September 24, 2025 • 61 mins
In this episode we continue the unfiltered and heartfelt conversation with acclaimed filmmaker, screenwriter and author, Mahesh Bhatt.
Enduring intoxicating success and belittling failures.
The blooming and withering of love.
Acknowledging and fighting alcoholism.
Meeting one’s idols.
Holding onto the capacity to gamble it all away, and hilarious insights on how to deal with critics.
The conclusion of this two-part special is both deeply personal and equally relatable.
Come for the honesty, stay for the fire.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Poor Jabad Show, where we continue
our conversation with mister mahish Pat, my father, and discuss
the joys and the agony of success with Nam and
that heavy success, which was something that you never got
from a mass audience.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Really, you certainly decided to quit alcohol.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That had got to do with realization that either I
will drink myself to death or I will slash my
wrists and coming suicide. And it so happened that I
went for some party I believe, I don't know haven
(00:46):
memory which party were. And when the dawn broke, I
was lying on the footpath of Jehu will Le bal
La Scheme with my left face hitting the pavement and
the sun was just coming up. It was a let
press morning and I couldn't figure out how I landed
up on the pavement. And I voice in my head said,
(01:07):
you've become an alcoholic or drunk like anybody else. With
all your intellectual pretensions, you're not different from any other
alcoholic whom you have felt superior to. So I remember
I tried to hold Shahen and I got this feeling
(01:29):
that she turned her face away from.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Me because of the stene of the alcohol.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
When I reflect back, I can't imagine how young maybe
like that doing this head movement, but maybe my own
feeling I wanted to kiss her froze me and I
had to attribute that. She turned the face away, and
then I said, no, I can't touch this drop of
(01:55):
divinity which is there in my arms with the strange
of alcohol. It was one moment which changed me completely,
and you never look back. I never drank again after that,
not even a drop of alcohol in what it's called
a COPS serum which has got alcohol content. But I
(02:16):
still fear at times that I may gravitate to ground
zero if I have one glass of beer. It's like
gunpowder and fire. You keep it away for five thousand years,
I think will happen the moment you make the contact
(02:38):
between these two elements explosions.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, I couldn't understand that until I came face to
face with my own frailties.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
So you inherited that from your father. Your gene is
all bad?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well, I mean it's a known fact that a child
of an addictor and alcoholic is four times most susceptible.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You should find a case against me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
No, I don't need to jeans yeah, but the same
genes have made me also quit cold Turkey, and I
have never looked back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm going to be nine years in December, a lot
of time.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You're going to be thirty nine years soon, so that's
that's Ironically. You cast me in a film called Daddy
to Me, and he said that I have a role
and it's about a father and a daughter, and the
daughter is seventeen, and I think you'll be a good fit.
(03:30):
It's not like I've written a film for you. You're
right for this part. And my answer was, but I
have not considered acting, because why, I've seen actors, filmmakers,
technicians come and go. I've seen them lose, I've seen
them win, and I've seen how unforgiving the media could
be on occasions and failure is and of course that
(03:50):
failure is a part of life. And then you said,
I'm going to give you twenty four hours to think
about it. Get back to me, and I didn't get
back to you. And then you told me that, okay,
dimple Caapadia has a daughter called Twinkle Khanna, and I said,
hang on, and you laughed and you said, oh, you
don't want to be an actor. But the thought of
this role going to somebody else is making your body
(04:12):
go up in flames.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That means you're made for this.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Do it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I said yes to it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And then I felt that, Okay, now I'll have to
walk my top because I've grown up on your sets.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
The spot boy is a light man.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Your assistants have seen me as a kid, and it
was really about will I be able to impress these
people more? And you told me very categorically that if
you are not going to be good, I'm going to
throw you out. And I'm not going to give the
world the privilege of telling you that you're no good
as a parent. I have to tell you that you
(04:47):
are no good. So go and learn your lines, and
I'm going to test you.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, I still remember that moment. I just gave it
to you as I read it. Yeah, and you read it,
and you read it well, and you were relieved and
even to sleep.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You decided to make Daddy Fudan, and the entire industry
told you that what the hell is wrong with you,
mister Mahage. But you're launching your daughter and you want
her to be in a TV film.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But you were very clear that.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
You wanted every home to see it because you felt
that it was a sorry that would be relevant to
a lot of people here, and you created history in
that sense because.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What it did give me was.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
My first film, which will be mentioning my obituary, which
is still a relevant film to the times that we
live in.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It will always be very forward for its time.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Very very powerful in terms of splot. A young girl's
seventeen helps has been alcoholic father achieved not only the
fight against alcohol but also re again his lost glory.
So that was a very powerful plot and still remains
etched on people's hearts because, as you rightly said, it
(06:08):
reached the consciousness of the nation. The biggest theater was
dou Version.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Very bold of them too, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Very bold of them. And they were more more they
were more liberal than all these platforms, and this was
nineteen eighty nine, and they they came out on the
heels of the memory of Jenaman because Jenam was eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So it would be fair to say that you created
your own OTT before OTT, I mean our time.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I did in a way, yes, And.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The first day was it Filmistan Studios.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So the first shot I remember it was through the
prison bars you enter and you have a conversation. I said,
let me go closer to her, slow, let her make
an entry in the In the white shot, I saw
that you entered in the right body language. You came
with the pre story. You came with the knowledge that
(07:04):
you're coming to a place where you shouldn't be coming,
and you are embarrassed on in prison and then you
point out towards the camera.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And so two.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Days before that, when you launched the film shooting at
Pali Hill, I remember with the Nina and Akas Kurana
and when they were packing up that day, Jaguan spotboy.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Who's worked with you for years, instead.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Baby shooting Thinker Pig and Acre Pig, and I was like,
oh my lord, So who cared about critics outside? I
had to impress these guys because they've seen it all.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I was telling this yesterday. It will I'm a Ji
and the ad shoot that we are a tribe and
we know the inside stories how we feel she's so unique,
which the outsiders can't figure out. So I know the
approval of them was paramount to you.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, it was paramount to me.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think that a story that people need to hear
is how the climax of Daddy was rewritten.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
After what transpired one night.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Do you remember we were shooting the climax in Baidas
Hall and we had a schedule of three or four days,
and then we were leading up to the final scene
where anabumcare who is a failed singer and has been
spending time away from the spotlight, actually musters the guts
to come and perform in front of an entire auditorium,
(08:42):
and the so called villain who's my grandfather in the film,
sends his stooge to tempt him with a glass full
of whiskey and tell him that, hey, it will soothe
your nerves, just have one sip, one sip. And it
was written in a way where my carriage that was
meant to appear at that point and fling that glass
(09:02):
out of my father's hands and then he goes and sings.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
But something happened the day before that life happened.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I remember we were at home and Sony had gone
away to Hong Kong with Shahin, and the house was
all empty. The boys had come and they had taken
the brief for the next day, and they had left.
They had proclaimed to the world and given up drinking,
and when they should come, I suld very generous with
the whiskey. And then finally you and me. You were
(09:31):
there and you went to sleep because you had to
shoot the next day. So I was picking up the
bottle to put it back into the mixshift bow. That's
when the thought crept into me that look, the world
is asleep, the child is asleep. You have an answer
(09:52):
to the world that you have given up drinking, and
you have done well. You're not taking a of alcohol
since then, why don't you just have a drink or
do you've had a tough day. It's a very important
day tomorrow to shoot. And the thought crossed my mind,
(10:15):
and as soon as it raised its head and became
an impulse, simultaneously a voice rose in me which said that, okay,
you can fool your child who's sleeping. You can fool
the world that you've given up drinking and be a
(10:36):
closet drinker. But how the hell are you going to
fool yourself? Hm hmmm. And that reduced the impulse to ashes,
and then I said, wow, that's the transformation.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
The narrative cannot find disclosure unless the child and your
character of Puja succeeds in bringing that inner transformation in him,
not through her presence, not through coercion, but it must
create that curve where he is still now a person
(11:21):
who is keeping himself on the leash. Right now he
has finally managed to unleash himself into life and he
has to go out daring to live life without this crutch.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And then you came to set the next morning and
you called everybody and you saiderao scene change yoga at climax,
change jogia, and then you narrated this I remember, and
everybody looked at you and we were all in agreement.
Because the voice has to come from within. It's what
you do when nobody is watching watching, It's when the
world has its eyes averted. And the lies you tell
(11:56):
or refuse to tell yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Though the worst lies you tell yourself. And you know
what is an important puja is that that was also
dramatically right for the film in terms of storytelling. Correct
the character finally changes, and that was the triumph life
rights you steal. It's a gift of life. Yes, So
(12:23):
is there anything that I can claim as original law?
It happened to me and I just just like a
good mirror reflected that moment within the idium of cinema
that I understand, but.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Talking about original and authentic, I think then we came
to another pivotal point when we finished Daddy and when
it came to the dreaded process of dubbing, because we
didn't have sing sound in those days, so we had
to go through the entire movie all over again in
isolation and dub every sigh and breadth and word. And
(12:58):
there was this kind of feel in the professionals there
that maybe my voice is too husky, because people in
India used to hearing Hindi film heroines sound a little
bit more feminine and softer. And then Rakish Ranjanji was
called Fine sound Recordeds and he reviewed it and he
got me to try it in a couple of ways.
(13:21):
And then the choice had to be made that should
we keep Pujabart's voice or should we get her voice dubbed.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
By a dubbing artist. And then I still remember what
you said.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
You said, no, either the world rejects her for what
she is, or the world accepts her for what she is,
with her flaws, with this husky voice, with the list
the way she is.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
It's all about that puja. You exist as a unique
force of life independent those cultural measures will be there.
But if you succumb to that and cut yourself and
prune yourself to fit into those regressive, dead ideas, which
(14:07):
were dead even before you were born, then you thorttle
something living in you. It's an act of self mutilation.
And I think the only thing an elder can do,
or a director can do in our field, our whole
traveler can do is to tell the other person just
retain that uniqueness, which is what defines you as you.
(14:32):
And of course there are certain parameters of the idium
within which you have to confirm, but yet essential salt
of life which you have born with has to be there.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
I'm extremely grateful to you because I was not aware
that my voice was different in that sense. But when
the discussion came up, you start feeling that, ah, I
don't fit into the Like you said, I don't fit
into the mold. But what you did was break the mold,
and you freed me, not only by allowing me to
use my voice in the film, but allowing me to
(15:05):
always express myself and find my voice.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
In the real sense, every voice has a face. That's
why having a voice echoes in your mind. It comes
with the face, you know, the image, and you can't
diverse it from the other. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I've spoken to people who are stalwarts with alcoholics anonymous,
and they say that we consider your father to be
like a black Swan. He's a rarety somebody who's ever
been part of the program. Never seek help outside of yourself, which.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
There's no power outside man. There is no power. Of course,
we have a physiological limitation that we are way down with,
but there is there's nothing that you if you put
your heart into and if you want to do it,
that you can't stop you from achieving it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, but is you said, then done? It's not easy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
The reason I say you gave me life is because
you rebirthed me in the real sense and like you
saw something in shahin turning away. I read something in
the message you sent me in December two thy and
sixteen which made me stop drinking.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
You never told me once not to drink.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
People just going and tell me you must tell pooja drinking.
I said, who the hell gives me the right to
say that? To talk to my children and pontific care
and advice, And I've broken every rule in the book.
I cannot go and tell her this.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I was in my wasteland phase, really, and you send
me a message, and I remember the quote also was
about that you know, a man cannot make a worm,
but yet he makes God's daily And I said to you,
I agree with something, and you signed off saying I
love you kid, to which I respond, I love you, pops.
(17:01):
And then I added that actually, at this point, you
are the only thing in my universe truly worth loving.
And the message you sent me back change my life
because you just said if you love me, then love yourself,
because I live in you. It was not the message,
(17:23):
but it's what I read between the words, and I
send you a message thing. I promise from today I'm
going to be the best me possible.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Though.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
That night I went out and drank three fourths of
a bottle of love Froud, my favorite tipple, and woke
up in the morning, look at myself in the mirror
and asked myself loudly, is this being the best you?
And the answers are resounding no. And then it was
Christmas Eve and I sat in my little apartment with
(17:53):
my cats, and I could hear silent night wafting in
from the windows, and I didn't, and I woke up
feeling like I had scaled Mount Everest. The next day,
a couple of years after i'd quit, and I had
that dream that I got drunk and I woke up
with a start, and I just felt like I was
on that Snakes and Ladders bought and I had landed
(18:15):
up exactly when I called you and I said I
had a dream I was drinking beer and you said
you had happens to me. Still, Yeah, So I was
so relieved, but I had that living reference to call you. See,
a lot of people were a little taken aback that
I was talking about my so called afflictions so openly
because I decided to make the world my alcoholics anonymous class.
(18:36):
I drank openly, but I refused to recover in the shadows.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And I feel equal mult women drink more today.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Than men do, so I feel that it's important for
women to speak out even more and claim the space
of recovery for themselves. The question I want to ask
you is do you think Daddy could be made from
the female perspective?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Now, after this conversation, it should be made from a
female perspective, because.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Where is the story of female alcoholism or addiction on
the Indian screen? Why have we never seen it through
the female gaze? In Daddy, you had a father who
left for seventeen years and came back. If a mother
leaves for seventeen months and will they allow her to come.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Back, will make it possible?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
After Daddy, you entered what people referred to as the
golden phase of not only your career, but the golden
phase of romance really where you unleashed upon the world
your own love story through ashiki and they'll heck Anthony
and start out, can.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
But to first revisit the monumental meeting with my mother
Lorraine Bright.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I was sixtange, she was fourteen, and there was a
bumper Scottish orphanage. She was living in the orphanage because
her mother did not have means to keep her as
a day's collar.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
She became a border.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, and she became a border And one day I
saw this gorgeous girl standing with her friends at the
gate of bombed Scottish. There's something about her that kind
of drew me to her. But somehow love is preceded
by the feeling of unworthiness. But I'm worthy enough to
(20:31):
go to her and with this form of mine and
me as I am to say that I like you.
So it took me a couple of rounds on two evenings,
for two or three evenings. But something in that silence,
though there was a traffic going in between, you know,
something had exchanged between both of us. What is that something?
(20:55):
Don't ask me what it is. So I went there
and I produced myself as by my name is Mahesh,
and what is yours? And and I offered her a
millen s body. I remember this, I don't know why,
and she because I think I was nervous. And the
(21:16):
other girls disappeared, leaving her alone. I think they had
sensed that this was a moment between a boy and
a girl. So I supported your name, and she said
Lorraine Bright, and that was it. The bell rang and
she just disappeared after mentioning her name, and I was
(21:41):
struck by something which I can't even begin to describe.
There was this Taylor who has been immortalizing Archikey called
Supreme Taylor, whose playstak and called Master. He was to
(22:01):
mistage school uniforms so he had that huge assignment. So I,
struck by her charm and by her beauty, begged him
to carry my letter to her, a love letter, a
love letter. And it was he who reluctantly first expressed
(22:22):
to me the hazards of doing that, because if he's
got then he will lose a size contract, part of
his income, because they'll throw him out from the job.
But he was a generalist man. So he took my letter,
and I waited and I waited whether she would reply,
(22:45):
And then she started.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Replying, how did she send her letter back to you?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
She said, give it to him.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He was the carrier.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
He was the carrier. He was cupid to me. And
then our letters started increasing. Then she wrote me a
letter and also in blood, wrote blood the first time
I wrote to her blood, and that she also replied
in blood. One day, one day, Supreme came to me
and said, no letter, and I was heartbroken. I said why.
(23:12):
She said, he wants to meet you. So one day,
how could you meet? I could meet her because this
was a fortress. So he whispered to me that she
said she will during the receless time. I must not
come there and stand there. I must steal from behind
and come into the section which is the laboratory, and
(23:33):
there is a classroom downstairs, and she has bribed the
watchmen to keep on her classroom doors open and she
will come there. And then I remember playing the role
of Steam McQueen from Starac seventeen of Wall Film, and
there were these menacing figures of the matron and the
door was opened. There was a door to paradise, and
(23:56):
I went inside the classroom, and I remember that moment
is a bad moment. Dusk was setting in with the
glow of the orange sky was seeping in, and there
was some dust in the air because of the class
and then I could hear my heart beat, and then
(24:18):
I heard her footsteps and then suddenly she appeared, holding
her sandals in her hand. She just stood there and
she said, I want to see your face, she says.
So I took out the match box and I lit
a match stick and I could feel the light light
up my face. And then she sol cap to go,
(24:44):
and she decided to turn and go. I said, no, wait, please,
and she waited and I walked up to her and
then I lit a match and I held it to
her face and pusha I saw her face, her face
with her mother. I will never forget that face. She's
not the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in
(25:06):
my life. She had freckles, the glow of the light
and that flame and then I remember it burnt my
finger and it fell off right and the other darkness,
and then she turned and she said, just sure to
make a go And then I slipped past her and
(25:27):
then looked back at she said, go to me, and
then she ran and I was never the same again,
And so I started meeting her. But yeah, but we
should stand in the distance, right, And I had never
touched her at all. One day I went and like
(25:47):
all good and bad stories got, I got got.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And then what happened?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And then I all hell broke loose, All hell broke loose.
Supreme lost his.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Job, and my grandmother was summoned.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
And the next day I knew that she was sown
out of school and she was taken back with her
mother to Baycola. And then I had to meet the
parent of that girl, an Angluanian girl. M So I
remember going there. She said, what the hell have you
got me into? And she so, now now what happens
(26:21):
to her? Wherever? I keep her, so I'm not telling
her that I'll take care of her. I'll take care
of her. It must have sounded absurd to that woman,
a sixteen year old voice saying I'll take care of her,
But I do you take care of her?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And you still take care of her.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, it took her to y forged her letter from
my father's letter, typed it that she's working. Why wanted it?
Could only keep girls who are working girls right, and
that scene isn't earth her ask her gives a fake letter,
(27:04):
signs it because she's got a job problem. And then
I used to take her to teacher typing and stenography
and I would it's the floor a fountain. She would
spend her day because she had to pretend to them
(27:24):
that she's working. And then I had to come and
pick her up later on in the afternoon and take
her to coaching classes. And I would wait outside like
parents wait for children. And she was a very good student.
And then she got a job Hindustan Machine and Tools
as a receptionist, as a receptionist telephone operator. I really
(27:48):
believed in the fairy tale love and I believe that
I would take care of her for the rest of
a life, which I'm doing. But as I said, don't
judge your parents till you're your parent yourself. But when
I fell into a relationship for I mean, Bobbie, I
discovered that when I came back home. I remember that moment.
(28:12):
It was dawn and you were sleeping, and she was awake,
and I got into the room and she looked at me,
she says later, I said, yeah, I had some work,
she says, when you have tea. I went in the
bathroom and I still remember. We had this strange yellow
(28:33):
bathroom bathroom.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, we did. I was strange that you remember it.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah. And I looked into the mirror and I said,
you all your life, you hated your father for keeping
your mother, you know, as the other woman. What are
you doing? What have you done? And that fairy tale
romance struck construct which I had spun in my head
(28:58):
was reduced to ashes. And then that began the most
turbulent phase of my life.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
It was actually Ugi who told you that you should
not be in this relationship to destroy you and.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
You can't help her. She will think you can't leave
the movies, she can't be here. You are like fire
and she has a gunpowder.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Explod So she resented Yugi for that.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Youji said, she's finished with the film industry and she
can't go back, and she resented the fact that she
couldn't go back. She couldn't come to terms with the reality,
so she came back.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
There are very few men I have met or encountered who,
once they hold a woman's hand, do not let go.
What strikes me is that the love story, the nature
of that love might change, but the love never goes away.
I mean, today you're more like a parent. Perhaps you
(30:00):
were like a parent even then, but perhaps I was
always a parent to her.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
She knows that no matter what, she can rely on you.
You have conveyed that to her.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
You have held her hand and never let go, and
you have never made her feel that you are stretching
yourself by providing to.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Give her that security is my need, yes, But.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
The thing is that you see, people.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Always remind the other person mayor r K. I have
provided the home, I am sending the money. At every point,
people are reminding each other about these things. For me,
I think it's important to acknowledge that I've watched you,
and I think children don't learn by listening.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
To their parents.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
You watch the actions and the actions and the words
have to match, and they do not in the majority
of the cases. Is that you live that when you
said to her, my grandmother, that I will look after her,
you still continue to look at yes.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
And I remember there came a moment when she will unwell.
I said, even if Puja and Sunny leave her, I
will go away. I will be there. I will take
care of her and I will do it. I'm responsible
for her.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
But you know, for me, the most moving thing, the
two things I'll never forget the way she came and
told me that Shahin was born, and when she said
that you have a sister now, and I said, how
do you know? She said, he called me, so you
made that first phone call from the hospital to her.
Secondly was when they questioned the legitimacy of your marriage
(31:43):
first and second sony and they said, oh, in that case,
you know who gave permission. And I'd never forget that
day when my mother got up and said who gave permission?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I gave permission. He has my blessings And that was
such a moving scene for me.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And I think that that people don't even what they
write off so easily is functional or dysfunctional, as if
any of those rules operate in their own lives.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I see those aberrations that you say you see a society.
There's more depth to those relationships than what meets the eye.
Absolutely Otherwise, for sixty years, I can't be possibly be
responding to her without any feeling that I'm doing her
a great favor. It's her right to call me and
(32:32):
say I need you to deal with this. And I
stand exactly the way stood when I was responsible for
her getting out of school.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And then you use that in nashiki and the rest
is history, that golden phase of Ashiki Mantani sudak So,
which was based on that one life that you heard
Yuji say, when Yugi found out that his son had cancer.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, and his son's girlfriend's father, a Catholic gentleman, lives
in the pootiales of a mount where's church. He said,
she was getting ready, says, he said, why don't you
come inside? And so you said, let's go inside. So
he came very guilty to him, and he said that
(33:25):
it's not fair, sir, It's not fair that out of
all people, why should God, you know, punish this child,
Your son should get cancer, it's not fair. So he said,
if not my son, who else son's son. I think
(33:46):
he's a very fair guard. Do I want somebody else's
son to get cancer? No. It was such a human
moment where he just said it meaning every word, and
that became the heartbeat of that movie. And the relationship
of aish rule in that picture was mind relationship with Yuchi.
(34:09):
That's why when the scene that he carried a show
I should do that for Yugi. When he used to
come back from from Europe and I used to carry it,
people used to watch and he says, smile and she
said people are looking and said, so what, I'm your koolie.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
But you had Sir and Hamedai Park released.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Together and they were together in one cinema hall Kangha
Jamnat at Worth and I remember going to the projection
because there's to be this tradition of BEFOM makers would
go to the projections, give them money so they'll control
the sound levels and keep the oars and change the
real and the real change over, not to get drunk
(34:51):
at night and mess up the film. So I was
going from one projector which was beaming Sir the other
ones being home, and when I stepped out, the black
marketers came to me and said, and they were setting
tickets for both the movies in black.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
But when I came back from them, I remember stopped
buying the hospital Mama was not bad. There was something
empty in me. I said, why is it that I'm
having such a phenomenal run asuki the like a Montani
sachi sir. I went into what is the vivas land phase?
(35:33):
You know where I went. It became a kind of
a Workloholidays were around the clock, and I was getting
completely disillusioned by this whole idiom of cinema because what
I was feeling and thinking and wanting to express was
something which the idium that we have was not broad
(35:54):
enough to absorb it. But then I was very gratified,
and Mama told me that look, they were taking me
down to the MRI and I heard the wad boy
tell the nurse handle her properly, she's my heage butts mother,
and that took all my pain away. But something was
withering in me. And you know, Puja, when beauty phades,
(36:16):
you see it. When talent fades, nobody sees it. The
volcano was drying up. The rumbling had stopped.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So this phase of yours what you call the wasteland.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Supposedly, even though in your wasteland phase, you found yourself
in South Africa and you met the great Nelson Mandela.
And I still have the book he gave you his
autobiography in which he's signed to mage but an extraordinary man.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Oh yes, I'll never forget his laughter, the head, a
full body laughter. I remember asking him. I said, we
were going through our bad phase. Our government to was
what he called the revolving door government. Prime minutester would
come and prime minister would go. I think Jo also
was there at that time as the prime minister. So
I asked him, I say, sir, what is your advice
(37:05):
to India? When you look at India, how do you
see our problems? Then he said, preposterous for me to
tell the land of Gandhi what they should do. You see,
you're such an ancient civilization. All I can say is
that when the going gets rough and the storm starts waging,
(37:28):
you hold each other's hands and walk. If you'll come together,
no power can beat y'all. There's nothing extraordinary with me.
What could he have seen in twenty minutes in me
he was an extraordinary man, because an extraordinary man makes
you feel extraordinary. A small man makes you feel small,
A big man makes you feel big. In a short time,
(37:50):
he was a generous man, and that generosity is now
etched in that book which you are in possession of.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
When I read in his book as a child, when
he had a kind of a skirmish with somebody his age,
and he said, even then, I defeated my opponent without
dishonoring him.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And that has remained with me.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And that's largely how I've seen you conduct your life
as well, unknowingly. And I think that's what we are
missing in the public discourse today, is that we have
forgotten how to disagree respectfully.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
That's why I keep on going back to our memory
of what I told you in Bangaloru when we had
gone for the location hunting. I said, do not allow
anybody to force his way of thinking on you. But
(38:49):
that's only half the job. You too, must make sure
that you don't force your way of thinking on somebody else.
And I think inevitably that's where the problem is. You know,
on the coin has two sides, correct, This is I'm
not going to live your life whatever you prescribed to me.
(39:10):
But I don't want to impose my way of thinking
and what I believe on to people. So I think
that's when you smell what is perhaps freedom.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Another defining memory to jump ship is of course Ajaraban
from Jism, and not very many people know this, but
it was said KADHRII who wrote the lyrics of what
became that.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Song as a poem and a ode to you describe you.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Yes, I met him after fourteen years in Jodhpur. He
was struggling a lyricists and he went away defeated.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
There's some connection with Rajasthan and you, I think.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
And then he came. He got no marriage, but he's
going into this for a book function release. So his
cousin told him over there and meet him. He said, no, yeah,
I become a big man. Now. I don't they recognized me?
And I don't feel insulted and humiliateds He said, no,
try it. How do you know he doesn't recognize he
(40:11):
doesn't recognize you. So he took the risk. The moment
I came down, I saw him, I said, gallery and
all the ideas that he had of his not being recognized.
Acknowledge just fell away. So I took him to my
room and he said, just don't talk to me, not
want to write something about you, and he's just coming
(40:32):
out of me. And then he sat down there and
right in front of me he wrote this savaa pan
Banjaraban and he said, and he said to me that
this is for you. This is you. Yeah, this is you.
And I remember immediately calling you and I've got a
song for your movie.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Just that's a defining song.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
That's a defining song.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I must say.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I loved the lyrics, but I couldn't understand how it
fit into this. And then you said, no, that's the
hero's heart loud. Yeah, And I was quite stunned, like
I was when you said we need a man like
John Abraham, because he was not even an actor then
he was a model, and I was like, why you
said we don't need a boy, we need a man.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
And you said for this movie, I only.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Want John Abraham. I do not want anybody else. And he,
I must say, he was so astute. He responded to
one line of the story and said, I'm doing this
movie and the rest is history.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
He should give everything totality worked.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But reading after that, I remember we had that fight
and I wasn't taking your call, and your dear friend
Osgar Ali took you to meet Paul McCartney. And you
called me and you said, okay, don't take my call
in Moro, but listen, I'm taking you to come with
me to meet Paul McCartney. And I took the call
and I said, you can't bribe me with the Beatles.
My fight with you was not going to evaporate because
(41:54):
now you're daggling the promise of meeting Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Frot of my eyes.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Maybe I would have copped out if it was Lennon.
And then you went and met Paul McCartney.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I wanted to meet him because I wanted to tell
myself and tell the world that I met Paul McCartney.
And then you go up to his music. You moved
my mother to your mother. I to sing too. I
sed to work make my hair like Paul, those haads
of hair on my head, and yeah, I used to
sing love love me too, and I want to hold
(42:24):
your hand. She was just seventeen. So he came and
with his girlfriend Heather. I asked him two questions. I said,
do you dream of john He said, yes, I dream
of Johnny. It's too powerful a person not to dream about.
And then he started talking about how the music would
(42:46):
flow into him, and he said, but you know, actually
the music came from up there, from somewhere. I'm mysterious
father was there which was giving us the music. So
I said, if that was the case, Paul, why did
you copyright your music? So he looked at me. I
said yes, I said, you want stardom plus divinity. No, no,
(43:13):
it's not that, you know, it's the manager that who
asked you to do copyright and all that. So he
was what he was struck by the another question, the question, and.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Then he got me his photograph, and then.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
He came back and he came to see Ras too,
and I remember showing it to him Dimple Theater. A
very generous guy. The song was coming up kPr. He
was singing the tune, and then when Askar told him
time for the flight, he reluctantly got up to leave
and was kept still looking at the screen. So I say, hit,
(43:48):
because if you can make Paul mccartt he turned back
and lover the screen and not just tried out something
right and then he made it. He said, I want
to speak to the lady, the Sophia reign of India
lovely and Papasta was in Goa shooting. So Psy called up.
I said, somebody going to speak to his. SI says
(44:08):
who who? I said, Paul McCartney. She says what Paul McCartney. No,
I said yes, And he was so general, so nice
to her, and Adieve Gohar got away for it and
it was flashed all over Bombay Times the next day.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yeah, big news, I mean watching a film.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, laws And that was my encounter with Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
And soon after, uh Jane Campion, the Oscar winning director,
was visiting you. This is just after she finished in
the cut with Megran and you brought her to Oscomon
studios where.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
I was doing the mixing of Just Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
And she saw the climb, walked and saw the climax
and she looked at it and she said, this movie
is going to be a hit. And I said, and
why do you say that? She said, because it's byronic
knows what it is. And she looked at John and
she said, he looks like Robert Mitcham and I was
quite stunned by how generous she was.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And how she watched completely. And then I came over
to your house for dinner.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Later she was staying with you and Sony and she
was with her little daughter. And I was in a
phase at that point where I was in an ugly
relationship that ended up breaking up really badly, and that
became fodder for the gossip mills, and it was in
the front page of the newspaper, etc. And she asked me,
she said, what's.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Going on with you?
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And then I told her, I said, right now, I'm
in the situation where I've just had the world and
their aunts give her opinion or.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
How I should lead my life.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
And she just looked at me, I remember, and she
told me what Meg Ryan and Megran, when she ended
her relationship with Dennis Quaid, was judged by a large
part of the world. And she was at the Dorchester
in London, and she said, Meg was going to the
elevator and she felt every person in the lobby was
(46:00):
staring at her, judging her, and she pressed the lift
button to go up and the elevator came opened. But
what Meg decided to do was not to scuttle away.
She turned around and she looked each one in their
eye until they turned away, and the elevator went up,
(46:21):
and it came down, and it went up and it
came down, and finally, when every person had turned away,
she got into the elevator.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
And I was so struck by that.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
What a scene.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And here was Jane Campion, this filmmaker, telling me about
another Hollywood icon who one is grown up watching Meg
Ryan's movies.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
And how I was able to use that and apply
that to my life in India at that time. So
in a way, we're all really connected, aren't we.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
You know, human beings similar.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
That's true, That's true.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Paul McCartney watches the ra as like a child hums
the song is able to reach out to Papasha generous,
you know, Jane was so generous.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Generosity is a defining attribute of an artist. A person
who is not generous cannot be an artist because that's
the shadow of generosity. He is entire personality, the shadow
of the generous spirit because he imbibes from the generosity
(47:29):
of life people. He soaks all that. What he says
is as well is not his. He's accumulated. You're just
a vehicle to dispense it.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
But we must talk about visuationims and what y'all set
about doing there and did very effectively, which is basically
junk the star system and create new people.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Because you spoke about generosity earlier, so I think there
can be nothing more generous than giving people they do
and not waiting for them or somebody else to make
them stars before you then join that line and cast them.
Why that decision to junk the star system and create
new stars not only actors, but technicians, music, directors, people
(48:16):
behind the camera. With every film that came out of
Vishage Films or Fishine Network, a new career was born.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So because it's cheaper to create star than to biastars.
And when you go go to a star lineup outside
his makeup ban or ooter his house, you already have
conceidered yourself that, ah, I don't have the wings to
go there without this particular star's support. My journey in
the movies taught me that you.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Wrote me a letter on the thirtieth of January two
thousand and four when papers releasing.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
What you told me in that letter was forget making
films for posterity. The world that you are at the threshold.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Off was once ruled by giants who disappeared without a ripple.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Just sing your song and go. But do you know
what doing that means.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
It means to sing your song, you have to have
the courage to be yourself. That means you have to
be alone in this world, one without a second. And
let me tell you you have that courage.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Filmmaking really is a journey of the alone to the alone.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yes, And I when I became a filmmaker, understood for
the first time, even though I was an actor. You
don't understand what it's like when you're left with your
print and you can sense that the market is not
really hot in that sense, and when you've got to
finish that movie and bring it out there, it's very lonely.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
So I don't know how you did it.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
All your life, and to do so through the loneliness
you connect to the collected loneliness. It requires a different
kind of courage to be a director. Yeah, because everybody
can hide behind a director. Yeah, the director can't hide
behind anybody.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
And you give me an amazing insight about critics.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
You wrote, the critic is like a mosquito who sucks
your blood not because he hates you, but because your blood.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Is his food.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
It's a livelihood he stings you to survive.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
A flea may irritate a horse for a few moments,
but a horse is still a horse, and a flea
remains a flea.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
I mean I read that to friends who are critics.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
They're like, ouch, what you're trying to say is that
And I've understood is that. Look, this world belongs to
people who dare to dream and go and put themselves
on that stage. That's why ninety eight percent of the
world watches and it's very easy to comment. And now
everybody has an opinion. Everybody is a critic.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Very difficult to be performer.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, but to go into that arena, to put your
gloves on, and you know, risk being.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Marked failure is a certainty. Successes of fluke in this business,
I agree. Those who don't have the stomach to deal
with that reality should have nothing to do with this business.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
So they used to say what four is to one,
five is to one, five is to one. Five flops
to one head and then you have to start all
over again. You have to walk into every office, even
with a hit and say hey, I'm so and so,
and I just made this movie and I made it
for this mouth because people have no memory.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
People have no memory, and because they go while the
collective market Pulse, which has got a memory of what
they called coldfish.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
The music company had a problem with my posters and
hoardings of just because they felt historically that you know,
a black on black image would not grab people's attention,
it wouldn't stand out. And when I called you complaining
you said anything new, they will oppose anything new.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
So you've got to stick to your guns, your.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Heels because they're frightened. There are risks of us people.
There's too much money involved, so they want to be
sure and you are cross every dot every I could
take all boxes and you are guaranteed to make up lob.
You'd have to have that regulars gene, that unknown factor
(52:11):
that makes it into a success.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
You you know, what do you think when you talk
about and you talk about people like that, those were
the real gamblers.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
There were gamblers. They were they were today. If I
look at it my life, I owe it to him
in a way because if he had not stuck to
his conviction that I had in the film. He saw
that conviction in me. He would have made me do
things which were reicidal for him.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
You were sitting under this poster of Yeah, where you
were telling me this incident when you was a little boy.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
When Yeah. You're staying in a union park, which is
Iran's grandmother's house which is now Keith nab And Bank.
Opposite there was m sadic SUVs bungalow, a two story bungalow,
and one morning there was this activity for the Squiet
Union Park which is the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, Pali
(53:05):
Hill Union Park. The who's who lived there. Sadik was
sitting on a chair, very somber and furniture and all
the goods of his house was being taken out into
the garden. It was being auctioned and being taken away,
and his house was being sold because he had made
(53:26):
a film in which he had lost a lot of
money and he owed the market money and so his
property was attached. So I remember my mother walked up
to me and she gave me awack on my head
and she said, Katamasha the there was his son, Mahmoud
take him out to play. It's not good to see
(53:47):
when you're say, your father being humiliated. This way they
will lose his house. So I remember going with Mahammoud
with Iran's father Anwer, and we played they thought the
children don't know children. He knew that the father had
said to him, they're not going to be living here.
And then he made it Sadiya Chan, which they say
(54:11):
was actually Goes directed by mister Durudad himself, but since
it was lucknow, the Islamic ethos perhaps was the able
hand to have one set.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
But they put everything on the table.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
That's what these guys were like. The famous story of
Sab told me about the Mahbu Sab was just that
he wanted to make ron in technical. He had seen
colorfuls come to India and he said, rung In rang In,
rang In Rangin, and the technology was only available in
London and it was costing Trina Blacks of Peace. I
(54:50):
remember mister Nasa telling me in the fifties, so he
mortgaged Mabo Studio. So Nasa said, I went to tell him,
what the hell are you doing? It is suicidal and
he said, just said, if I don't have faith in
my film, who else will have? Correct And he succeeded
(55:12):
by putting every buck of his into movies.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
And three, you have a lovely corporate culture and.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
It's not their money in there and just keeps care
about the small jobs that they have. And yeah, they
were reckless people who mortgage their wife's jewelry, you know,
their flats and their properties and put money into movies.
Those are different people. Yeah, the branded is stupid. And
(55:41):
then the wisdom came, don't make movies with your own money.
M m it was somebody else's money. Means what we
are brought up on that culture of selling tickets in
the box office. Every ticket sold was food at our table,
right and then and then look at the audience response
(56:02):
and see their body language and however painful it, just
take their verdicts and go home. Yeah, and then it
stays in your memory box and you assimilate something, but
your body like an animalo and goes out for Arn't.
You'll learn something subliminally and that becomes your priceless system.
(56:23):
You don't become a filmmaker till you have had your
first release and watched your film with the audience, whether
it's rejected or it becomes ahead.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
A lot of people are suddenly again talking about what
you have put into motion, which was work with new people,
cast people who are write for the part, not necessarily stars.
With Mohit's amazing success with Sayara people. And I was saying, yes,
you should only work with new people, you should.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Not take stars.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
But it takes Joe Brad back him.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
I did tell him, Look, boy, big stars don't go
to the stars. That's a bogus security you get, you'll
work harder, you can do it. You're a talented boy.
They gave him all the support and he was grateful.
And I have to say, all that is there on
the screen is mot It is his own unique idiom
(57:17):
that he has created, and he has come into his
own with this film and he has got a phenomenal success.
But we took him fourteen films to reach here.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight, just for people getting.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Fourteen films to reach here. And then I told him, so,
now be careful that you don't hold it like a
mingas that somebody. You have to then have the courage
to gamble your success company and turn the wheel ower.
There's no other way.
Speaker 2 (57:52):
Correct. So now You're going to turn the tables if
I keep asking you questions.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
We'll have to soon convert the show from the Pujaba
Show to My Hate and pojab Show because we can
talk for fifty episodes.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
But is there anything you'd like to ask me?
Speaker 3 (58:06):
I wanted to ask you only one thing. How did
you cope with a reckless father like me? I don't
fit into the definition of what an ideal father is?
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Is there an ideal father?
Speaker 3 (58:25):
No? That definition of the world. No.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
I remember saying to somebody when I was very young,
that you know what keep your so called normalcy because
my father might not have been home at the same
time every day and being the box about sitting on
around the table and having a meal together supposedly where
people don't say anything to each other.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Earlier, there was not even a phone to hide behind.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
So I said that my father, when he's there, he's
fully present, and I genuinely mean Papa. The idea of
a broken home, I know far more broken homes of
people who are still technically married on paper and who
still live under the same roof. I've seen more brokenness
in those homes. I think that you might have physically
(59:07):
left home that was a matter of geography.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
You never left.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I never left.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Yeah, I think it was your seventy third birthday.
Speaker 1 (59:14):
If I'm not mistaken, I'd come to the office and
while leaving you told me, what if you walk out
of this office and you never.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
See me again, and I remember telling you that. I
promise you one thing is that if that's the case,
you're not leaving behind an emotional pigmy.
Speaker 3 (59:34):
That's the most gratifying thing I've heard. Because all that
man loves he has to part with, and because life
doesn't last is beautiful. That's why the fragrance of the
flower in Toxic kids, because it withers and trumbles. Let
me tell you, with complete responsibility, an absolute authority of
(59:59):
a n editor who's lived for seventy seven years on
this planet, that Puja hurt is a better version of
my age.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
That's very generous of you.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Not generous. It is the fact of life. The only
thing which I would urge you on your show is
don't let anybody impose his will and his way of
life on you. But for God's sake, remember you too
must refrain from doing that to others. If you can
(01:00:32):
do that, you will score like you cannot imagine. You
will be like a blazing volcane.
Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Thank you, mister Bart for being my first guest. It's
been a privilege and honor as much as it has
to have been. And to always be your daughter.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
So blaze on, baby blazon, Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
The Pa Show is produced by Mammoth Media Asia and
Epilog Entertainment and distributed by iHeart Podcasts. The executive producer
is Jonathan Strickland.
Welcome back to the Poor Jabad Show, where we continue
our conversation with mister mahish Pat, my father, and discuss
the joys and the agony of success with Nam and
that heavy success, which was something that you never got
from a mass audience.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Really, you certainly decided to quit alcohol.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
That had got to do with realization that either I
will drink myself to death or I will slash my
wrists and coming suicide. And it so happened that I
went for some party I believe, I don't know haven
(00:46):
memory which party were. And when the dawn broke, I
was lying on the footpath of Jehu will Le bal
La Scheme with my left face hitting the pavement and
the sun was just coming up. It was a let
press morning and I couldn't figure out how I landed
up on the pavement. And I voice in my head said,
(01:07):
you've become an alcoholic or drunk like anybody else. With
all your intellectual pretensions, you're not different from any other
alcoholic whom you have felt superior to. So I remember
I tried to hold Shahen and I got this feeling
(01:29):
that she turned her face away from.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Me because of the stene of the alcohol.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
When I reflect back, I can't imagine how young maybe
like that doing this head movement, but maybe my own
feeling I wanted to kiss her froze me and I
had to attribute that. She turned the face away, and
then I said, no, I can't touch this drop of
(01:55):
divinity which is there in my arms with the strange
of alcohol. It was one moment which changed me completely,
and you never look back. I never drank again after that,
not even a drop of alcohol in what it's called
a COPS serum which has got alcohol content. But I
(02:16):
still fear at times that I may gravitate to ground
zero if I have one glass of beer. It's like
gunpowder and fire. You keep it away for five thousand years,
I think will happen the moment you make the contact
(02:38):
between these two elements explosions.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Well, I couldn't understand that until I came face to
face with my own frailties.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
So you inherited that from your father. Your gene is
all bad?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well, I mean it's a known fact that a child
of an addictor and alcoholic is four times most susceptible.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You should find a case against me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
No, I don't need to jeans yeah, but the same
genes have made me also quit cold Turkey, and I
have never looked back.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm going to be nine years in December, a lot
of time.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
You're going to be thirty nine years soon, so that's
that's Ironically. You cast me in a film called Daddy
to Me, and he said that I have a role
and it's about a father and a daughter, and the
daughter is seventeen, and I think you'll be a good fit.
(03:30):
It's not like I've written a film for you. You're
right for this part. And my answer was, but I
have not considered acting, because why, I've seen actors, filmmakers,
technicians come and go. I've seen them lose, I've seen
them win, and I've seen how unforgiving the media could
be on occasions and failure is and of course that
(03:50):
failure is a part of life. And then you said,
I'm going to give you twenty four hours to think
about it. Get back to me, and I didn't get
back to you. And then you told me that, okay,
dimple Caapadia has a daughter called Twinkle Khanna, and I said,
hang on, and you laughed and you said, oh, you
don't want to be an actor. But the thought of
this role going to somebody else is making your body
(04:12):
go up in flames.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
That means you're made for this.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Do it.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I said yes to it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And then I felt that, Okay, now I'll have to
walk my top because I've grown up on your sets.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
The spot boy is a light man.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Your assistants have seen me as a kid, and it
was really about will I be able to impress these
people more? And you told me very categorically that if
you are not going to be good, I'm going to
throw you out. And I'm not going to give the
world the privilege of telling you that you're no good
as a parent. I have to tell you that you
(04:47):
are no good. So go and learn your lines, and
I'm going to test you.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, I still remember that moment. I just gave it
to you as I read it. Yeah, and you read it,
and you read it well, and you were relieved and
even to sleep.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You decided to make Daddy Fudan, and the entire industry
told you that what the hell is wrong with you,
mister Mahage. But you're launching your daughter and you want
her to be in a TV film.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But you were very clear that.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
You wanted every home to see it because you felt
that it was a sorry that would be relevant to
a lot of people here, and you created history in
that sense because.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
What it did give me was.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
My first film, which will be mentioning my obituary, which
is still a relevant film to the times that we
live in.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It will always be very forward for its time.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Very very powerful in terms of splot. A young girl's
seventeen helps has been alcoholic father achieved not only the
fight against alcohol but also re again his lost glory.
So that was a very powerful plot and still remains
etched on people's hearts because, as you rightly said, it
(06:08):
reached the consciousness of the nation. The biggest theater was
dou Version.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Very bold of them too, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Very bold of them. And they were more more they
were more liberal than all these platforms, and this was
nineteen eighty nine, and they they came out on the
heels of the memory of Jenaman because Jenam was eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So it would be fair to say that you created
your own OTT before OTT, I mean our time.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I did in a way, yes, And.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The first day was it Filmistan Studios.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So the first shot I remember it was through the
prison bars you enter and you have a conversation. I said,
let me go closer to her, slow, let her make
an entry in the In the white shot, I saw
that you entered in the right body language. You came
with the pre story. You came with the knowledge that
(07:04):
you're coming to a place where you shouldn't be coming,
and you are embarrassed on in prison and then you
point out towards the camera.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And so two.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Days before that, when you launched the film shooting at
Pali Hill, I remember with the Nina and Akas Kurana
and when they were packing up that day, Jaguan spotboy.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Who's worked with you for years, instead.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Baby shooting Thinker Pig and Acre Pig, and I was like,
oh my lord, So who cared about critics outside? I
had to impress these guys because they've seen it all.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I was telling this yesterday. It will I'm a Ji
and the ad shoot that we are a tribe and
we know the inside stories how we feel she's so unique,
which the outsiders can't figure out. So I know the
approval of them was paramount to you.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, it was paramount to me.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think that a story that people need to hear
is how the climax of Daddy was rewritten.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
After what transpired one night.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Do you remember we were shooting the climax in Baidas
Hall and we had a schedule of three or four days,
and then we were leading up to the final scene
where anabumcare who is a failed singer and has been
spending time away from the spotlight, actually musters the guts
to come and perform in front of an entire auditorium,
(08:42):
and the so called villain who's my grandfather in the film,
sends his stooge to tempt him with a glass full
of whiskey and tell him that, hey, it will soothe
your nerves, just have one sip, one sip. And it
was written in a way where my carriage that was
meant to appear at that point and fling that glass
(09:02):
out of my father's hands and then he goes and sings.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
But something happened the day before that life happened.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I remember we were at home and Sony had gone
away to Hong Kong with Shahin, and the house was
all empty. The boys had come and they had taken
the brief for the next day, and they had left.
They had proclaimed to the world and given up drinking,
and when they should come, I suld very generous with
the whiskey. And then finally you and me. You were
(09:31):
there and you went to sleep because you had to
shoot the next day. So I was picking up the
bottle to put it back into the mixshift bow. That's
when the thought crept into me that look, the world
is asleep, the child is asleep. You have an answer
(09:52):
to the world that you have given up drinking, and
you have done well. You're not taking a of alcohol
since then, why don't you just have a drink or
do you've had a tough day. It's a very important
day tomorrow to shoot. And the thought crossed my mind,
(10:15):
and as soon as it raised its head and became
an impulse, simultaneously a voice rose in me which said that, okay,
you can fool your child who's sleeping. You can fool
the world that you've given up drinking and be a
(10:36):
closet drinker. But how the hell are you going to
fool yourself? Hm hmmm. And that reduced the impulse to ashes,
and then I said, wow, that's the transformation.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
The narrative cannot find disclosure unless the child and your
character of Puja succeeds in bringing that inner transformation in him,
not through her presence, not through coercion, but it must
create that curve where he is still now a person
(11:21):
who is keeping himself on the leash. Right now he
has finally managed to unleash himself into life and he
has to go out daring to live life without this crutch.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And then you came to set the next morning and
you called everybody and you saiderao scene change yoga at climax,
change jogia, and then you narrated this I remember, and
everybody looked at you and we were all in agreement.
Because the voice has to come from within. It's what
you do when nobody is watching watching, It's when the
world has its eyes averted. And the lies you tell
(11:56):
or refuse to tell yourself.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Though the worst lies you tell yourself. And you know
what is an important puja is that that was also
dramatically right for the film in terms of storytelling. Correct
the character finally changes, and that was the triumph life
rights you steal. It's a gift of life. Yes, So
(12:23):
is there anything that I can claim as original law?
It happened to me and I just just like a
good mirror reflected that moment within the idium of cinema
that I understand, but.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Talking about original and authentic, I think then we came
to another pivotal point when we finished Daddy and when
it came to the dreaded process of dubbing, because we
didn't have sing sound in those days, so we had
to go through the entire movie all over again in
isolation and dub every sigh and breadth and word. And
(12:58):
there was this kind of feel in the professionals there
that maybe my voice is too husky, because people in
India used to hearing Hindi film heroines sound a little
bit more feminine and softer. And then Rakish Ranjanji was
called Fine sound Recordeds and he reviewed it and he
got me to try it in a couple of ways.
(13:21):
And then the choice had to be made that should
we keep Pujabart's voice or should we get her voice dubbed.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
By a dubbing artist. And then I still remember what
you said.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
You said, no, either the world rejects her for what
she is, or the world accepts her for what she is,
with her flaws, with this husky voice, with the list
the way she is.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
It's all about that puja. You exist as a unique
force of life independent those cultural measures will be there.
But if you succumb to that and cut yourself and
prune yourself to fit into those regressive, dead ideas, which
(14:07):
were dead even before you were born, then you thorttle
something living in you. It's an act of self mutilation.
And I think the only thing an elder can do,
or a director can do in our field, our whole
traveler can do is to tell the other person just
retain that uniqueness, which is what defines you as you.
(14:32):
And of course there are certain parameters of the idium
within which you have to confirm, but yet essential salt
of life which you have born with has to be there.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
I'm extremely grateful to you because I was not aware
that my voice was different in that sense. But when
the discussion came up, you start feeling that, ah, I
don't fit into the Like you said, I don't fit
into the mold. But what you did was break the mold,
and you freed me, not only by allowing me to
use my voice in the film, but allowing me to
(15:05):
always express myself and find my voice.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
In the real sense, every voice has a face. That's
why having a voice echoes in your mind. It comes
with the face, you know, the image, and you can't
diverse it from the other. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I've spoken to people who are stalwarts with alcoholics anonymous,
and they say that we consider your father to be
like a black Swan. He's a rarety somebody who's ever
been part of the program. Never seek help outside of yourself, which.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
There's no power outside man. There is no power. Of course,
we have a physiological limitation that we are way down with,
but there is there's nothing that you if you put
your heart into and if you want to do it,
that you can't stop you from achieving it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, but is you said, then done? It's not easy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
The reason I say you gave me life is because
you rebirthed me in the real sense and like you
saw something in shahin turning away. I read something in
the message you sent me in December two thy and
sixteen which made me stop drinking.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
You never told me once not to drink.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
People just going and tell me you must tell pooja drinking.
I said, who the hell gives me the right to
say that? To talk to my children and pontific care
and advice, And I've broken every rule in the book.
I cannot go and tell her this.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I was in my wasteland phase, really, and you send
me a message, and I remember the quote also was
about that you know, a man cannot make a worm,
but yet he makes God's daily And I said to you,
I agree with something, and you signed off saying I
love you kid, to which I respond, I love you, pops.
(17:01):
And then I added that actually, at this point, you
are the only thing in my universe truly worth loving.
And the message you sent me back change my life
because you just said if you love me, then love yourself,
because I live in you. It was not the message,
(17:23):
but it's what I read between the words, and I
send you a message thing. I promise from today I'm
going to be the best me possible.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Though.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
That night I went out and drank three fourths of
a bottle of love Froud, my favorite tipple, and woke
up in the morning, look at myself in the mirror
and asked myself loudly, is this being the best you?
And the answers are resounding no. And then it was
Christmas Eve and I sat in my little apartment with
(17:53):
my cats, and I could hear silent night wafting in
from the windows, and I didn't, and I woke up
feeling like I had scaled Mount Everest. The next day,
a couple of years after i'd quit, and I had
that dream that I got drunk and I woke up
with a start, and I just felt like I was
on that Snakes and Ladders bought and I had landed
(18:15):
up exactly when I called you and I said I
had a dream I was drinking beer and you said
you had happens to me. Still, Yeah, So I was
so relieved, but I had that living reference to call you. See,
a lot of people were a little taken aback that
I was talking about my so called afflictions so openly
because I decided to make the world my alcoholics anonymous class.
(18:36):
I drank openly, but I refused to recover in the shadows.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
And I feel equal mult women drink more today.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Than men do, so I feel that it's important for
women to speak out even more and claim the space
of recovery for themselves. The question I want to ask
you is do you think Daddy could be made from
the female perspective?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Now, after this conversation, it should be made from a
female perspective, because.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Where is the story of female alcoholism or addiction on
the Indian screen? Why have we never seen it through
the female gaze? In Daddy, you had a father who
left for seventeen years and came back. If a mother
leaves for seventeen months and will they allow her to come.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Back, will make it possible?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I'm going to hold you to that.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
After Daddy, you entered what people referred to as the
golden phase of not only your career, but the golden
phase of romance really where you unleashed upon the world
your own love story through ashiki and they'll heck Anthony
and start out, can.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
But to first revisit the monumental meeting with my mother
Lorraine Bright.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
I was sixtange, she was fourteen, and there was a
bumper Scottish orphanage. She was living in the orphanage because
her mother did not have means to keep her as
a day's collar.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
She became a border.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah, and she became a border And one day I
saw this gorgeous girl standing with her friends at the
gate of bombed Scottish. There's something about her that kind
of drew me to her. But somehow love is preceded
by the feeling of unworthiness. But I'm worthy enough to
(20:31):
go to her and with this form of mine and
me as I am to say that I like you.
So it took me a couple of rounds on two evenings,
for two or three evenings. But something in that silence,
though there was a traffic going in between, you know,
something had exchanged between both of us. What is that something?
(20:55):
Don't ask me what it is. So I went there
and I produced myself as by my name is Mahesh,
and what is yours? And and I offered her a
millen s body. I remember this, I don't know why,
and she because I think I was nervous. And the
(21:16):
other girls disappeared, leaving her alone. I think they had
sensed that this was a moment between a boy and
a girl. So I supported your name, and she said
Lorraine Bright, and that was it. The bell rang and
she just disappeared after mentioning her name, and I was
(21:41):
struck by something which I can't even begin to describe.
There was this Taylor who has been immortalizing Archikey called
Supreme Taylor, whose playstak and called Master. He was to
(22:01):
mistage school uniforms so he had that huge assignment. So I,
struck by her charm and by her beauty, begged him
to carry my letter to her, a love letter, a
love letter. And it was he who reluctantly first expressed
(22:22):
to me the hazards of doing that, because if he's
got then he will lose a size contract, part of
his income, because they'll throw him out from the job.
But he was a generalist man. So he took my letter,
and I waited and I waited whether she would reply,
(22:45):
And then she started.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Replying, how did she send her letter back to you?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
She said, give it to him.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He was the carrier.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
He was the carrier. He was cupid to me. And
then our letters started increasing. Then she wrote me a
letter and also in blood, wrote blood the first time
I wrote to her blood, and that she also replied
in blood. One day, one day, Supreme came to me
and said, no letter, and I was heartbroken. I said why.
(23:12):
She said, he wants to meet you. So one day,
how could you meet? I could meet her because this
was a fortress. So he whispered to me that she
said she will during the receless time. I must not
come there and stand there. I must steal from behind
and come into the section which is the laboratory, and
(23:33):
there is a classroom downstairs, and she has bribed the
watchmen to keep on her classroom doors open and she
will come there. And then I remember playing the role
of Steam McQueen from Starac seventeen of Wall Film, and
there were these menacing figures of the matron and the
door was opened. There was a door to paradise, and
(23:56):
I went inside the classroom, and I remember that moment
is a bad moment. Dusk was setting in with the
glow of the orange sky was seeping in, and there
was some dust in the air because of the class
and then I could hear my heart beat, and then
(24:18):
I heard her footsteps and then suddenly she appeared, holding
her sandals in her hand. She just stood there and
she said, I want to see your face, she says.
So I took out the match box and I lit
a match stick and I could feel the light light
up my face. And then she sol cap to go,
(24:44):
and she decided to turn and go. I said, no, wait, please,
and she waited and I walked up to her and
then I lit a match and I held it to
her face and pusha I saw her face, her face
with her mother. I will never forget that face. She's
not the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in
(25:06):
my life. She had freckles, the glow of the light
and that flame and then I remember it burnt my
finger and it fell off right and the other darkness,
and then she turned and she said, just sure to
make a go And then I slipped past her and
(25:27):
then looked back at she said, go to me, and
then she ran and I was never the same again,
And so I started meeting her. But yeah, but we
should stand in the distance, right, And I had never
touched her at all. One day I went and like
(25:47):
all good and bad stories got, I got got.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And then what happened?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And then I all hell broke loose, All hell broke loose.
Supreme lost his.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Job, and my grandmother was summoned.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
And the next day I knew that she was sown
out of school and she was taken back with her
mother to Baycola. And then I had to meet the
parent of that girl, an Angluanian girl. M So I
remember going there. She said, what the hell have you
got me into? And she so, now now what happens
(26:21):
to her? Wherever? I keep her, so I'm not telling
her that I'll take care of her. I'll take care
of her. It must have sounded absurd to that woman,
a sixteen year old voice saying I'll take care of her,
But I do you take care of her?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And you still take care of her.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, it took her to y forged her letter from
my father's letter, typed it that she's working. Why wanted it?
Could only keep girls who are working girls right, and
that scene isn't earth her ask her gives a fake letter,
(27:04):
signs it because she's got a job problem. And then
I used to take her to teacher typing and stenography
and I would it's the floor a fountain. She would
spend her day because she had to pretend to them
(27:24):
that she's working. And then I had to come and
pick her up later on in the afternoon and take
her to coaching classes. And I would wait outside like
parents wait for children. And she was a very good student.
And then she got a job Hindustan Machine and Tools
as a receptionist, as a receptionist telephone operator. I really
(27:48):
believed in the fairy tale love and I believe that
I would take care of her for the rest of
a life, which I'm doing. But as I said, don't
judge your parents till you're your parent yourself. But when
I fell into a relationship for I mean, Bobbie, I
discovered that when I came back home. I remember that moment.
(28:12):
It was dawn and you were sleeping, and she was awake,
and I got into the room and she looked at me,
she says later, I said, yeah, I had some work,
she says, when you have tea. I went in the
bathroom and I still remember. We had this strange yellow
(28:33):
bathroom bathroom.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, we did. I was strange that you remember it.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah. And I looked into the mirror and I said,
you all your life, you hated your father for keeping
your mother, you know, as the other woman. What are
you doing? What have you done? And that fairy tale
romance struck construct which I had spun in my head
(28:58):
was reduced to ashes. And then that began the most
turbulent phase of my life.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
It was actually Ugi who told you that you should
not be in this relationship to destroy you and.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
You can't help her. She will think you can't leave
the movies, she can't be here. You are like fire
and she has a gunpowder.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Explod So she resented Yugi for that.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Youji said, she's finished with the film industry and she
can't go back, and she resented the fact that she
couldn't go back. She couldn't come to terms with the reality,
so she came back.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
There are very few men I have met or encountered who,
once they hold a woman's hand, do not let go.
What strikes me is that the love story, the nature
of that love might change, but the love never goes away.
I mean, today you're more like a parent. Perhaps you
(30:00):
were like a parent even then, but perhaps I was
always a parent to her.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
She knows that no matter what, she can rely on you.
You have conveyed that to her.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
You have held her hand and never let go, and
you have never made her feel that you are stretching
yourself by providing to.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Give her that security is my need, yes, But.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
The thing is that you see, people.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Always remind the other person mayor r K. I have
provided the home, I am sending the money. At every point,
people are reminding each other about these things. For me,
I think it's important to acknowledge that I've watched you,
and I think children don't learn by listening.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
To their parents.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
You watch the actions and the actions and the words
have to match, and they do not in the majority
of the cases. Is that you live that when you
said to her, my grandmother, that I will look after her,
you still continue to look at yes.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
And I remember there came a moment when she will unwell.
I said, even if Puja and Sunny leave her, I
will go away. I will be there. I will take
care of her and I will do it. I'm responsible
for her.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
But you know, for me, the most moving thing, the
two things I'll never forget the way she came and
told me that Shahin was born, and when she said
that you have a sister now, and I said, how
do you know? She said, he called me, so you
made that first phone call from the hospital to her.
Secondly was when they questioned the legitimacy of your marriage
(31:43):
first and second sony and they said, oh, in that case,
you know who gave permission. And I'd never forget that
day when my mother got up and said who gave permission?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I gave permission. He has my blessings And that was
such a moving scene for me.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And I think that that people don't even what they
write off so easily is functional or dysfunctional, as if
any of those rules operate in their own lives.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I see those aberrations that you say you see a society.
There's more depth to those relationships than what meets the eye.
Absolutely Otherwise, for sixty years, I can't be possibly be
responding to her without any feeling that I'm doing her
a great favor. It's her right to call me and
(32:32):
say I need you to deal with this. And I
stand exactly the way stood when I was responsible for
her getting out of school.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And then you use that in nashiki and the rest
is history, that golden phase of Ashiki Mantani sudak So,
which was based on that one life that you heard
Yuji say, when Yugi found out that his son had cancer.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, and his son's girlfriend's father, a Catholic gentleman, lives
in the pootiales of a mount where's church. He said,
she was getting ready, says, he said, why don't you
come inside? And so you said, let's go inside. So
he came very guilty to him, and he said that
(33:25):
it's not fair, sir, It's not fair that out of
all people, why should God, you know, punish this child,
Your son should get cancer, it's not fair. So he said,
if not my son, who else son's son. I think
(33:46):
he's a very fair guard. Do I want somebody else's
son to get cancer? No. It was such a human
moment where he just said it meaning every word, and
that became the heartbeat of that movie. And the relationship
of aish rule in that picture was mind relationship with Yuchi.
(34:09):
That's why when the scene that he carried a show
I should do that for Yugi. When he used to
come back from from Europe and I used to carry it,
people used to watch and he says, smile and she
said people are looking and said, so what, I'm your koolie.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
But you had Sir and Hamedai Park released.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Together and they were together in one cinema hall Kangha
Jamnat at Worth and I remember going to the projection
because there's to be this tradition of BEFOM makers would
go to the projections, give them money so they'll control
the sound levels and keep the oars and change the
real and the real change over, not to get drunk
(34:51):
at night and mess up the film. So I was
going from one projector which was beaming Sir the other
ones being home, and when I stepped out, the black
marketers came to me and said, and they were setting
tickets for both the movies in black.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
But when I came back from them, I remember stopped
buying the hospital Mama was not bad. There was something
empty in me. I said, why is it that I'm
having such a phenomenal run asuki the like a Montani
sachi sir. I went into what is the vivas land phase?
(35:33):
You know where I went. It became a kind of
a Workloholidays were around the clock, and I was getting
completely disillusioned by this whole idiom of cinema because what
I was feeling and thinking and wanting to express was
something which the idium that we have was not broad
(35:54):
enough to absorb it. But then I was very gratified,
and Mama told me that look, they were taking me
down to the MRI and I heard the wad boy
tell the nurse handle her properly, she's my heage butts mother,
and that took all my pain away. But something was
withering in me. And you know, Puja, when beauty phades,
(36:16):
you see it. When talent fades, nobody sees it. The
volcano was drying up. The rumbling had stopped.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So this phase of yours what you call the wasteland.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Supposedly, even though in your wasteland phase, you found yourself
in South Africa and you met the great Nelson Mandela.
And I still have the book he gave you his
autobiography in which he's signed to mage but an extraordinary man.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Oh yes, I'll never forget his laughter, the head, a
full body laughter. I remember asking him. I said, we
were going through our bad phase. Our government to was
what he called the revolving door government. Prime minutester would
come and prime minister would go. I think Jo also
was there at that time as the prime minister. So
I asked him, I say, sir, what is your advice
(37:05):
to India? When you look at India, how do you
see our problems? Then he said, preposterous for me to
tell the land of Gandhi what they should do. You see,
you're such an ancient civilization. All I can say is
that when the going gets rough and the storm starts waging,
(37:28):
you hold each other's hands and walk. If you'll come together,
no power can beat y'all. There's nothing extraordinary with me.
What could he have seen in twenty minutes in me
he was an extraordinary man, because an extraordinary man makes
you feel extraordinary. A small man makes you feel small,
A big man makes you feel big. In a short time,
(37:50):
he was a generous man, and that generosity is now
etched in that book which you are in possession of.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
When I read in his book as a child, when
he had a kind of a skirmish with somebody his age,
and he said, even then, I defeated my opponent without
dishonoring him.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And that has remained with me.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And that's largely how I've seen you conduct your life
as well, unknowingly. And I think that's what we are
missing in the public discourse today, is that we have
forgotten how to disagree respectfully.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
That's why I keep on going back to our memory
of what I told you in Bangaloru when we had
gone for the location hunting. I said, do not allow
anybody to force his way of thinking on you. But
(38:49):
that's only half the job. You too, must make sure
that you don't force your way of thinking on somebody else.
And I think inevitably that's where the problem is. You know,
on the coin has two sides, correct, This is I'm
not going to live your life whatever you prescribed to me.
(39:10):
But I don't want to impose my way of thinking
and what I believe on to people. So I think
that's when you smell what is perhaps freedom.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Another defining memory to jump ship is of course Ajaraban
from Jism, and not very many people know this, but
it was said KADHRII who wrote the lyrics of what
became that.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Song as a poem and a ode to you describe you.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Yes, I met him after fourteen years in Jodhpur. He
was struggling a lyricists and he went away defeated.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
There's some connection with Rajasthan and you, I think.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
And then he came. He got no marriage, but he's
going into this for a book function release. So his
cousin told him over there and meet him. He said, no, yeah,
I become a big man. Now. I don't they recognized me?
And I don't feel insulted and humiliateds He said, no,
try it. How do you know he doesn't recognize he
(40:11):
doesn't recognize you. So he took the risk. The moment
I came down, I saw him, I said, gallery and
all the ideas that he had of his not being recognized.
Acknowledge just fell away. So I took him to my
room and he said, just don't talk to me, not
want to write something about you, and he's just coming
(40:32):
out of me. And then he sat down there and
right in front of me he wrote this savaa pan
Banjaraban and he said, and he said to me that
this is for you. This is you. Yeah, this is you.
And I remember immediately calling you and I've got a
song for your movie.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Just that's a defining song.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
That's a defining song.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I must say.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I loved the lyrics, but I couldn't understand how it
fit into this. And then you said, no, that's the
hero's heart loud. Yeah, And I was quite stunned, like
I was when you said we need a man like
John Abraham, because he was not even an actor then
he was a model, and I was like, why you
said we don't need a boy, we need a man.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
And you said for this movie, I only.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Want John Abraham. I do not want anybody else. And he,
I must say, he was so astute. He responded to
one line of the story and said, I'm doing this
movie and the rest is history.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
He should give everything totality worked.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But reading after that, I remember we had that fight
and I wasn't taking your call, and your dear friend
Osgar Ali took you to meet Paul McCartney. And you
called me and you said, okay, don't take my call
in Moro, but listen, I'm taking you to come with
me to meet Paul McCartney. And I took the call
and I said, you can't bribe me with the Beatles.
My fight with you was not going to evaporate because
(41:54):
now you're daggling the promise of meeting Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Frot of my eyes.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Maybe I would have copped out if it was Lennon.
And then you went and met Paul McCartney.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I wanted to meet him because I wanted to tell
myself and tell the world that I met Paul McCartney.
And then you go up to his music. You moved
my mother to your mother. I to sing too. I
sed to work make my hair like Paul, those haads
of hair on my head, and yeah, I used to
sing love love me too, and I want to hold
(42:24):
your hand. She was just seventeen. So he came and
with his girlfriend Heather. I asked him two questions. I said,
do you dream of john He said, yes, I dream
of Johnny. It's too powerful a person not to dream about.
And then he started talking about how the music would
(42:46):
flow into him, and he said, but you know, actually
the music came from up there, from somewhere. I'm mysterious
father was there which was giving us the music. So
I said, if that was the case, Paul, why did
you copyright your music? So he looked at me. I
said yes, I said, you want stardom plus divinity. No, no,
(43:13):
it's not that, you know, it's the manager that who
asked you to do copyright and all that. So he
was what he was struck by the another question, the question, and.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Then he got me his photograph, and then.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
He came back and he came to see Ras too,
and I remember showing it to him Dimple Theater. A
very generous guy. The song was coming up kPr. He
was singing the tune, and then when Askar told him
time for the flight, he reluctantly got up to leave
and was kept still looking at the screen. So I say, hit,
(43:48):
because if you can make Paul mccartt he turned back
and lover the screen and not just tried out something
right and then he made it. He said, I want
to speak to the lady, the Sophia reign of India
lovely and Papasta was in Goa shooting. So Psy called up.
I said, somebody going to speak to his. SI says
(44:08):
who who? I said, Paul McCartney. She says what Paul McCartney. No,
I said yes, And he was so general, so nice
to her, and Adieve Gohar got away for it and
it was flashed all over Bombay Times the next day.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yeah, big news, I mean watching a film.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, laws And that was my encounter with Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
And soon after, uh Jane Campion, the Oscar winning director,
was visiting you. This is just after she finished in
the cut with Megran and you brought her to Oscomon
studios where.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
I was doing the mixing of Just Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
And she saw the climb, walked and saw the climax
and she looked at it and she said, this movie
is going to be a hit. And I said, and
why do you say that? She said, because it's byronic
knows what it is. And she looked at John and
she said, he looks like Robert Mitcham and I was
quite stunned by how generous she was.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And how she watched completely. And then I came over
to your house for dinner.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Later she was staying with you and Sony and she
was with her little daughter. And I was in a
phase at that point where I was in an ugly
relationship that ended up breaking up really badly, and that
became fodder for the gossip mills, and it was in
the front page of the newspaper, etc. And she asked me,
she said, what's.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Going on with you?
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And then I told her, I said, right now, I'm
in the situation where I've just had the world and
their aunts give her opinion or.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
How I should lead my life.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
And she just looked at me, I remember, and she
told me what Meg Ryan and Megran, when she ended
her relationship with Dennis Quaid, was judged by a large
part of the world. And she was at the Dorchester
in London, and she said, Meg was going to the
elevator and she felt every person in the lobby was
(46:00):
staring at her, judging her, and she pressed the lift
button to go up and the elevator came opened. But
what Meg decided to do was not to scuttle away.
She turned around and she looked each one in their
eye until they turned away, and the elevator went up,
(46:21):
and it came down, and it went up and it
came down, and finally, when every person had turned away,
she got into the elevator.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
And I was so struck by that.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
What a scene.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And here was Jane Campion, this filmmaker, telling me about
another Hollywood icon who one is grown up watching Meg
Ryan's movies.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
And how I was able to use that and apply
that to my life in India at that time. So
in a way, we're all really connected, aren't we.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
You know, human beings similar.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
That's true, That's true.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Paul McCartney watches the ra as like a child hums
the song is able to reach out to Papasha generous,
you know, Jane was so generous.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Generosity is a defining attribute of an artist. A person
who is not generous cannot be an artist because that's
the shadow of generosity. He is entire personality, the shadow
of the generous spirit because he imbibes from the generosity
(47:29):
of life people. He soaks all that. What he says
is as well is not his. He's accumulated. You're just
a vehicle to dispense it.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
But we must talk about visuationims and what y'all set
about doing there and did very effectively, which is basically
junk the star system and create new people.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Because you spoke about generosity earlier, so I think there
can be nothing more generous than giving people they do
and not waiting for them or somebody else to make
them stars before you then join that line and cast them.
Why that decision to junk the star system and create
new stars not only actors, but technicians, music, directors, people
(48:16):
behind the camera. With every film that came out of
Vishage Films or Fishine Network, a new career was born.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So because it's cheaper to create star than to biastars.
And when you go go to a star lineup outside
his makeup ban or ooter his house, you already have
conceidered yourself that, ah, I don't have the wings to
go there without this particular star's support. My journey in
the movies taught me that you.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Wrote me a letter on the thirtieth of January two
thousand and four when papers releasing.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
What you told me in that letter was forget making
films for posterity. The world that you are at the threshold.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Off was once ruled by giants who disappeared without a ripple.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Just sing your song and go. But do you know
what doing that means.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
It means to sing your song, you have to have
the courage to be yourself. That means you have to
be alone in this world, one without a second. And
let me tell you you have that courage.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Filmmaking really is a journey of the alone to the alone.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yes, And I when I became a filmmaker, understood for
the first time, even though I was an actor. You
don't understand what it's like when you're left with your
print and you can sense that the market is not
really hot in that sense, and when you've got to
finish that movie and bring it out there, it's very lonely.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
So I don't know how you did it.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
All your life, and to do so through the loneliness
you connect to the collected loneliness. It requires a different
kind of courage to be a director. Yeah, because everybody
can hide behind a director. Yeah, the director can't hide
behind anybody.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
And you give me an amazing insight about critics.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
You wrote, the critic is like a mosquito who sucks
your blood not because he hates you, but because your blood.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Is his food.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
It's a livelihood he stings you to survive.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
A flea may irritate a horse for a few moments,
but a horse is still a horse, and a flea
remains a flea.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
I mean I read that to friends who are critics.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
They're like, ouch, what you're trying to say is that
And I've understood is that. Look, this world belongs to
people who dare to dream and go and put themselves
on that stage. That's why ninety eight percent of the
world watches and it's very easy to comment. And now
everybody has an opinion. Everybody is a critic.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Very difficult to be performer.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, but to go into that arena, to put your
gloves on, and you know, risk being.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Marked failure is a certainty. Successes of fluke in this business,
I agree. Those who don't have the stomach to deal
with that reality should have nothing to do with this business.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
So they used to say what four is to one,
five is to one, five is to one. Five flops
to one head and then you have to start all
over again. You have to walk into every office, even
with a hit and say hey, I'm so and so,
and I just made this movie and I made it
for this mouth because people have no memory.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
People have no memory, and because they go while the
collective market Pulse, which has got a memory of what
they called coldfish.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
The music company had a problem with my posters and
hoardings of just because they felt historically that you know,
a black on black image would not grab people's attention,
it wouldn't stand out. And when I called you complaining
you said anything new, they will oppose anything new.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
So you've got to stick to your guns, your.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
Heels because they're frightened. There are risks of us people.
There's too much money involved, so they want to be
sure and you are cross every dot every I could
take all boxes and you are guaranteed to make up lob.
You'd have to have that regulars gene, that unknown factor
(52:11):
that makes it into a success.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
You you know, what do you think when you talk
about and you talk about people like that, those were
the real gamblers.
Speaker 3 (52:18):
There were gamblers. They were they were today. If I
look at it my life, I owe it to him
in a way because if he had not stuck to
his conviction that I had in the film. He saw
that conviction in me. He would have made me do
things which were reicidal for him.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
You were sitting under this poster of Yeah, where you
were telling me this incident when you was a little boy.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
When Yeah. You're staying in a union park, which is
Iran's grandmother's house which is now Keith nab And Bank.
Opposite there was m sadic SUVs bungalow, a two story bungalow,
and one morning there was this activity for the Squiet
Union Park which is the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, Pali
(53:05):
Hill Union Park. The who's who lived there. Sadik was
sitting on a chair, very somber and furniture and all
the goods of his house was being taken out into
the garden. It was being auctioned and being taken away,
and his house was being sold because he had made
(53:26):
a film in which he had lost a lot of
money and he owed the market money and so his
property was attached. So I remember my mother walked up
to me and she gave me awack on my head
and she said, Katamasha the there was his son, Mahmoud
take him out to play. It's not good to see
(53:47):
when you're say, your father being humiliated. This way they
will lose his house. So I remember going with Mahammoud
with Iran's father Anwer, and we played they thought the
children don't know children. He knew that the father had
said to him, they're not going to be living here.
And then he made it Sadiya Chan, which they say
(54:11):
was actually Goes directed by mister Durudad himself, but since
it was lucknow, the Islamic ethos perhaps was the able
hand to have one set.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
But they put everything on the table.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
That's what these guys were like. The famous story of
Sab told me about the Mahbu Sab was just that
he wanted to make ron in technical. He had seen
colorfuls come to India and he said, rung In rang In,
rang In Rangin, and the technology was only available in
London and it was costing Trina Blacks of Peace. I
(54:50):
remember mister Nasa telling me in the fifties, so he
mortgaged Mabo Studio. So Nasa said, I went to tell him,
what the hell are you doing? It is suicidal and
he said, just said, if I don't have faith in
my film, who else will have? Correct And he succeeded
(55:12):
by putting every buck of his into movies.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
And three, you have a lovely corporate culture and.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
It's not their money in there and just keeps care
about the small jobs that they have. And yeah, they
were reckless people who mortgage their wife's jewelry, you know,
their flats and their properties and put money into movies.
Those are different people. Yeah, the branded is stupid. And
(55:41):
then the wisdom came, don't make movies with your own money.
M m it was somebody else's money. Means what we
are brought up on that culture of selling tickets in
the box office. Every ticket sold was food at our table,
right and then and then look at the audience response
(56:02):
and see their body language and however painful it, just
take their verdicts and go home. Yeah, and then it
stays in your memory box and you assimilate something, but
your body like an animalo and goes out for Arn't.
You'll learn something subliminally and that becomes your priceless system.
(56:23):
You don't become a filmmaker till you have had your
first release and watched your film with the audience, whether
it's rejected or it becomes ahead.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
A lot of people are suddenly again talking about what
you have put into motion, which was work with new people,
cast people who are write for the part, not necessarily stars.
With Mohit's amazing success with Sayara people. And I was saying, yes,
you should only work with new people, you should.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Not take stars.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
But it takes Joe Brad back him.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
I did tell him, Look, boy, big stars don't go
to the stars. That's a bogus security you get, you'll
work harder, you can do it. You're a talented boy.
They gave him all the support and he was grateful.
And I have to say, all that is there on
the screen is mot It is his own unique idiom
(57:17):
that he has created, and he has come into his
own with this film and he has got a phenomenal success.
But we took him fourteen films to reach here.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah, it doesn't happen overnight, just for people getting.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
Fourteen films to reach here. And then I told him, so,
now be careful that you don't hold it like a
mingas that somebody. You have to then have the courage
to gamble your success company and turn the wheel ower.
There's no other way.
Speaker 2 (57:52):
Correct. So now You're going to turn the tables if
I keep asking you questions.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
We'll have to soon convert the show from the Pujaba
Show to My Hate and pojab Show because we can
talk for fifty episodes.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
But is there anything you'd like to ask me?
Speaker 3 (58:06):
I wanted to ask you only one thing. How did
you cope with a reckless father like me? I don't
fit into the definition of what an ideal father is?
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Is there an ideal father?
Speaker 3 (58:25):
No? That definition of the world. No.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
I remember saying to somebody when I was very young,
that you know what keep your so called normalcy because
my father might not have been home at the same
time every day and being the box about sitting on
around the table and having a meal together supposedly where
people don't say anything to each other.
Speaker 2 (58:43):
Earlier, there was not even a phone to hide behind.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
So I said that my father, when he's there, he's
fully present, and I genuinely mean Papa. The idea of
a broken home, I know far more broken homes of
people who are still technically married on paper and who
still live under the same roof. I've seen more brokenness
in those homes. I think that you might have physically
(59:07):
left home that was a matter of geography.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
You never left.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
I never left.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Yeah, I think it was your seventy third birthday.
Speaker 1 (59:14):
If I'm not mistaken, I'd come to the office and
while leaving you told me, what if you walk out
of this office and you never.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
See me again, and I remember telling you that. I
promise you one thing is that if that's the case,
you're not leaving behind an emotional pigmy.
Speaker 3 (59:34):
That's the most gratifying thing I've heard. Because all that
man loves he has to part with, and because life
doesn't last is beautiful. That's why the fragrance of the
flower in Toxic kids, because it withers and trumbles. Let
me tell you, with complete responsibility, an absolute authority of
(59:59):
a n editor who's lived for seventy seven years on
this planet, that Puja hurt is a better version of
my age.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
That's very generous of you.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Not generous. It is the fact of life. The only
thing which I would urge you on your show is
don't let anybody impose his will and his way of
life on you. But for God's sake, remember you too
must refrain from doing that to others. If you can
(01:00:32):
do that, you will score like you cannot imagine. You
will be like a blazing volcane.
Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Thank you, mister Bart for being my first guest. It's
been a privilege and honor as much as it has
to have been. And to always be your daughter.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
So blaze on, baby blazon, Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
The Pa Show is produced by Mammoth Media Asia and
Epilog Entertainment and distributed by iHeart Podcasts. The executive producer
is Jonathan Strickland.
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