With Ketan Mehta you have to nudge, prod and wait for the response but with Deepa Sahi you can cut straight to business. “Kangana fits the frame both age-wise and build-wise and of course she is one of the best actresses we have now and over the course of time her brand will also grow. She becomes the character, she doesn’t caricaturise,” says Deepa who is writing the film. “Every film has its time. Earlier when we were trying to raise money the market had just one question, hero kaun hai. I could get half the funding from Britain but here nobody was ready to partner. I had faxes of contracts from abroad but they also want an Indian partner. Now Kangana is as good as the hero. People have begun to realise that a female-dominated film can have a big budget. There are many heroines who have done 100 crore business with male stars but she is the only one who has done it on her own strength. She has made it possible,” says the actress, who is still remembered for her performances in “Tamas” and “Party”.
As for the contemporary relevance of the subject, Deepa says it is crucial. “The encounter between the East and the West has hardly been over. In fact it has just begun. And fighting for your conviction can never be out of fashion.” She has brought in Farrukh Dhondy for his insight on British empire. “I want to polish it with a couple of more drafts.”
Talking about the research process, Deepa says when she began to write 10 years back, she found that most of the British and Indian versions of history were one-sided. “Then I went to the British Museum Library. There you type the word sepoy and you get 70,000 entries. They have a huge sense of archiving. And have some information on almost each and every solider, who served in India. As it was hot in India, the soldiers used to take a break in the afternoon and write letters and diaries. There is a collection of such writing which helps you make sense of the everyday life. As you read them you discover that the reality is somewhere in between. The hook for my story came from one line. Sir Hugh Rose, the commanding officer who laid the siege around Jhansi one day got her in the line of fire. His assistant asked him should he fire. She was standing on the ramparts surveying the area. And Rose said no. Kyon! Then I read around and there were some fascinating details. We tend to reduce history to five lines.”
She wants to shoot in Jhansi. “During one of our holidays, Ketan and I decided to do the entire route by car. After the siege of Jhansi she ran on her horse to Gwalior. The route that she took we did that by car.” She holds that the imagery of her running with the child tied to her back is real. However, the incidents that led to her death are hazy. “There are four versions of her death in Kotah Ki Sarai and you don’t know which one is real. The one I find the most fascinating I am going to keep that because that is what mentally appeals to me that it could have happened.”
Subhdara Kumari Chauhan described her as “Khub Ladi Mardani”. Today many can take umbrage at this usage of gender metaphors. “She might have done it according to her generation. Lakshmi Bai did step into a male zone but she was very much a woman. The way she breaks down and reassembles herself is amazing. The feminine portions have not been removed. It is also a study on how a woman solves a problem…” Deepa trails off. “In fact, I am writing another story which delves on how a man and a woman tackle the same problem in different ways.” That’s for another day.
