Even Buddha was accused of sexual abuse: Shekhar Kapur

SHEKHAR Kapur has been haunted by the question what is infinity since he was 12 He would lie on his back on the terrace of his Nizamuddin home in Delhi and ponder about the Milky Way with his mother Sheela Irsquod ask her where the sky extended to And shersquod say to forever Irsquod go to physics class the next day and theyrsquod tell me anything that canrsquot be measured doesnrsquot existrdquo he smiles over the memory of contradictions when we meet at a Juhu cafeacuteShekhar KapurMost recently the question led him to religious and spiritual gurus He says he befriended newage speaker Deepak Chopra and yogi Sadhguru Jaggi VasudevHe also spent time with the Dalai LamaAmma and Shekhar Kapur in conversation PicGetty ImagesHe came closer to the answer when working on an installation called Water that now sits at Mumbairsquos T2 international airport terminal It allows visitors to interact with musical notes by running their fingers through a water fountain Itrsquos while creating it that he met a scientist who had worked at a university run by the Amritanandamayi Trust which has at its centre Amma the 62yearold hugging saint from Kerala who assuages people of their troubles with a squeeze She spends more than 12 hours every day hugging thousands of followers ridding them of woes when she presses their heads against her soft rounded body always draped in white Hospitals and educational institutions spanning schools to engineering colleges are run under the aegis of her trust Like with all godmen and women Amma too has been critiqued for amassing a fortune from miseryA still from WillIt doesnrsquot vex KapurInstead he harks back to 2013 when he was invited to film Ammas 60th birthday celebrations in Kollam KeralaShe hugs for 17 hours a day She travels six months of the year doing just that She runs a multitude of universities ashrams and hospitals where the greatest minds from all over the world work If you go up to one of them and ask lsquowho planned this Who commissioned thisrsquo all answers lead to Amma he says He remembers sitting behind her during a darshan when a staffer came and whispered something in her ear She answered in Malayalam The guy told me lsquoWe have a million dollars and we needed to check with Amma what to do with it She conveyed her decision How does she do it She is uneducatedrdquo he says with wonderment about the woman born to a fishermanrsquos family in Parayakadavu KeralaAnd so was born The Science of Compassion a 49minute documentary on Amma which he premiered online last weekCriticism targeted at her he says he doesnrsquot care for One of Ammarsquos most prominent followers Gail Tredwell released Holy Hell in 2014 highlighting the embezzlement of funds and rampant physical and sexual abuse at Ammarsquos ashramEven Buddha was accused of sexual abuse People living in the ratinal world are always trying to bring down everything to the mundane Thatrsquos the way we are Kapur saysHe clarifies though that he isnrsquot a follower But he has fallen victim to her charm ldquoShe is fascinating There is this story I heard and a picture I saw of her licking the sores of a man suffering from leprosy when she was told she couldnrsquot hug him Who does thatrdquoWe ask him about something less tricky mdash ShakespeareThe director has been busy working on a 10episode series for TNT titled Will Itrsquos based on the early years of William Shakespearersquos life The trailer depicts a 16thcentury London that could also be your modernday loud obnoxious nightclub Will is a poet who writes stories that excite the masses An actor questions him in the trailer ldquoYou canrsquot just make up wordsrdquo and Will says to that Someone has toI realised TV is big I mean half the world watches Game of Thrones Will was written by Craig Pearce a collaborator of Baz Luhrmann That made it more excitingrdquoAnd the project taught him a thing or two He admits he hates lsquointellectualsrsquo ldquoI was always told that to read Shakespeare you needed to be one But when I began reading the script I realised he was a poet of the masses And English was the language that the man on the street spoke The gentry conversed in French It was only later that intellectuals staked claim to himWill Kapur admits proves that he takes Bollywood along wherever he goes I went to Dharavi and took pictures and the art direction is inspired by that shootrdquo he laughs ldquoItrsquos very very BollywoodrdquoHe recalls a time after the release of the 1998 British biographical film Elizabeth released The New York Times called it an ldquoMTV versionrdquo in its review ldquoFor a long time I thought it was a complimentrdquo he says We crack upWe decide to give him a real compliment mdash we still love Mr India when can we hope for a sequelldquoAsk Anil and Boney Kapoor to hand me the rights and the freedom to make it my way During that movie we did what we wanted we werenrsquot scared to take a risk We were fearless It has to be made like that if again If that happens Irsquoll do it in a heartbeatrdquo