An outsider will remain an outsider: Shirish Kunder

The filmmaker has written eight scripts that he’s kept locked in a cupboard. But he is visibly bullish about digital platforms

Published - December 02, 2017 04:19 pm IST

 ‘The digital world offers immense freedom and possibilities,’ says Kunder.

‘The digital world offers immense freedom and possibilities,’ says Kunder.

For a filmmaker who rarely talks to the media, Shirish Kunder is rather accessible when it comes to an appointment; I am able to fix a meeting with him within precisely 60 minutes of back and forth on WhatsApp. The only thing that needs sustained negotiation is the photoshoot. “I hate getting ready,” he messages, “Is it fine if I click a selfie and send later?” He finally agrees to a fresh shoot. “I was very fat earlier,” he says.

The man who greets us the next day at the Lokhandwala apartment, dressed in distressed jeans, a denim shirt and green camouflage-print sneakers, looks ridiculously young for his 44 years.

It is the first time in my two years in the city that I have made such a long vertical journey for an interview. Swallowing hard to fix my elevator ears I reach the 35th floor lobby to find myself facing bright blue-and-yellow walls with Shirish-Farah-Czar-Diva-Aanya imprinted in bold. That is Kunder, his director wife Farah Khan and their triplets. A bicycle leans on one side of the wall and a tiny Ganesh rests on the other.

We are led into a sprawling living room with distinct seating areas, Buddha statues, family pictures, books and M.F. Husain prints and an original on the walls. We take in the 180 degree view (of the 360 degree view that the apartment apparently offers) of Mumbai — a surreal constellation of high rises, blue tarpaulin clad slums and vast swathes of greenery around Mogra Nallah and Malad Creek. Just the right spot for Ed Sheeran to have partied at during his Mumbai visit.

So why Shirish Kunder now? Is he finally making another film? Well he has announced a new web series but what intrigues me most is how he has reinvented himself on the social media, Twitter to be specific (he just can’t be on Facebook or Instagram he says).

An army behind him

With two flops as a director — Jaan-E-Mann (2006) and Joker (2012) — and a brawl with none other than Shah Rukh Khan behind him, the last thing one would have expected of Kunder was to make a name for himself on Twitter with an army of followers (1.1 million at last count) and trolls at his heels.

The sarcasm, candidness and irreverence have floored many, as has his take on politics. He doesn’t fight shy of taking a political stand. On the other hand, he can’t see himself align with any party. Kunder is the author of the famous “56-inch foreign policy” phrase.

There are other samples from Twitter: “There are two meanings to every tweet: 1. What it actually means. 2. What the Bhakt understands”; “Modi sarkar promised to be a game-changer, turned out to be a name changer”; “I really hope Donald Trump wins. Then Americans will understand our problem”; “Who would have thought that a day would come when protesting against mob lynching would also be considered anti-national”; “Those who have nothing new to offer will offer you what you already had since birth: your religion.”

But finding his unique voice on social media was not easy for Kunder, it took a bit of time for him to get on a roll. He started off in 2009 but only now have people started to understand him, he says. “Initially, only stand-up comedians in the U.K. would get my tweets. Here, people used to wonder what I was trying to say.”

In retrospect, Twitter made him understand his audience, the kind of humour that clicks with them and the kind that doesn’t. And he feels now that his audience has begun to get him on Twitter, they may get to understand his films too. He calls it the story of his life — people not being able to get him in the first instance, figuring him out much later. No wonder he has had just two feature films in the last 11 years. Jaan-E-Mann, however, has acquired cult stature over the years.

Kunder wanted to make a film on the Kandahar hijack for his debut when the romcom came to him. He decided to give it a new spin and treatment. “People watch La La Land and say that we made it 11 years ago. It was unusual story-telling, started in a spaceship with a couple dancing to ‘The Blue Danube’,” recollects Kunder.

All these years, away from spotlight, he has been writing scripts, some eight of them all kept locked in the cupboard assuming that no one will understand them. The short film which he released last year on YouTube, Kriti, helped him gain some confidence and now he is visibly bullish about digital platforms.

His kind of films

“Films are star-driven, about stars getting the viewers to the theatres. The digital world offers freedom and possibilities when it comes to content,” he says. He is all set to make a 10-part crime thriller that he refers to as the female Breaking Bad.

“It is all about committing crime to save a loved one.” He thinks the digital space would be his kind of platform, for his kind of films.

Reinvention is not something new for Kunder. The electronics engineer from Mangaluru worked in Motorola for four years and then decided to turn to films on a whim one day. He wanted to be a choreographer initially but a visit to a Saroj Khan shoot made him realise that he wouldn’t fit into the environment. Nine months of working as an assistant director on television and he gave that up as well.

“The work is that of a glorified peon. You are master of none,” he says. He decided to take up a specialisation — editing. He assisted Renu Saluja, known for picking up people from the Film and Television Institute of India. He, perhaps, was the only one not from there. Kunder has lived through both the analog and digital phases of editing, one of the earliest to adapt to the new technology.

Starting off as an editor in dozens of films, he turned director with Jaan-E-Mann in 2006 that he also wrote, edited and composed music for. Isn’t that too much for a single person to handle? “That was how it was always meant to be. Sanjay Leela Bhansali does it. It’s the basic responsibility but over a period of time we (filmmakers) have become lazy,” he says.

Opposites attract

What does he like the most of all these crafts? “Best is writing, composing is fun, so is editing. In these three, things are in your control. In direction, you are dependent on 300 other people and any one of them can mess things up,” he says.

Was it his interest in choreography that got him and Farah Khan together? He met her while editing her Main Hoon Na in 2004. “I edit with a sense of music and choreography,” he says, something she could have possibility related to.

However, even after about 12 years of their marriage Kunder insists he can’t feel like an insider in the industry the way his wife does; can’t hang out with stars, be pals with them the way she can. “They talk differently, the equations are different. I don’t belong in the party. An outsider will always remain an outsider,” he says, categorically.

So he tries not to attend parties, even those at home, save an odd exception. What makes the two of them tick then? Introspection, self-awareness, he says. There is no room for jealousy or competition, he adds: “She is extremely successful as a director. I am yet to get there.”

Back to his favourite playground — Twitter. There are some rules of the game — no holiday pictures, no selfies with celebrities. These days he has been tweeting less, finding more interesting, indirect ways of putting things out there. He understands the industry at large playing safe and not speaking out on issues, even those involving cinema.

He blames a vitiated atmosphere: “I have always been anti-establishment but the backlash now is more vicious. Even I have reduced tweeting,” he says.

His field is not politics but a creative one. “When I am writing I need peace, I can’t write in an agitated state,” he says.

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