Fish out of water

A microbiologist researching artificial kidneys, gave it all up to go in search of Satyajit Ray and dreams of making films. This is Smita Kudva’s story

SERENDIPITOUS ENCOUNTERS: Smita Kudva

A microbiologist who convinced filmdom’s greats like Satyajit Ray and Ismail Merchant to let her hang around their film sets and learn filmmaking by observing — that’s an intriguing person to begin with. So it’s only natural to ask Smita Kudva, who traces her roots to Karnataka’s Bantwal region, but has spent most of her life in Mumbai, to tell her story.

Smita is on the cusp of her first big feature film Fish Out Of Water , that talks of alienation of the oldest community of Mumbai — the fisherfolk (Koli community), and the city’s transgender and LGBT community. Her recent documentary film Chiraag , on the NGO MESCO helped the organisation raise money to complete a school building for underprivileged children.

“I come from a family with a

pucca south Indian bent of mind that you have to be a ‘professional’. So to begin with it was very unconventional for me to even have such dreams (of filmmaking),” she says, speaking over the phone from Mumbai. “I was doing research on artificial kidneys and was feeling like a complete misfit. In the Goud Saraswat community I’m a part of, there is a propensity towards a classical and performing art aesthetic…I feel there are some things you are just born to do,” says Smita by way of explanation of why she wanted to make films.

A friend had promised to introduce her to Satyajit Ray and off Smita went to Calcutta in early 1990. The promise didn’t really work and finally Smita just picked up the phone and dialled Ray’s home, she says, and Ray himself took the call! “I asked to meet him and he said ‘Come meet me today if it’s not about acting’. When I did go to his house, with me entered another man with good news he’d been waiting for…so he joked and said ‘You’ve brought the feet of Lakshmi home’. After that he was very nice to me, but also brutal. I asked if I can be his trainee. He said ‘Lot of people ask me what you are asking. Why should I allow you?’ He finally said he’ll write to me. And he did, putting down conditions of what I could and couldn’t do on set.” And so she landed on the set of Ray’s last film

Agantuk , as an observer, says Smita.

Smita had also learnt classical vocal from Sudha Divekar of the Kirana Gharana and Pandit Jasraj was their neighbour and growing up, she “ran in and out of his house”, says Smita. Smita has directed 30 hours of television work for Star Plus Asia and directed the 1997 music video of the Alka Yagnik-Javed Akhtar song “Saare sapne kahin kho gaye”. Lotus Indigo, her short film on Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, was screened at IFP, New York, as a work in progress.

Smita says she assisted Ismail Merchant in various capacities on two of his Merchant Ivory films –

In Custody and

Street Music of Bombay . And the story of how she came to work with Merchant, also has a musical connection. “I was in London when the post-production for

Heat and Dust was happening. I was in the studios because of my friendship with the music maestros — Zakir Hussain and Hariprasad Chaurasia were there — I was generally hanging around. There was a mixed crew and I would take one of the dogs of the English musicians for a walk. Ismail was very indulgent and would take me out for coffee and sandwiches; in the evenings when he would cook for the crew, I would chop up vegetables. I had a great chance and I kick myself for not taking the opportunity because I was too shy then — Ismail was looking for locations in Florence for

A Room With A View and asked me to help. But after my experience with Satyajit Ray, I wrote to Ismail saying I’d like to work with him.” Ismail Merchant was beginning work on

In Custody and sought Smita’s help to find locations — and they zeroed in on Bhopal, says Smita, because she had lived there briefly, interacting with famous Urdu poets, mostly uncles of a friend who had helped her in a time of distress. And such coincidence that she had started reading

In Custody at the very time she stayed in Bhopal, so she was vey familiar with its milieu. Did she ever study filmmaking? “Before I was 18 I had seen the films of the world masters — Bergman, Rossellini, Fellini, Kurosawa, thanks to my brother. It’s been a life experience of cinema. And when I went on to the sets of

Agantuk , I learnt much more than many learn in a film school. When I should have been listening to popular music, I was listening to classical greats and it was all demystified for me. Cinema was an amalgamation of all that I was capable of. And I told my family they would see the maximum utilisation of my talent if I made films.”