The right direction.
For four years Rakesh Anand Bakshi woke up each morning with one purpose. He would spend his days either meeting some of Bollywood's directors, manically editing their interviews or persist at getting a response from those who had not given him an appointment yet. This was all for his labour of love-his book Director's Diaries: The Road to Their First Film. "For the first two years I didn't even have a publisher, and I never hid this fact from the directors I was meeting at the time," admits Bakshi. But then Harper Collins's Shantanu Ray Chaudhari read his proposal and jumped at the chance to publish the book.
Bakshi, son of lyricist Anand Bakshi and an aspiring filmmaker himself, traces the origins of the book's concept to his own frustrations at not being able to successfully direct a film when so many others "without any background in films managed". An avid reader, he'd read everything related to film he could possibly get his hands on. "But there seemed nothing on the lives of these filmmakers.
It was important to make their voices available to all those who are looking for motivation, inspiration and knowledge," he believes. Indeed, with the insight we get into the childhoods and early influences of each of the directors, be it Govind Nihalani's tryst with the partition or Imtiaz Ali's aimless adolescence, it is easy to draw inspiration from Bakshi's interviews. Perhaps not all the directors had a tough childhood, but candour was the one thing common to all of their stories. Farah Khan talked of how she'd avoid coming home because her father would rent out their hall to card players, and Mahesh Bhatt was just as open about growing up with a Muslim mother while having a Hindu father who never stayed the night. Subhash Ghai, on the other hand, talked of how his love for music saved him from drowning emotionally. In school he was attracted to art, music, dance and drama, and his teachers adored him.
In the chapter dedicated to Khan, Bakshi writes, "I laughed the most during her interview." But when you ask him about it, he adds, "I couldn't put in most of what she said. She poked fun at a lot of people, in the sense that she spoke about the duality of some of the people in the industry and how fickle that world is. How they treat you depends on how well or badly your film has done. I could relate to what she said. On my dad's birthday, sometimes we'd have to pick our way through the bouquets all over the house. And then there were times when we didn't realise it was his birthday because no flowers or phone calls had come. When Farah's father was bankrupt, people just stopped visiting them overnight," reveals Bakshi.
From the four to five hours he spent with each of the directors, Bakshi was left with 25,000 words per interview. "I had to edit so much," he rues. In fact, of the 33 directors he interviewed, only 12 could be featured. "I made sure I spoke to directors who'd grown up in smaller towns like Bhillai or Jamshedpur or Patna. Imtiaz Ali told me, 'You keep asking me whether it was my dream to be in films. Let me set the record straight-I'm from Jamshedpur. Growing up, I could never have dreamt that I would be here one day!' There must be so many like him across the country," says Bakshi.
If this book does well, the plan is to publish a second volume and eventually if Bakshi has his way, each director will get a book dedicated to his life and work. Hopefully volume two will feature Raj Kumar Hirani too, one of the directors Bakshi hasn't been able to interview so far.
While a few of his readers have questioned Bakshi about choosing to feature directors like Farah Khan despite the populist cinema they adhere to, he is quick to defend his decision. "There's so much poverty in this country and for so many, the kind of films she makes is the only entertainment they have," he says.
So sincere was Bakshi as an interviewer and his dialogue with the directors so immersive, that several even thanked him for taking them down memory lane. After the book was published, Vishal Bhardwaj thanked him saying, "I came to know or rather discovered so much about myself." Anurag Basu and Ashutosh Gowariker were both thrilled at being "immortalised" through the book. But Bakshi believes he has gained the most from the experience. "I know now that you can't make a movie if you're not fearless. And if I were to do something differently on my own first or any other film it would be walking into it with the belief most of these directors has bequeathed to us readers-it is okay if you do not know everything," he concludes.
- Moeena Halim.
India Today (by Moeena Halim) July 27th 2015
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