Many filmmakers have seen Partition from the cinematic prism but the picture remains hazy. At times the political angle becomes skewed and at others emotions fail to tug at heartstrings. Now Gurinder Chadha is busy finalising the script for her magnum opus on the subject that continues to haunt India and Pakistan. “That is my passion project. I have to work quite hard on getting it right because I am making a film on British and Indian history for British and global audience, and not just the Indian audience. I have to keep the balance right. It is unlike what I have done before and it is not an easy thing to achieve. You have to think about the sensibilities of different cultures so that it is not just appealing but is also appreciated. People in American might not even know what Partition is, while in India it is still part of everyday discussion in many families,” says Chadha, who is in India to audition a couple of big names for the project.
Isn’t ‘balance’ overemphasised in projects dealing with socio-political conflict of different cultures? “Good question but it is something what make me. I achieved it with Bend it Like Beckham . I did it with Bhaji On The Beach but I couldn’t do it with Bride and Prejudice . It is a complex issue and that’s why it is taking me such a long time. Ultimately, I am making a film that I want to see. That’s the only way. I am telling my own history, my parents’ history and taking my audience, which come from different cultural backgrounds on a journey in a very emotional storytelling way but at the same time I am also rewriting history.” In what sense? “I am rewriting what I have been generally told about Partition. What Richard Attenborough said in Gandhi , that’s not what happened.”
Chadha has drawn from Dominique Lapierre’s Freedom At Midnight and Narender Singh Sarila’s The Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition . The former provides the background and the latter makes the meat. Sarila was the ADC of Lord Mountbatten and has thrown new light on diplomatic world of pulls and pressures, said and unsaid. “Without giving anything away I want to say there was a feeling that something was not right in the British administration and that’s why things happened so quickly towards the end. As they say in Punjabi koi na koi kartootiyan thi. There was something wrong. Dal main kuchh kala tha. But nobody has been able to pin point it out on the British side. I am giving it a try,” says Chadha whose family was directly affected by Partition. “I grew up with heart rendering tales. I have seen films from Indian subcontinent on the subject. Some of them are very good like Khamosh Paani . Even Veer Zara was good masala if you see it from Yash Chopra’s unique view. Here one has to be careful. Being a British filmmaker I am a little bit freer to tell the story,” she notes. At the end of the days, she adds, one has to make political personal and present it in an emotional way. “It is not a question of taking sides; it is about representing all sides of the story.”
Unlike other filmmakers of Indian diaspora, Chadha has presented a happy, optimistic view of the world around her. “It depends on what you experienced as a child. Some become cynical. I didn’t. My fond memories of childhood include my father playing songs of Baiju Bawra and Mother India ,” Chadha breaks into “Tu Ganga Ki Mauj”. Then came Manoj Kumar’s Purab Aur Paschim and it introduced Chadha to the nationalist flavours of India. “It was a big hit in Britain. We knew the representation of Saira Banu as the liberated British-Indian was far from real but we still watched it again and again because he cleverly mixed the popular with the patriotic. Then came ‘Bobby’ and every boy and girl was driving up the alley in Bobby outfits.” Apart from “Bride And Prejudice” , such craze for Bollywood doesn’t reflect in her work. “Because I was equally fond of Charles Dickens and Ken Loach’s films,” she reasons.
Spreading her wings, Chadha has come up with a venture capital fund with AVT Shankardass, a financier of a number of recent Hollywood films like Captain America . “I have been working to create my own media fund and what I have been doing is to keep my projects ready so when the fund kicks off I can go and shoot. People are showing interest. Some of the projects are very lucrative but if I make them in the traditional way then I end up giving the rights and so I am waiting for my fund to take place.”
One of the projects is the reworking of Bend It Like Beckham as a stage musical. “We completely reworked the film for the stage. We have sixteen songs in it. It is incredibly moving. Anybody who loved the film will be in for a big treat. It is about history, it is about struggle but also celebration of what it means to be a British Indian. That is my legacy.”
Does the film continue to be the ice-breaker between the two communities? “Oh yes! Bend It Like Beckham had a lot to do with changing relations not only in Britain but also in the US because it came after 9/11 and at that time nobody knew the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim. It generated lot of discussion. I mean what is interesting is there is a third generation British Indian that doesn’t feel alienated. He goes out clubbing, intermingle with people of different cultural backgrounds. He is a very diverse entity in the urban space. He does think and is conscious about his roots but he is not conflicted.”
Between the lines
On Bride And Prejudice
It was about taking an English classic and giving it a Hindi film treatment. The film was not aimed at Hindi audience. It was my attempt to introduce English audience to Hindi filmmaking style and for that I wanted to have Hindi filmstars in it. It is the number one Hindi film with young girls in the US when they have Bollywood sleepovers. They learn all the songs and dances. I have seen a young American-Italian girl performing all the Punjabi numbers phonetically.
On casting
I have some actors in mind and I am meeting a couple of them in Mumbai. It is very difficult in India to take names before you finalise them. It is very difficult for Indian actors to pick a project that demand their full concentration for a couple of years because they don’t want to ruin their constituency here. The kind of actors which will finally do it will do it not for money but because they want such a film in their resume.
