Going down Mira Road

Mira Nairs journey as an Odishabornbred filmmaker in America will seem greater to you if you consider the first thing she did landing up as an undergrad student at Harvard in the mid 70s She went over to her coursemate from Bombay Sooni Taraporevala desperately to check on who the other Indians around wereThere were only two mdash studying film One of them a gentleman named Anand Mahindra the industrialist whose surname carries the massive fleet of automobiles on Indian roads Anand was a really talented filmmaker Hes still an artist in his soul Ill never forget the wonderful thesisfilm he made following a holy man up a mountain Mira remembersScreenwriter Sooni and Mira of course became great friends and colleagues thereafter mdash collaborating on notable productions like Salaam Bombay 1988 Mississippi Masala 1991 and The Namesake 2006 Anand was the big brother whod encourage everyone to move back to India once done with studies As he did taking over his family empireMira Nair PicGetty ImagesSpeaking of famous associations from unrelated fields a picture that once got widely circulated online was of Mira as Cleopatra and Shashi Tharoor as Mark Antony in an intercollege Shakespearean production from the 70s Mira was a student at Delhi Universitys Miranda House then Shashi Tharoor the undisputed star of St Stephens CollegeShes been asked about this picture on occasion during interviews And I gauge from her responses before mdash it doesnt seem like she liked the collegekid Shashi Tharoor much Did he throw big words at her Oh no I just didnt like kissing him in the play Back then you know how it was mdash even if you got slightly physically close to someone people would start catcalling It was ridiculousAs for the Tharoorosaurus bit Well we used to tease Shashi who hadnt lived or been abroad yet about where he had got that accent from We used to say that his mother flew over England when she was pregnant and you know wahaan se thoda atmosphere aa gaya But hes always been a sport He used to take it wellEntertainment editor Mayank Shekhar connects with the filmmaker over a video callWhich instantly reminds you of Vivek Gombers character Arun Mehra from Miras A Suitable Boy who has similarly never set foot in England but throws a thick British twang chiefly to denote class Arun Mehra of course is straight from Vikram Seths novel of the same name On which the sixpart series is basedIn fact the languagediction has been a pet peeve for a lot of people who have dissed the show In her defense Mira says I feel like we were very nuanced with the language back then mdash trying to be angrez and we were taught to be so But it is a world that people literally dont know now They dont hear that worldTo be fair you do hear that overintonated cleanly clipped BritishEnglish in old clips especially of Indian statesmen or women from the time mdash say Nehru or Sarojini Naidu whose blackandwhite video pops up quite often on social media feedsThe filmmaker joins the virtual edition of Sit with Hitlist from New YorkI dont get that dialoguelanguage comment from people of my mothers generation Because that was the world familiar to them I tempered a fair amount of dialogue that I could during the making of A Suitable Boy mdash primarily getting 20 per cent of it back into UrduHindustani and Awadhi Which wasnt the case beforeThey didnt even think of it Anyway so I know that it is new and different to the ear But I stand by it Of course it was from the getgo written by someone else Andrew Davies It could be different But the book is what we largely followedFor its setting early 50s and setup BBC production streaming on Netflix Mira has in jest described A Suitable Boy as The Crown in brown within a fraction of the budget It is by no means her most loved work even while rants and raves are subjective by nature One wonders if after over 40 years of being an active filmmaker she cares so much for all thats written about her latest film or debut series as in this caseMira NairThat I am always creatively absorbed in another world provides a protection So I am not waiting to hear your words whats the point And social media is a weirdly interesting space where I just kinda get a vibe than actually read a full review Especially if there is something nasty in the headline she laughs flipping her fingers as if quickly turning pagesTaking away nothing from the fact that Mira remains still one of the most critically acclaimed filmmakers mdash for a majority of her filmography A creative slumpdissatisfaction if one may call it that is something she attributes only through selfintrospection Which is how she felt after Kama Sutra 1996 I wanted to burn every print that existed of that film Its not something youll hear many directors publicly admit even in hindsightAs she puts it It was also dovetailed with me moving to Cape Town with my husband Mahmood Mamdani who was heading the African Studies department at the university Our son Zohran was six and I didnt want to leave him It was a dove tailing of all those things I didnt quite know how to work it We made this film in two months My Own Country 1998 which Sooni and I wrote after That was good I have to keep doingmaking things It was in that wandering that I found myself making a documentary film Laughing Club of India 2001 in my state of malaise What happened with the shooting of that film in the rain using old Hindi movie songs On its own it became the seed for what became the style of Monsoon Wedding 2001 Thats what I share with people mdash to be fallow is also importantMira is formally trained in cinema verite mdash arttechnique mostly associated with documentary filmmaking intended to convey realism Well before Reese Witherspoon in Miras costumeperiod piece Vanity Fair 2004 even before Denzel Washington a topdraw Hollywood star who said yes to her mixedrace romance Mississippi Masala 1991 mdash struck by the Oscarnominated Salaam Bombay 1988 mdash the main muse for Miras realistic lens was in fact the city of Bombay itselfWhich is where Im speaking to her from and where Laughing Club of India is set in Malabar Hill to be more precise So are her two early documentaries Children of a Desired Sex 1987 on genderdetermination foetus tests And India Cabaret 1985 following lives of two Bombay stripclub dancers before dancebars became a thing and thereafter became illegal And anybody had thought of Maximum City or Slumdog MillionaireI watched India Cabaret recently on YouTube And the warm yet brutal gaze still holds As with Salaam Bombay that it subsequently inspired It was not a pretty Bombay for sure mdash pigs careening in the mud cruelty and violence over how men treated womenhellip In that type of filmmaking you dont take holidays It is about what is happening around you I remember going to see Shekhar Kapur who is an old friend but I almost had no language to understand his Juhu life mdash after living the life I was back in Antophi Antop Hill Most days I would just go to a beautiful handloom shop called Kasab which is still there on Napean Sea Road and sit there for hours for mental peaceWatch theinterview with Mira Nair belowNow they can call me a New Yorkbased filmmaker in Bombay but the fact is that not many saw Salaam Bombay right under their noses It was a life around us When you live in it all the time you cant see it well mdash having numbed yourself to itThis seamless transition from documentary filmmaking to fiction mdash something that writers of nonfiction find harder to be equally adept at mdash Mira admits has helped define her work And you can still sense strong stamps of it even in later movies like Queen of Katwe 2016 set in a slum in Kampala Uganda or the otherwise unfilmable conversation she turned into the movie version of Mohsin Hamids The Reluctant Fundamentalist 2012Cinema of truth cinema verite sounds a little pretentious It is very real in the sense that you dont script everything You just have to be humble enough to enter the world Just be there Of course your presence is shaping the moment to some extent But it is also about being an observer to the situation and eliciting things from actors mdash as they feel them rather than you telling them what to sayWhat this has also led to since her celebrated debut feature is mdash film after film an established practice of casting real people as it were or nonprofessional actors alongside trained actorsstars in the same frame And watching this unique alchemy come to life on screenFor instance Mira discovered Sarita Choudhury who played Denzel Washingtons love interest in Mississippi Masala biking on a street in Cambridge once She found Tillotama Shome Alice in Monsoon Wedding in the corridors of Delhis Lady Shri Ram College Even better she picked up Kamini Khanna for a typically DelhiPunjabi Shashi Aunty in the same film mdash spotting her on the walking track of a South Delhi park Does she think everyone is essentially an actor thenNot at all Its about several things but mostly instinct I can tell immediately if the camera will love you or not Or sometimes it doesnt matter if the camera wont love you but can I use that in a way Like Pedro Almodovar and his ladies are fantastic And they so destroy the notion of whats beautiful before a camera But the roles need that So it depends on the role of courseWhile casting for Monsoon Wedding she recalls a newbie Vijay Raazs face had caught her eye Hed walked in from the train station to Umas Da Cunhas house in Churchgate I dont know how I even remembered his name Paresh Rawal whom I admired a lot had approached me for PK Dubes part We had a workshop in Delhi which Paresh couldnt join So then I had to take Tillotama Alice back to Bombay to rehearse with Paresh DubeNaseer bhai Naseeruddin Shah had given us space above his flat for rehearsal The door opened and my eyes fell out Paresh had gained 30 to 40 pounds He looked like Alices father and this was supposed to be a lovestory with him as a tentwalla He said Ill just lose weightBut we were shooting in literally four days I just thought of the bald man with long ears and the widest mouth in the world Vijay Raaz and called him I had not auditioned him but I loved his look The role expanded as Raaz came on board killing it along the way This conversation between midday and Nair took place a day before Raaz was summarily arrested and subsequently bailed over a molestation charge on a movie setHes had a solid career since Several Indian actors in the Bombay film industry similarly owe their first frame on the big screen to Mira Right from Nana Patekar and Irrfan in Salaam Bombay Late Irrfan she always felt was cut from a different cloth from Bombays leading men in the 80s and 90s He delivered arguably his finest work with Mira in The Namesake 2006Or Randeep Hooda and Ram Kapoor for that matter They were debutants in Monsoon Wedding bona fide stars now Why even Kamini Khanna Shes played multiple versions of Shashi Aunty in every other Bollywood movie This contribution to the Bombay film industry in particular I suspect isnt acknowledged enough about the New York and Kampalabased filmmakerEven more than a keen headhunter Mira is an allencompassing aesthete wholly invested in cinematography literature production design colours costumes the craft of moulding actorscharactershellip You can dive deep into her independent filmmaking process on an expensive app called MasterclassA trait that unites Mira still with the timehonoured tradition of mainstream Indian filmmakers is her exquisite ear for desi poetry and music mdash whether that be L Subramaniams musical interludes in Salaam Bombay or the Monsoon Wedding soundtrack that melodiously travels from Anu Malik to Farida Khanum As do the poetry of Daagh Mir and Ghalib set to ghazals in A Suitable Boy or the sitar maestro Shujaat Khan showing up on the small screenThe song playing in my head all through talking to Mira and while writing this excerpt is the haunting Mehfil barkhaast hui by Kavita Seth in A Suitable Boy Similarly Susheela Ramans earworm version of Mukeshs Yeh mere deewanapan hai had invaded my brain for a full year after The Namesake It plays on the suhaag raat which isnt like any another because these are Diaspora kids So there is jazz and blues with echoes of their roots They have seen Bollywood stuff and simply want to be stars on their honeymoon night Mira reasons before humming the song delightfully herselfSurprisingly Susheela would simply not sing that track when she once performed in Bombay despite repeatedly loud requests from the pit right under the stage Mira says that could be because she must have been shy to sing it in India in that British twang Even my husband who is older and knows the real song says Yeh kya hai He cant take itGiven the reacutesumeacute and musical references seeped into her work besides an army of previous recruits from among top Bombay actors Im almost amazed that in all these years Bollywood folk havent ever attempted to coopt Mira with a grand schemeprojectI am not looking for that either But I have really lovely friendships Yash Johar and I were very close He was the production manager on one of my films Buddha with Warner Brothers in 199091 We travelled the whole country locationscouting I really respect Aditya Chopras mind I had taken him on an idea mdash not for me to do but for us to work together on But no I dont think so I think they think correctly mdash that I just make my own moviesOn social networks Mira goes by the rather odd handle Pagli Dont forget the Ji Pagli is my nickname from childhood I did weird things as a kid still do My son made me get on social media when we were opening The Reluctant Fundamentalist He asked whats the name ma I didnt want my name on it I thought Id get hounded beyond belief So I just said Pagli yaar And because people called me jivi and all that usko bhi laga diya Pagliji mdash an honoured mad personThat we can see in person in India when she brings down Monsoon Wedding as a stage musical once pandemic ends and hell freezes over A film that wouldve brought Pagliji back to Bombay mdash her early muse and that too with Johnny Depp mdashwas the adaptation of Gregory David Roberts ShantaramRegrets mdash that the film fell through I only regretted that I gave oneandahalf years of my life to it And we really had a good thing going Not otherwise They were starting it again and I was not interestedMira also famously let go of directing the fourth Harry Potter film for the sake of The Namesake She declined The Devil Wears Prada going by the same measure of what interests her mdash and what she can do better than similar directors on hireI am very nihilistic like that I suppose I just turned down something also very huge few days ago Thats when I fell down into a khadda a ditch on the street she says from her Manhattan apartment nursing a shoulder painExuding power all right in an industry that when she entered it mdash doing theatre in New York during day waiting tables at night mdash there were barely any coloured people around let alone desis or women Its a world very far away from the one with M Night Shyamalans and Mindy Kalings that we knowMira first got on the road splitting rent for an editing suite at a basement collective for offbeat artistes in New York This is after she had shot Salaam Bombay Which she knew the West had no similar reference point forSpike Lee same age also editing his film would pay the other half of the rent I also used to work at a restaurant called Indian Oven when they really didnt know how to spell India Id explain cottage cheese balls fried in gravy mix of peas mdash for a matar paneer They get her nowKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest 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