Long cab drives, eating hot pakoras on the vintage Fairy Queen train, a night at the ashram — last year’s Qarib Qarib Singlle certainly put you in the mood to travel. But the reel journey played as pivotal a role in the rom-com as the protagonists, Yogi (Irrfan Khan) and Jaya (Parvathy). “The journey is the story. There is a physical one, of course, to these places (Dehradun, Rishikesh, Delhi, Alwar, Jaipur and Gangtok) and an inner one as well that the lead characters have,” says director Tanuja Chandra, of the film about a mismatched couple meeting through a dating app, setting out on an expedition to revisit their past, and, in the process, discovering themselves and each other.
We are discussing the many journeys portrayed in contemporary Hindi films, and how their cinematic depiction has evolved over time. Exceptions have always been there but, by and large, reels journeys have been a pretext to find a beautiful backdrop to shoot a song or take the viewer on a vicarious holiday. They have also been about stoking wanderlust. So, if Chandni (1989) made Switzerland the go-to place, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) put Spain on the well-heeled Indian’s bucket list. However, of late, journeys in films have become the thematic thread, the central motif and also the integral narrative device on which the entire foundation of a film is built.
Imtiaz Ali, the most itinerant filmmaker of contemporary Hindi cinema, says he never consciously intended journey to be the leitmotif in all his films. “I have not been aware of my own interest that I have been identified with in retrospect,” he says.
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The politics of it
Shibani Bathija, writer of Karan Johar’s
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For Kabir Khan, the preponderance of travel in his films is an offshoot of his early days of training as a documentary filmmaker, assisting senior journalist Saeed Naqvi and visiting over 60 countries with him. “It wasn’t about tourism,” he clarifies, but rather about documenting people and places, understanding political situations and internalising them. Unusually, he sees a kindred spirit in Mani Ratnam, in how the cinematic journeys in the director’s films have a political element woven in, be it Roja (1992) or Dil Se (1998). The “political” road film genre then — be it Kabul Express (2006) or Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) — came to him organically than consciously. “It’s how I inherently end up doing things, on the go,” he says, though Kabir does admit that travelling through the length and breadth of Afghanistan and Rajasthan also offered visual, cinematic possibilities. Ultimately for him location is a character. “Some things can only happen in a certain place,” he says.
Voyage into the self
Whatever be their own portrayal of travel, most contemporary Hindi filmmakers are in agreement with Johar, who says that “earlier, travel used to add to [a film’s] opulence, scale and indulgence. It was all about cut to foreign location to shoot a song. Now it has to do with the narrative itself. Characters are moving more organically across time and space [in a film].” So how do they see journeying change over the years in Hindi films? “I don’t think we have explored geographies as much as we are doing now,” says Ali. He takes it back to the equipment — the bulky shooting gear has given way to lighter instruments so it has become easier to travel and shoot. “I don’t think a Highway would have been possible 30 years ago.”
Chandra views it thematically. Road movies usually show protagonists running away from someone or something. “Possibly now, they may be running towards something — towards finding love or towards discovering some kind of undiscovered meaning in life,” she says. But, conversely, how does a journey help elaborate on these themes? For Johar, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was about the evolution of a character in time, and so the journey. “It’s said that you leave home to find yourself, to create a new side of yourself. Travel is connected to that emotional syntax of the film,” he says.
According to Ali, travel is a reorienting experience; it makes you break the shackles of everyday existence. “You are not the same as you are the rest of the time. In doing so, you discover yourself,” he explains. So it is not just about the geographical journey, the protagonists are perennially on a metaphorical trip — a journey inwards, a journey to love, about men and women fighting their inner demons to fall in love. “We get to know people quite intimately when we travel with them, probably because there is something new or strange that we are contending with, new places and experiences,” adds Chandra.
Off the road
The often crazy shoots of such poignant journeys create recollections aplenty. Kabir recalls shooting in Afghanistan for Kabul Express , and how difficult it was to find spots without landmines. Or the challenge of taking Salman Khan, who does not enjoy travelling, all the way to the Khjuwah glacier for Bajrangi Bhaijaan . “Every location in Kashmir was stunning, but at least one hour’s trek from the road. Salman would keep staring at me with this strange expression in his eyes,” he recalls.
Ali remembers how a lot of Highway was not pre-planned, but all about stopping and shooting at whichever location felt right. “I was in the first car of the cavalcade. We were in Nako, the highest point in Himachal, and had stopped to eat when I saw this hillock and the light. Alia [Bhatt] who was relaxing was asked to change into the costume. She kept asking me ‘what do I have to do’. I told her to just climb up, that she will know what to do by the time we reach. We got her on the camera just as the sun was setting. And [in the rush] it was [DoP] Anil Mehta who had to say ‘action’ instead of me,” he says.
Following the heart
A film with a journey at its core might look good and feel great, but it also means huge logistical issues, which could be both fun and a nightmare. Kabir cannot see it as anything but fun. “The process of filmmaking is as important as the end product and nothing can replace the real locations,” he says. We catch him when he is just back from a tough two-month-long journey, shooting Amazon Prime’s five-part series, The Forgotten Army . On Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), it had him go back on the same journey he went on two decades ago for the documentary he had made on the same subject. “It was challenging to go deep into the jungle, we shot near the border…”
Shooting in locations that haven’t been explored before is all about “belling the cat”, as Ali puts it. It could literally involve building bridges across streams to walk across, which could later get used by local people. “It can be tough but also thrilling. If we were playing safe we wouldn’t be making movies,” he concludes.
namrata.joshi@thehindu.co.in
Realities of the route
Vishal Menon
The journey has been a part of South Indian films, with many like Kamal Haasan’s Anbe Sivam — where the protagonists travel from Bhubaneshwar to Chennai, and address themes like atheism and communism — giving it the depth usually reserved for its lead characters. In Malayalam cinema, Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi (2013) followed a similar line, though on motorcycles, as the protagonists made their way from Kerala to the Northeast.
Road movies are about letting external factors call the shots, says Dan Macarthur, the DOP of Gautham Menon’s Achcham Yenbadhu Madaimaiyada , a trip from Chennai to Maharashtra. “You can’t predict how the light will be and you run the risk of returning without a single shot. That’s the tough part of shooting a journey.” But from the lensman’s eye, the challenge is to refrain from making every frame a picture postcard, shares cinematographer Madhu Neelakantan, who shot the Malayalam film Rani Padmini (2015, pictured above). A feminist road movie, it culminates in its two female leads escaping patriarchy and literally finding wings, hang gliding over the Himalayas. “The film could afford the larger-than-life beauty of the Himalayas; it gives the feeling of Utopia, a place where the two women are free. The mountains are very much a character in that sense,” he says.
However, for Mysskin — whose 2010 film Nandalala (inspired from Takeshi Kitano’s Kikujiro ) traced the journey of a mentally-challenged adult and an eight-year-old boy, both in search of their respective mothers — the journey is hardly beautiful. “When we’re reliving painful memories, it cannot all be pretty; the places need to signify that. Instead of wide-angle shots, I use close ups of the actors’ feet, as they walk, run and move about, to make the journey come alive,” says the director.
vishal.menon@thehindu.co.in
Bollywood’s bucket list
Karan Johar: I am not an adventurous traveller. No new beaches, hills; it’s the same old sterile boring concrete jungle for me. London, Paris and New York are where I go to. I am a Gemini and New York is my soul city. It has that split personality — it is so buzzing yet there is a deep sense of loneliness. I feel a deep, karmic connection with it. I have my Imtiaz Ali moment when I am in New York.
Tanuja Chandra: I’ve done a fair bit of travelling, but more often than not I do it for work. Which doesn’t detract from the enjoyment. In fact, it creates a hunger to learn as much as I can about a place. When I was a kid, we used to visit Sikkim often because my uncle was posted there when he served in the army. That’s the reason I put it in QQS . Irrfan used to joke, saying, “We’re going all the way to Gangtok to satisfy your childhood memories!” But he and the whole crew ended up loving their Sikkim experience.
Kabir Khan: I am a travel junkie. Right now, as we are talking, I am in Maldives, getting my 14-year-old son his scuba diving certification. I always travel to write my scripts — I get away for two-three weeks, and sit and write with nothing disturbing me. I would recommend the five-day trek on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest with Rongbuk monastery, the highest in the world, at the base. The Chadar trek in Ladakh is outstanding, too. The Zanskar river gets frozen in winters and is like a white sheet, and it is a seven-day walk to Ladakh.
Imtiaz Ali: It’s a chicken and egg situation — whether I am travelling for work or working for travel. Even if I don’t travel on work, work emanates out of it. Family trips to Kashmir and Rajasthan have led to [locations for] films. I ‘find’ myself in Punjab, Himachal, Kashmir and Rajasthan. I like Europe a lot, specially Central Europe. My most recent trip was to the Maldives, where I went berserk with all the water activities — paragliding, fly-boarding.
Films that take you places
Imtiaz Ali: I am fascinated by the different worlds opened up for me by films like David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia or Dr Zhivago . I love films situated in different locales. One that comes to mind is JP Dutta’s Ghulami . I went to the Fatehpur-Shekawati region because of that film. It was the first personal travel I could afford, the first holiday after moving to Mumbai. Later, I shot two films in that area — Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal.
Kabir Khan: Travel films that come to mind immediately are Bombay to Goa and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara . I love Motorcycle Diaries — it shows how travel shaped Che Guevara.
Karan Johar:Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin was all about finding each other through travel. All of Imtiaz Ali’s films are about travel, about looking for something. Ayan Mukerjee’s Ye Jawani Hai Deewani is interesting in how the central character, played by Ranbir Kapoor, reflects on, represents and personifies travel. He is trying to use travel, the montage of places, to find himself. Travel in that film is actually within the character.