September 19, 2025 • 73 mins
The first guest on The Pooja Bhatt Show is none other than her father - acclaimed filmmaker, screenwriter and author, Mahesh Bhatt. This rare and intimate conversation between a daughter and her father, is searingly honest, sparklingly insightful, irreverent, and hilarious in turn. In this first of a two-part special, Mahesh Bhatt opens up like never before. Deeply personal revelations and a walk down memory lane, with inside stories about some of the Indian film industry's greatest legends. Nothing is off limits; come for the honesty, stay for the fire.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I begin with a letter from a father to a daughter.
Pucha lalish Furie, born centuries ago in the wounded Valley
of Kashmir, once walked out of her home, stripped of
the lies the world had wrapped her in, and said nothing, nothing, Nothing.
(00:32):
I didn't understand those words when I was younger. I
thought they meant emptiness, loss, defeat. But now, as I
sit here, surrounded by the noise of war, the silence
of grief, and the slow crumbling of the world we knew,
I think I finally hear her. We've just come out
(00:55):
of another indoor park war, or maybe we're still in it.
The smoke hasn't cleared, the wounds haven't closed. There is
sorrow in the air, thick quiet, unspoken in times like these,
when flags are stained with blood and words are used
(01:17):
as weapons. I look to you, you who have always
dared to be you, not the actor, not the daughter,
but the woman who refuses to perform for a world
that doesn't know how to feel any more. You've never
been afraid of pain, You've never hidden from your truth.
(01:39):
And that's why I write this to you now, because
I want you to remember that in a world gone mad.
It is enough to stay human l'alaish worries. Nothing is
not about giving up. It's about letting go of the illusions,
(02:00):
the noise, the need to be right. It's what's left
when everything else burns away. Push your hold onto that nothing,
not as a void, but as a space, a space
where sorrow can breathe, where truth can whisper, where love,
(02:25):
even if broken, still has the voice. You don't have
to carry the world, but you must carry your truth,
because someday, when the bomb stops falling and the cameras
are turned off, all that will remain is the quiet,
(02:48):
and in that quiet your voice will matter. This letter,
if it survives, will matter because of what it remembers.
A time, a war, a father, a daughter, and a
love that refused to lie. Love always, Papa, You give.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
My words a new meaning talking about new meaning.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Happy seventy seventh birthday, mister butt. What does seventy seven
feel like?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I wonder where all those years have gone. They've melted
into the abyss of time. I feel fiercely alive, dangerous, silly,
(03:49):
out of sync with the mainstream discoursed in every area
of life. Yet I have the sanity to realize that
if I don't follow the traffic rules of culture, they
(04:14):
will hang me to the nearest lamppost.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, they've tried often enough, haven't they. Which brings me
to your book, your memoir.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
One thing I'm certain, Puja, that book is never going
to see the light of the day, because all autobiographies
are lies, and all biographies are double lies. Why do
you write either to win somebody over, for vanity or
(04:44):
to be relevant. I don't have any of these thirsts.
They were once fiercely alive, but now they're withered with time.
It will be a cautious stringing, stretching up of a memory.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I don't think there's anything cautious about that writing or
that reliving of what I think largely defines you. You
lived with your mother sen but in Shivaji parking an apartment,
and your father nonea by, but visited on weekends.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
He was a very busy man, filmmaker, more one hundred
films folks to reckon with in those days. I think
he was like all human beings, a human being lord
at times, very courageous but also timid. He tried to
(05:46):
do this tight trope walking. When I look back at him,
now my feelings have changed over the years seventy seven,
as you say, seventy seven. So when you look at
life through the of seventy seven years like looking at
something so the wrong end of the telescope. But the
(06:09):
emotional power of those memory wells which are there embedded
in your body when they wrapped, Oh my god, it's
like tsunami.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Even though Zaccomber was a very very bare, brave film,
I think you merely skim the surface when but in
this you talk about how basically the family was living
a lie.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Do you know my heart is beating very fast? Yeah, okay,
that happens when you are seventy seven and you have
your young child who forced you to re exactly like
the first sound you heard.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Was and then that's how getting stronger and louder, and.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Who looked like a mouse is too, the fattest baby that.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yes, So in this chapter you talk about the lie
that was being perpetuated, but you're not supposed to tell
outside k Daddy.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The lies that families live, all families.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And then the bombshell was dropped where finally you asked
the dreaded question that where's your father? Wise you drop
you off in that fancy car, right, So that time
you lied.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I gas lighted their conversation by saying, oh, mister X,
mister X shooting I went for mister X was the story,
the great, the invisible man story.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So they were distracted.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You know. I didn't push it because of course they
quote unquote decent enough not to push it, doesn't they
knew children of wish.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I wanted to read this out because this, for me,
I think defines you, and I think that's when you
were really born.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, I don't think one moment define somebody in my eyes,
because you see, it's it's that is how you've lived
your life posts.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That where you have not hidden anything uncomfortable or embarrassing, supposedly.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So I'll read this out and then what I dreaded happened.
In those days, there was no electric lighting, so gas
lamps lit the streets a bombay at night, as dusk descended,
I walked down the road towards home, watching earthworms wriggle
(08:29):
out from the crevices of the footpath, while a lamplighter
wearing a faded blue shirt carrying a long pole, ran
from one lamp post to the other, manually lighting up
the approaching darkness. That familiar sight of this aging lamp
(08:50):
lighter criscrossing through the streets of Shiugagy Park fascinated me
as a fragrance of the first train still lingering in
the air. Suddenly, four elderly boys wallayed me. They grabbed
me violently and pushed me against the wall. I panicked,
(09:15):
and from the depths of my heart therose a cry,
asking the gods to rescue me. But the gods were indifferent.
They remained silent. It took me years to understand that
liberators do not exist. One has to liberate oneself. Let
(09:36):
me go home, I begged, trying to break out of
the menacing circle these brutes had formed around me. The
silence was steppening. I was hoping, against hope that some
passer by would intervene and rescue me from these bullies.
But ordinary life flowed by, unconcerned about my anglish pulled
(10:03):
down his pants, said one of them. Even before the
boy could lursh forward and go for my trousers, I
began to plead and push the boy's hands back and screamed,
why are you doing this to me? We want to
see if you are one of us. Isn't your mother
(10:26):
your father's mistress. She's a Muslim whore and she used
to dance in cheap boys. So why is your name
my hash? I was old my profound grief and began crying, bitterly,
choking with emotions. I asked them to let me go,
(10:50):
or else I would tell my father. They laughed, your father, okay,
tell us where is he now? Where does he stay
in the house? Tell us the truth, and we'll let
you go. The questions dug into the festering wound my
family had been concealing for years. I stammered and meekly said,
(11:15):
I swear he lives with us. He has gone for
our door shooting. My words lacked conviction, they sounded hollow
even to me. Yeah, and then something snapped in me.
Looking at them in the eye, still crying, I audaciously said,
(11:36):
my father does not live with us, and he lives
with his wife and my other mother in Nhari. Having
confessed this, I was overwhened by profound grief. Strangely, the
air changed and the bearded boy eased his grip over
(12:00):
me and signaled me to go. As I walked home,
struggling to erase the memory of what had just happened.
I wondered what made them let me go? It began
to drizzle. When Mama and my other siblings heard about
(12:23):
what had happened that evening, they saw my confession as
an act of betrayal. You said that a real man
keeps his secret and suffers in silence. You have failed us.
My mother hopped with rage, and then she emotionally locked
(12:49):
me out of her life. The traumatic memory of being
ballied by the police got eclipsed, but the enormous guilt
of having failed my mother. I couldn't bear the feeling
of being looked upon by her as a coward, and awakening,
(13:12):
I began to hate myself. All I longed was to
win back that love, but that did not happen. For
a very long long time, I became an outsider in
my own home. As days passed, the neighborhood bullies hood
(13:33):
snigger and taunt. My sister stopped bothering them. That is
when I discovered what my mother thought was an act
of betrayal. Had fear us all they say, there's a
sacred miss in tears. They speak more eloquently than a
(13:56):
thousand tons can, and they touch even the stoneheart. Perhaps
that is what must have happened that evening, because my tormentors,
for first look like demons to me, began to look
like human beings. They would often wave smile at me
when I ran into them. It was because of this
(14:22):
so called traumatic incident that I learned that you are
what you hide. I'm grateful to my tormentors who made
me realize that life's most precious insights come from facing
(14:43):
the bitter truths that you're trying to run away from.
And above all, I'm grateful to those gods who remained
silent and did not come to my rescue, for it
is in this silence that I realize that there is
(15:03):
no power outside man.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So now this is not defining, they tell me, what is?
I think. I've also lived my life like that, where
I realized that the more you hide something, the more
they'll try to pry it out of you. So don't
give them the privilege.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
That makes you oddly like can outsider in the club
of very good, nice people.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
No, that's fine, we don't want to belong to that club.
But I always was able to come and talk to
you about the darkest thoughts, the uncertainties and you would
not judge.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I dare not judge you. Remember when I said, look,
I will not be living here, and please do not
mistake this as my rejection of you. There's another woman
in my life. But I love you and I will
always take care of your mind there in this house
(16:02):
till my dying day. I can't tell you, and I
can't thank you enough for that expression.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You looked at me. I did not judge me.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, no, I didn't judge you.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
But but I can't. I can't get that face out.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yeah, the innocence, the largeness of a child.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I couldn't judge you because I feel that somewhere a
lot of children use this. Oh I'm from a broken home.
In fact, I remember one time in my life when
you told me not to get involved with this particular person,
(17:11):
and I threw this line at you and I was like, well,
you shouldn't have left in that case. And you were like, really,
are you going to go to that route? And I
pause and I was like, actually, you're right. It's a
it's a very manipulative thing to do. So that's not
time I tried to use it. I think that from
the time when we were in Silver Sands. You came
back home one night stumbling. I think obviously you had
(17:32):
much to drink, and you went into the balcony.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Much understatement.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
You went into the balcony, and because obviously that must
have been a recurring nightmare for my mother, she has
gotten up and locked you into the balcony with there's
an ocean roaring outside, and then you were knocking let
me in, and I hear your voice echoing through this
with the ocean rowing behind you, that stump in my head,
(17:59):
drunken fine, trying to get up, and she was like,
you cannot go and open the door. This is not
good what he does. He drinks every night. It's not
good for him. He has to learn. And I said,
but he might follow over you. She's like, always on
your father's side. And I think that the truth is
(18:19):
that I firmly became and came out of your side,
and then never left that side after that, though. I
was traumatized when I had a fight with her once
and left home. You called me and you shouted at
me and said that if it's a choice, we've been
you and your mother, It'll always be your mother. First.
I was heartbroken and I went back home with my
six plastic bags with all my clothes in it. Anyway,
(18:40):
so that time is when I think I saw you
for the first time as a human being. And then
when I saw you sitting at the edge of my
bed telling me about a woman you'd met, Sony, and
the fact that you're going to be marrying her and
moving out. I was just privileged to be treated as
an equal where you told me this before you even
(19:02):
told my mother this in no uncertain terms. And I
could have made it all about me and thrown atandrum
and say I can't come from a broken home and
my parents have to stay together because of me. Oh,
I could look at it and say, you're two people
who obviously have lost something, which is why there's room
for somebody else to come into that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Equations are human beings.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes, exactly. So I feel that it's very important for
children to also give their parents a break. It's very
important for you to because look at your father.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Or your mother as a human very playing that role.
You know they're hardly that role. You know.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The problem is that everyone's into appearances. You know the
reality is something else, But you're just telling yourself that
no you're taking the boxes, so I understood. In fact,
I went on a w reki with Sony many years later,
I think around twenty fifteen, perhaps for a film that
we were supposed to do together called Love of and
(20:01):
we were sitting out in Kunor at the charge gateway
under the stars, and she just looked at me. She said,
I felt so guilty at that time, and she said
it in such a bare manner. So I told her,
I said, Sony, it's not your faulty. You couldn't have
taken him away. So I generally believe that. Yeah, and
(20:29):
you just started the podcast and we just began. Then
your mother told you go and get a job.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I was thrown out of don Bosco and I had
gone joined to said Michael's school. Whi's in Mihime. Why
are we thrown out because I locked horns with the
prefector studies?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Why what.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It was in this looking priest? It looked like the
face of evil to me. But what made it even
more weird was there was a translucent image of the murder,
you know, which was the symbol of compassion. When he
was standing before and he was complete opposite of what
his faith actually was. He was supposed to be there.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
He wasn't following the compassion he preach.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
The representative of he called me. I still refused to
wear uniform. So he called me one day and it
was announced on the speaking loud speaker. I remember the walk.
I walked the silent walk like I act just think
that was would be the walk towards the gallows. Right
(21:32):
when everybody in the classroom looked at me with awe
and the teachers were looking at me with contempt. He said,
why do you come here? I said what? Father? He said,
why do you come here? People come here for knowledge
(21:53):
and you already know everything, So why do you come here?
So I paul, I said, yeah, so I wonder why
do I come here? Actually I don't know. Father. He flipped.
He picked up a cane that was there, and he
hit me on my shoulder and he said, I was
(22:17):
announced that nobody's going to talk to this boy. Oh
my god, So so my dearest friend who's been immortalized
in archikey.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yes he would.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
He stopped talking to me, and then I was going
alone walking back. He ran up to me and said,
I'm sorry, I can't talk to you because they said nah,
I said to talk to me, and I walked. I
remember back home. My mother was very upset.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, but interestingly, I have been with you to don
Bosco School where they've called you back multiple times as
the chief. Yes, a paradox, that's the paradox.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I think I was fifteen years old and I was
in Saint Michael's Imber just come back from school and
I should stand up and eat, and my mother came.
And Mama came and sat down in front of me.
The house was quiet, and she looked at me and
she had tears her eyes. And so I said, what happened?
I remember moments to people's faces, and she said, asked, Tom,
(23:24):
I don't like the sight of you eating in front
of me. So I remember I was speaking of the moussel.
I said why. She said, your sister is working, she'll
become an air hostess, and you are doing nothing to
help the house.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I put the moussel down and I just walked out
of the house and she didn't stop me. It. Hannah
told the King Gata and all that. M I went
to my friend girl. I was ask I'm not lost,
shouting it. Yeah, he came down. What happened? I told him,
(24:09):
I said, I must, I'm want a job here? What job?
I want a job? I said, And he was working
at a Kelican extent with excellent but the direct slotted
angles and the making the shelves. I said, get me
a right job. He pulled my hand to you. He said,
have you looked at your hands? And said, what happened
(24:32):
to my hands? He says, see these hands? I mean
you had rough hands because they were cut and all that.
I said, so they will get like that. So you said,
don't understand my hes. You have to go all the
way far to you know from you have to go
to tour bay. So I'll just do anything. Let's keep
me a job. Man as well, he took me to
(24:54):
a Catholic supervisor of in Bandra. He was drunk that
man and he said, this guy, this guy just did work.
I'm using this is very good. Come on, but we
won't give you any money. We'll only give you a luance.
So I shall remember when used to work on a Saturday,
(25:16):
each one was given the conveyance the travel money for
the week. Yeah, and the first week I remember fifty
eight rupees. I got wow, and I took that money,
and I went to my mind and said that this
is it. And so she I remember, she threw other money,
and she looked at it and she put it in
(25:39):
her blouse and she said, I'll give it close to
my heart and sleep tonight. Ever since that day, I've
always worked, and today I'm seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You're still working, and I still work.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Not for myself anymore, but I do it for much
bigger reason, which is far more gratifying. It is to
help people who are much more talented, brilliant discover their
own potential and find their own voice. And that can
be so gratifying this phase of mine, which is started
(26:17):
post seventy five as the most political thing. When I
see people bloom and coming to you, But then.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
You you've always been somebody who's who's taken great joy
and seeing other people attain their goals and reached their destinations.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Because somebody saw in me when I was yeah, exactly,
that's going to come to you down or out. Somebody
saw that in me.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yes, that it happened when you were nineteen, when you
bluffed your way into my book studios and went to
mister rag Costlas's office.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So It was my cousin, Reginie, who had recommended my
name to him. The word seemed to work on the
office boy, so he went inside. Surprisingly, unlike people who
have to go and wait outside film offices for aurs
for days, for months, for years, I was let in.
(27:14):
And I still remember the room. It was a schoolroom,
It was in air condition room, and it had black
magazine so fast. And there he was sitting down, he
had finished his afternoon siesta. There was sleep still in
his eyes, and he looked at me and he asked
(27:35):
me one question. He says, so tell me, young man,
you do you know anything about filmmaking. So I paused
as aid, no, sir, I don't know anything, And he
gave me the most generous wise says, greatest zero is
a fantastic figure to begin from. That's amazing, and I'll
(27:56):
never forget that.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
But you had told me about this incident when you
had gone on an outdoor and your job used to
be to get the junior artists together and transport them
by train to the outdoor locale.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And I did not have any booking on my name.
All the junior artists, plenty of them, was sleeping.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
You're traveling from Bombay too.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
From there we would go on a narrow gage and
go to Uddha Pool. I remember dust cat setting at
night was taking me. And when I was sitting down there,
and I remember distinctly that there was this man who
had learned later on his shot cut and he was
(28:39):
singing the song and I was misperized by his voice.
He was drinking and he was raging against the skies
and the words of that song was the ri kay
nat maya huda que Lanning. And I was all struck
(29:04):
by that song, by his singing, by the entire demeanor.
And based on that, me a production band and he
a junior artist before a lifelong relationship. I became rich,
I became successful, He got he withered, got poorer. But
(29:26):
he had that spell on me that only he had.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
But you told me this heartbreaking detail when he was
extremely agitated and very upset because his suit.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Had I had moved into my new flat after Nam
and I was sitting on this law which was marbled.
There was tone was still being made and I got
a call and it was Socker and he said, okay,
he will be sitting on a marble. I said, yes,
(30:04):
there will be a fan on your head or as
I said, no, you're not compound going on yet? He said,
you ask me where you am? I said, where are you?
This is my joy is being broken in Barampara. Have
to meet you. And then he met me and he
had a strange request. He says, give me some money
(30:26):
for a new suit because the rats had eaten his suit.
This is first of all, I've got a buthering body.
I am not faskin the world is changing. They want
younger people. Please get me a suit. That is my
source of living.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Just to give people context, the junior artists, if they
had a suit or the evening where I would get
two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They would get more money. But for that you need
to have a good suit.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
So his suit was eaten up by rats.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
If you go to the size of rats are like
cats huge. And he was dying. I remember I want
to see him there and he was lying on the floor.
And then I asked him to sing the song again.
He's called me mister director, and I made him sing,
so he sang from me and it was after I
(31:18):
I didn't see him. I learned later on and he
passed away. But I had a born with that family
take care of their children and all because of that
song which was sung to me when I was nineteen.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Can you sing two lines of it?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
I didn't notice going to turn into a musical session.
Terryka till me eg khuba mera del lo jo tsa
(32:04):
married de lukode monsieur esa kui milan takai to Mekolda,
and of the train for the train and the desert
(32:28):
and the camels in the desert and his wife. There's
something you're libating. Mariso is a gonkey kahania ish cookie
does kiss h jackisona quis neva? Uh? He said, uh jah?
(33:08):
Case Now who is Raha?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
So moving? So moving?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I see his face every time I'm saying this, Wow.
And it's to rage. He's to rage against the gods.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And that's why you and him connected. I think, do
you sing it so well? And I think that what
you always said to me is that singing is not
about a voice. It's about an expression of life.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
When I see him, his voice sings through me. I
don't think he came once to Nya Bungo Island all
the way to see you. So I said, what are
you doing? Yeah, there's no board today, no junior artists today.
But come me up, Sir, I said, what And this
gave me a two hundred piece. That's why two hundred
(34:00):
is worn. He says. I want to drink, said, devout
Muslim have some shame. A lot of love will follow
on you doing this. He says, yalysis, then is a lot.
He told Joanna r special and then I would give
(34:27):
him money. His family went to Pakistan and he went
to Parkistan and then he came back. So I asked
him why did you come back? There's too many Muslims there.
And then he told me. He says, you know, people
like us, we have no place, we have no home.
(34:47):
Actually there's a wonder in him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, I think it's these people in this shadows. These
are the ones that actually make this business what it is.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah, it is one of the treasures of mine is
Shock at Shock is my treasure. At the age of nineteen,
he kind of saw me and sang that song. It
telegraphed my entire life to me. It became a defining
melody of my.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yes it is, it has my heart. And for how
long did you work with Raji?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Not for long? Better I joined towards when Dora Say
was getting over with the great Rejashana. I was speaking
into this.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
From a start or super so people today even begin
to decipher the kind of stardom that someone like had.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I don't think any actor or the generation that consumes
movies have any idea what he was something which you
can't believe. My memory of him, of helping him to
dub the at odd hours in the night, and if
(36:05):
you asked him to do one more take, he would say,
go to the Karsa Palihill and get the event. I
can't do beyond this. And then I, of course had
that iconic movement with him. I had gone to Patna
for this, but this Kala said Sati nobel prize manner.
(36:26):
And I was coming back from Partna. I guess who
was next sitting down there? He was a congress MP
Raja and I sat down next to him. By then,
the course we had better several times, and I started
talking to him and I said, so can I ask
you a question? He said, I said, when did you
realize that you're no longer the superstar? So he took
(36:52):
a pause, looked at me and he said, and one
day the flowers stopped coming. Ah, it was like poetry.
And then he went to memory. He said they should
come in trucks, tempos houses to get full. And one
day they didn't come.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I think that says it all.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, great people die twice, once when their greatness dies,
the second when they die physically. The gap between the
two is too much. Those days are spent in absolute anguish.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Reminds me of your experience with Kumar sub when you
went to the Bite the Mango festival in Bradford in
two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, that's one of my most treasured memories to have
this rare privilege of interviewing India's greatest actor, Kumar. Half
the industry tried to imitate him. Half the industry tried
imitate him. He remained the reference point. You're not really
(38:05):
open to interviews, but he aready to talk to me.
It's early in the morning and the train was empty
and there was this Bangladeshi guy I came to know
later on Bangladeshi. I thought he's an Indian, but he
came up to me, recognizing me, and then he said,
you laughed something, so so I said, just give me
(38:26):
a vegetable sandwich if you have his at falls. He
came and gave me pretty promptly the sandwich and then
he asked me, may I ask you a question? You
are from the movies, aren't you? Said? Yes, many know, Sir.
Can I ask you one question? Who, according to you,
is the best Indian actor? Shadow Khan with a butchin,
(38:49):
little kohal, He said, they will Kman. He just gave
me a smile and he just went away. And I
finished my sandwich and coming to my destination and I
called him, how much do I have to pay you?
So he said nothing. I said, this is on the house.
He says, no, it's not in the house. But the
(39:11):
idol that I look up to is that the command
and you also look up to him. So I mentioned
this Dilip Sad when I interviewed him, and he listened
to this story like a child listening to somebody else's story.
It was a jam packed show. You had Bangladeshi's, you
had Pankistani Indians, you had Koreans there, the lip Sab
(39:33):
was there with me in the wings and there was
this huge picture of dev das backdrop against which we
were going to conduct this interview. And I remember I said,
I'll go on to the in terms of stage, and
I said, aladies and gentlemen, today you're going to meet
somebody who represents the plural stream of India, celebrates the
(39:56):
diversity of India and has been the crusader who was
fought from the front. So he was holding my hand
like a child holds the mummy's hand the first day
at school, and he said, you're a qkre. When do
I have to enter to Polish English? So he said, look,
(40:21):
I'm not an old gladiator, right, I can't see, I
can't hear properly, and you're feeding me to the lions
in there, and everybody there's a lion wants a piece
of me, So you give me a cue. Went to
inter and enters. He says, that's why he told me,
(40:45):
if you're not nervous, that means you're not an actor.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I think these words I'm going to take too heart,
because I came to record with you today with a
dry mouth and an extremely heightened nervous system.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
That's a healthy sign and it's even pass del coom artist.
Then I asked him, I said, mister Yusuf Khan, what
it has been for you to play Dela Coumar in
this lifetime. His voice comes back to me through the
midst of time. He listened to the question and his
(41:19):
eyes were narrowed, Lennard, and he said, it's been enchanting, exciting, humiliating, uplifting.
It's been one great journey. But Sir, when I look
(41:41):
at that picture of that young man staring down from
that poster and this audience here, I wonder who that
guy is. I don't have any relationship with that fellow.
Nothing adds up. It added up to nothing. What are
(42:03):
these people doing here? I wonder what is it that
they expect to find here? In my conversation in the
very beginning, he kind of demolished the iconic status which
was given to that event by his presence. And it
was not put on humility. It was a fact. And
(42:29):
I found that those words were like nectar that forced
a very deep bond with him, and it stayed till
he passed away. I should go on his birthday and
to go on eve and as to meet him, and
weished to talk, and I remember when somebody told him, look,
(42:50):
he's not here because he's a filmmaker and he's a
very good conversationist. But he's a person who's locked horns
with the right being posts and spoken for the minority rights.
They say he looked at me and then looked at them,
the people his guests. He said, this boy's courage needs
(43:11):
to be investigated. So I said, you were an embodiment
on that courage. He had to fight the Congress regime
to get hair m that he says in Ganda Jamna past.
They said you can't have a Muslim actor of your stage.
Are saying here m and the climax of the film
(43:35):
is saying here m. Way he said here am. I
don't think any actor can say the plural heritage was
in his dna? Was it his bloodstream? And he's to lament.
His heart is to break when he say see the
world getting more and more polarized.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
I think that's why you become the lip Kumar, because
you truly live that truth. You're not just mouthing those
dialogues in a film.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
But that plural heritage, which according to me is one
of my defining attributes because of my genetic of nagar
rahaman father and she almost the mother. Yes, I am
the treasure that Gandhi spoke about spoke about who talked about.
(44:20):
We were brought up from that. We are the ideal
representatives of that plural values.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
You absolutely, And then we moved to Bandra and then
I went to a Parsi school and my mother was Christian,
and then I grew up in a home where you
know far more about all three strains of religion than
most people who claim to practice it. You're not quite
a believer in the obvious sense. My grandmother took me
to Sidney Manaik every Tuesday, and to navinas.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Never took me. I am glad she took you.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And then we used to go to Mount Mary because
she's to keep telling me that that's why she went
and prayed for you. And then my mother, who said,
I'm Christian, but I'm not going to force my religion
down your throat. You choose, and then Daddy who was
and my son back.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yes, every part of his body got tattooed with's image.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
But we had gone to Banaras I remember just after
my fortieth birthday, and we were there for this World
Religious Convention, Yeah, where they had invited you to speak,
and they were seers from every faith, and you were
talking about Ugie, and there was this American lady who
was quite taken aback by how irreverent Ugie was. I
(45:32):
remember you telling me this story about how you, as
a struggling filmmaker found yourself and bananas in front of
this tan trick trick. I think that's the craziest story.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
I was twenty and I met with my friend around Desai,
who was my age, who was also a son of
a filmmaker who had made a picture was under and
then he had gone into debts and ultimately became a
taxi driver. He died on the means while driving taxis.
She spiraled into capsule of poverty. So he said to
(46:06):
me that I have got a guy in Gaya, the
land where the Budha was enlightened, right, so we'll have
to go there. But we had to go. Why are bananas?
I said, why why are banaras? He said, because I
have to meet by Guruji. So we took a train
(46:27):
and we went to war and I see there's mobiles
on my station. I remember that at dawn we landed there.
It was the most amazing morning, the bell singing. We
went to her. There is one story building where there
was there's a queue of very poor people waiting to
(46:49):
have an audience with that guruji. He was a tantric
young man who held a bottle of ron in his
hand and keep on dancing. And the problems that people
came to him with, well, very strange. Somebody stole them
my cycle, and he would say, after the full moon comes,
you'll find it there, and then they would touch his
(47:10):
speed and go, and then he kept on looking at me.
And I was a bit of a skeptic. So he
used to say any month time away, any one time.
He did them a month away to go. I didn't
contest him, so he said come to me tomorrow. I'll
have your solution for you. Next morning we went to
(47:33):
him and there was nobody there and he called us
close and then he said, I'm giving you something. We
should do the trick, and we're wondering what it is.
And he opened his I'll go the rich kind of
a covered small one, steal one still one and inside
there was in a wrapper something which was like a ball,
(47:59):
and from that he pulled out a piece anywhere to
put you out of it, and he says, this is
from the human flesh, which is taken out from the
guards bodies which are cremated and half cremated. Now I
take this and feed it to your potential investor and
(48:23):
he will give you money. Now we had this key
to the kingdom of money. And then I remember going
quite this trained to both Guaya, the land of the Buddha,
and there were some Americans there, hippies to are discussing
(48:43):
with Meeklock for collage of Stanley Curiic. And there we
were poor Indians going there with a tant.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Transporting this was supposedly meant to be human.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Flesh, and the outskirts. Some guy there was this zamindar.
He used to sit behind this skate on it and
he had gun, talking kind of security men.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Wow, that's an amazing visual.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
And then he would ask about the heroines and all
kinds of stuff. Right, and now we were aiming to
feed him and it was not happening, so we had
to stay one more night. Then it struck us. I
think the idea came to him to buy a pan
(49:27):
and put it in a pan and give it to him.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
And then we went there and he was sitting again
behind the Now the idea used to give him this.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Parn with this charge, and.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I was talking and this he said capilli pan lions
or pan lion especially, And then finally I remember him
raising the the mosquito net and taking the pun. And
now we've watched it with the health breath, whether he's
(50:05):
going to eat it or leave it. The head the
plate next to him, and slowly he brought it into
his mouth and he started chewing it, and he felt that, ah,
they have hit bullseye. The more he came out from there,
out told me you leave because they have to pay
twenty bucks always And cut to one month later, no
(50:27):
news of this guy. And then I got to know
that he has come, but the security man is not
allowing him inside my studio. I was looking at the
large ghost, so I said, oh my god, my future
is yeah, and standing it made to stand at the gate,
and I went there and I signaled to the security man.
There By then we had become friends. So I saw him.
(50:48):
I said, come, but his walk was very slow compared
to my enter the album. You knew that I know
him before he came and told me so many words,
nothing happened. Wow, then nothing has happened.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Oh god, this is quite a story. So Manzilla RBA
seventy four, which was seventy seven wrong seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I got because of because in the rising star and
stars are sought after. Commodity is so shunka p s
s up. The great distributed producer went to him and
he said, get marriage.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
But and you cast Helen in a very the first
film fer I WoT that as an actor.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yeah, it was an unusual casting. I remember there was
the late dance master I don't want to name him.
He said, your picture. You have cast a cabaret artist
in the mother of the role. People will not accept
her and the only thing accepted.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So after this more people will not accept You made Earth.
You got this brave man called to actually who.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Was the kind of a gambler by temperament.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
And you made this film which was again about your
wife as this.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
By trauma with Pervine and your mother my guilt tanks.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
But you did do something unusual. You made the wife
the protagonist.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Of the film, which was unusual by the Indian standards
in those days. That's why for one years were laying
unsold proofs.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Again, the industry knows nothing. The insiders know nothing.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
The audience is like a flowing river, the dynamic. It's
changing all the time. India's changing, the people changing, lives
are changing. And suddenly Arthur revealed that the aspiration of
the Indian woman, middle class woman it to day, chose
to be defined by being what she is, not necessarily
(52:44):
by being attached to a male figure.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
I remember as a child, me and my mother driving
past Banda Talkies and that's the first time we saw
Houseful board for your film. And there was actually a
line of people and mainly women, who were thronging the
the yes yes to watch it because they felt very empowered.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
I would have the wives and the other women both
come to me privately and say, how do you know
about her life? So I don't remember your life and
only about my life. That what is personal, universal, electorally.
Mommy came to me and said, my mother. Now I
can go into the world and say, mother, that was
(53:28):
validation of the highest kind. There I finally bring validation
to her life. You know, the woman who went to
the Mount Berry's church and played for a moon and
felt that she had birthed a fiend who can't get
along with anybody, has made a disastrous start, broken the marriage,
rouse gone and had an extra marteral affair. Then he
(53:49):
makes a picture about his own sordid life. But then
he discovers the world wakes up and applauds him. And
as she discovers something there in Hassan's birthday for exactly
the same reason to get her identity. So in a
way she was right that she got her identity. And
(54:12):
if there's anything to storytelling and whish is coming true?
The boon that she asked for was delivered.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yes, absolutely, And then after that came sar I was.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Thirty three at that time, Yeah, thirty three year time
and then came.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
So Saraj was meant to be made with.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Yes, still no, it was a bit meant to be made.
But Sanjeev was my friend. Everybody knew it. He loved me.
He just loved me, and he indulged me and need
to take me for three shoes shooting. He'd go and
he would pay for my ticket and he would say,
come and stay with me in myitute, go and see
the film festival. And he was a remarkable man.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
So when you went to that film first that I
want to take you back on the ticket on the
seat that had given her. There was an experience.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
Experience was one hell of a humiliating experience which I
was safe from by one iconic director. And I went
and sat down in the seat which was assigned obviously
in the elite zone. So I went there and was
remember it was jelly and it was winter, and I
didn't have shoes, and I went with slippers and I
had to keep on covering my feet because it was
(55:23):
pretty cold. And then some bureaucrat came cladydn suit and
all that, and said, oh are you and what are
you doing here? I said, this is my seat, sir,
and I shoot him the card he said, and he said,
got up from here. And then there was a voice
that came came from the back way. Why are you
(55:44):
doing this to him? And I turned back. Mker, one
of the greatest directors India. Scene, he was there. He
was waving his finger. Why are you doing that to
my boy? You keep sitting there, You sit down? He's
got a card? Who are you to stop him? And
that guy just withered and ran away the stale between legs.
(56:08):
I was just so moved by. I didn't know that
well he had only he had only done this because
he felt that one of his kind was being belittled.
Speaker 2 (56:21):
Th he did tell you to send earth for these.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Later on wed me that it had passed the date
of entry to the National Film Awards, and I met
him accident when Robert Wise had come to the USI
s and we were all invited, and I went there
met Dan and he said, believe your picture is very good.
Have you entered it at the film festival? Said the
date has gone. He said, oh, I'm the shame, and send.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
It to me.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
I said, you said, no, send it to me. So
I and the produce science had send it. That it's
too expensive the process. You will send the print there
someone you connected again the same saying, I said, send
it yard. Thanks to that visit to and then she
got a National Award and it also got the Best
(57:11):
Editing Award. And that was the intoxicating high of art.
And I was twice born. There was a budding genius
according to the world in twenty nipped in the budge.
By the time the twenties ended and thirty there was
a rebirth. But I just made it in time. If
you're not successful before thirty five, then you might as
(57:34):
well forget it.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
So Saraane happened, and then the story about how you
got rad Street to produced it was quite a fascinating Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:44):
I made odd story as you know, Aunt the old
man old coupment losing their son, which was quite an
unusual tale. So I went to borrow money from Rajen Lal,
the businessman triend from downstairs two and a half thousand peace,
I remember as a feast for them to screen the
(58:07):
the script and find it whether it's worthy of being
backed by the state. Based on that, they gave me
an appointment and I was supposed to go on a
said date for the final meeting wherein they would take
a call about film being financed and what budget they
will give us. And when I went there with armed
(58:29):
with the letter which they sent me because it costs
money to go to town from Bandra to go there
and then eat food there and then come back. So
when I went there the reception she told me you
can't meet him. Mister Rabbi Malika was the bureaucrat who
was heading this finance thing. And they said, no, you
(58:52):
can't meet him myself. Why I've got my appointment, I've
come all the way from Bandra, he said, because miss
is Sean Benicholas. Come. Sean Benkel was a big man
and it was a star in that alternate cinema. So
I said, but the NMTC has been created for people
like me who have no money but have ideas. She said, look,
(59:16):
don't give us lectures. Please go away. Come again, So
I said. I got angry. I said, give me my money.
So that made him even more angry. He said, this
is not some producers. We'll send it to you by post.
You'll get it. I'm so angry. From there, I caught
a bus and I was coming back. So it was Tuesday,
(59:39):
and the bus slowed down. I said, vena. But then
I'd seen the banner of Ratchbe picture. So something told
me you was get down here and go to rachis
a voice in my head, and I went there. She
was a bold receptionist. There, I said, to speak to
(01:00:00):
body found a product protection. What is it about? I said,
it's about the picture? You know? Who are you? I'm
a director? No, No, nobody is here, I said, please
see somebody must be there, okay, ware she said. Then
she called up and then the person there across said go.
(01:00:23):
When I walked up and there I meet Rascal mar
It looks at me and then we they mess it
down decent man wove glowing face and then I told
him this is my story I want to make for you,
(01:00:43):
so you listen to me. And he only asked me
a question. This is you have one film right that
you are not being able to sell also not being
sold level. I said, yes, can we see the screaming
of that? Mm hmmm, said okay, So I went running
to Paul. I said, listen, yeah, they want to see
(01:01:05):
the film an air condition market. So yeah, the air
condition market. They are no taxi fair So I said,
come on, he's asking for it. So we had the screening.
He came out into intermission. Wow. And that was the
night when the National Award was also announced. It was
(01:01:26):
a double one something could stars journ and that then
last we came a top of the town the film
where it's got the coverage that no in tel of
mine my life has given me, even in those days.
So I asked him, I said, would tell me how
did you back up film where an old man had
(01:01:47):
lost his son. There's a woman who believes in the incarnation.
You know you already said, gee bought your hunger. You
became like a hungry man, possessed. Correct. A lot of
people come to us, they come flogging a project. Nobody
(01:02:07):
brings his handa And we had had a streams of flops,
and we wanted a hungry man. And we have achieved
that for us. We've given us a respectability back.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
But that's so astute.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Was my sister to that. In fact, I shouted as
soon as when he was to be the editing room,
I said, look to call you the producers, and you
can't keep on my head. I should really want to
learn something going right, So he when he specifically and
smash it mana here. He wrote me a long letter,
he said, so you told me that in those days, right,
(01:02:43):
you'll never be a director. So right, every gurup put
you Monday, he calls me. He comes from that flock.
And then.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
How did you find him? How did he find you?
Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
And one day happened to you. The bell rings. I
opened the row and Mark Zubar and Dick Tina was
sitting down there. Sonny is playing on the ground. You
know one, right, So he starts talking to Sonny baby language.
(01:03:18):
So I said, this guy knows how to hold a
child's attention. There's something I liked about him. But then
what happened was they got greedy the production they wanted.
Senjikumar Anaboon got very upset. He came to me and
he said, you're a liar, You're a fraud. I said,
(01:03:40):
do the other role. Now. You came looking for a
small role. Sonji was a big star and they want him.
He said, no, I am the man to be born
to play this role. Be plan. He fought to such
ferocity that there was no way I could back off
from that certainty ad and to He said, okay, so
you Sanji wants to do it, but you don't want
(01:04:02):
him to do it. Now before you come and you
want him to do it, I said, yes, sir, it's fine.
Then he fought you the entire plan of his and
they were also with their back against the wall because
they had a string of flops, so they needed something good. Said, no,
what he says will happen.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
So Ana made it impossible for you not to cast him.
Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
It impossible. And then I remember Puja and his shorts
and leave the picture in Lashwai. Finally he saw it
alone and they were waiting outside Me and an Obam
and he used to hear from the soundtrack now which
just solding to an end, And just when it got
(01:04:45):
over in the cinema hall with quiet, I heard an
animal wail. I went and I saw him lying on
the ground, curled up between seats. Pulla really yeah, and
he's supposed touched out his hand. My age, she said,
my something he had seen because he was he was
(01:05:10):
dealing with his health problem. He had a series of
heart attacks. I think he had come face to face with.
Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
H and.
Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
The gig Anthony. I think in that moment he had
faced mortality. And then I remember he took me anom
to his house and offered us Bat sixty nine. And
then he said something very very gracefully. I couldn't have
done this role the way you did.
Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Wow, how generous.
Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
And then he did a trailer endorsing the picture.
Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
But I mean he just became that himself.
Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
I don't know I did it. I said, some ghosts
came and mad, but he.
Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Was so so good in that scene. Of course, the
TV scene.
Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
The iconic scene has burned into the consciousness of the nation,
and four thousand people in Moscow giving your standing ovation,
sitting behind me saying up, get up, get up. Spot
Light came on me. I started scaring on him. I
didn't know what it's going on me.
Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
So Sarah was chosen as India's official entry.
Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
And it got the Best Special Jury Award.
Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Moscow International Film Festival nineteen eighty five. You had to
wear shoes, I remember, So there was this whole operation
about how to get shoes to put you in and
Aurora without telling you put a dubba of alatas in
your bag and when you unpacked your bag at that
National Hotel, which you said was U Moongay's, there was
(01:06:47):
rotten alaradas in your bag. And you couldn't believe that
this supplause.
Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Was for you. Four thousand people and was telling me
get up, get up, And there was mister gard Gil
who's the Minister of Information Broadcasting. Spot Lights come on,
speak bixtus. But that was an unbelievable moment. And then
I came out in the corridor. I remember people coming
(01:07:13):
to me for autograph and Amaza walked ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Yeah, so that was Sarang and then Janava happened and
it was a very unusual film again came on.
Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
It was backed by reliances communication and the person who
came on mister Christian Muti. He said he was to
work the report directly to the um Buni. When the
cultural center of the Ambanis were being opened, I met
Avocation Bunny and his wife Nita, and I told her,
I said, do you remember, I said, I'm the first
(01:07:50):
person who made a film for you? Was me for
seven hour flags on the piece. It was made in
sixteen eleven and it brought the nation to a halt
for the first time in the history of news. Thirteen
minutes was delayed because the PMO was instructing don't break
the floor. And I got the maximum number of calls
of seniorschi a casebook. He called me the great Raskomar
(01:08:14):
called me congratulating me. Those are the traditions of the industry.
The elders would call the juniors ambition then and congratulate
them for their achievements. And then comes now and but now,
what is amazing is that even Salim Sab Salim Saba,
who was going through a very unusual painful phase where
(01:08:36):
there was doubts about him playing a pivotal role in
the Salim Javit s tream, came into his own and
just took charge of things and we created that document
for ra and I must say that he gave us
all the support that we needed, barring that he was
always apprehensive that ultimately it will be Sandja Dat who
(01:08:58):
will steal a tanda because he had the intelligence to
see the role had that kind of a tragic quality.
And and Sanchu was again twice born. He has never
worked more sincerely on any film like she worked on.
Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
La Chittii, which was listed by the BBC in the
top one hundred songs from Hindi films. Ever, yes, just
two weeks ago a friend of mine who now lives
and works in Russia, I was down, so I had
a CD my hage Birth greatest hit slag in my
car and Chitta came on and he said, yeah, yeah, Ghana, Johanna,
(01:09:36):
it's in his salobaddus Yeah Ghana. But and they get nostalgic.
My favorite Nam story is a story that Amrita Singh
told me. She says, we were shooting at a hotel room. Puja.
I landed up for my shift in the morning and
the room was reeking of alcohol. She's said, I saw
(01:10:00):
my edge but lying in a heap in a corner
of the room, and I thought, okay, low artca shooting
to Gea. There's no way he's going to be able
to film del But I went to get ready and
when I came back out, I saw a man who
was transformed, and he had this demonic energy that came
(01:10:22):
from I don't know where. He was up on his
feet and he just infused the air with so much
of energy, and I shot the best scene.
Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
In my career, Wild Days for Wild Days.
Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
So alcohol was a part of life at that time.
Most creative people who have.
Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Had a you know, Austria upbringing and not one enough money.
Success meant being able to buy a black label whiskey,
black label.
Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
I'm just jumping, but I remember when you worked with
the legendary whether I'm on on Am, she said, my age,
but it is a very unusual filmmaker. He's the only
filmmaker who yells shut up when others yelled silence on
the set. So I remember that, and I think she
was quite amused. So suddenly that came to me. I
(01:11:15):
don't know why. We were talking about how Nam became
your first big hit that actually made you a darling
of the masses. Really, you'd won your award. But like
you always said that you can't eat reviews pooja. Yeah,
but you also say that there's nothing that feels like success.
Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Success is like surviving a bomb blast. So I had
phenomenal success. I had other than the nads ranch and
that I had the intoxication of genoen And so you
are high. You're already high, and you've had a life
of deprivation. Betwere twenties and all the waste land right,
(01:11:56):
dorbitaries were already written. And then suddenly you you resurrect yourself.
And then you have the industry coming because you know,
first three films they were trying to figure out is
he in middle of the road filmmaker? What is he
a art filmmaker? Because though when you have movies, work
(01:12:18):
with the people of the country, that's when the bucks
come in. And then when the bucks come in, you
don't go to your body's house looking for half a
bottle of rum left flover. Then you have bootleggers coming
to you and giving you the best of whiskeys, and
you have the means to destroy yourself. And that began
(01:12:40):
my spiraling going into dust.
Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
So hold that thought until we come back for another episode.
With mister Hutt, where we discuss failing forward, winning backwards,
and everything in between. The show is produced by Mammoth
Media Asia and Big Entertainment and distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
The executive producer is Jonathan Strickland.
Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I begin with a letter from a father to a daughter.
Pucha lalish Furie, born centuries ago in the wounded Valley
of Kashmir, once walked out of her home, stripped of
the lies the world had wrapped her in, and said nothing, nothing, Nothing.
(00:32):
I didn't understand those words when I was younger. I
thought they meant emptiness, loss, defeat. But now, as I
sit here, surrounded by the noise of war, the silence
of grief, and the slow crumbling of the world we knew,
I think I finally hear her. We've just come out
(00:55):
of another indoor park war, or maybe we're still in it.
The smoke hasn't cleared, the wounds haven't closed. There is
sorrow in the air, thick quiet, unspoken in times like these,
when flags are stained with blood and words are used
(01:17):
as weapons. I look to you, you who have always
dared to be you, not the actor, not the daughter,
but the woman who refuses to perform for a world
that doesn't know how to feel any more. You've never
been afraid of pain, You've never hidden from your truth.
(01:39):
And that's why I write this to you now, because
I want you to remember that in a world gone mad.
It is enough to stay human l'alaish worries. Nothing is
not about giving up. It's about letting go of the illusions,
(02:00):
the noise, the need to be right. It's what's left
when everything else burns away. Push your hold onto that nothing,
not as a void, but as a space, a space
where sorrow can breathe, where truth can whisper, where love,
(02:25):
even if broken, still has the voice. You don't have
to carry the world, but you must carry your truth,
because someday, when the bomb stops falling and the cameras
are turned off, all that will remain is the quiet,
(02:48):
and in that quiet your voice will matter. This letter,
if it survives, will matter because of what it remembers.
A time, a war, a father, a daughter, and a
love that refused to lie. Love always, Papa, You give.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
My words a new meaning talking about new meaning.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Happy seventy seventh birthday, mister butt. What does seventy seven
feel like?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I wonder where all those years have gone. They've melted
into the abyss of time. I feel fiercely alive, dangerous, silly,
(03:49):
out of sync with the mainstream discoursed in every area
of life. Yet I have the sanity to realize that
if I don't follow the traffic rules of culture, they
(04:14):
will hang me to the nearest lamppost.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, they've tried often enough, haven't they. Which brings me
to your book, your memoir.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
One thing I'm certain, Puja, that book is never going
to see the light of the day, because all autobiographies
are lies, and all biographies are double lies. Why do
you write either to win somebody over, for vanity or
(04:44):
to be relevant. I don't have any of these thirsts.
They were once fiercely alive, but now they're withered with time.
It will be a cautious stringing, stretching up of a memory.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I don't think there's anything cautious about that writing or
that reliving of what I think largely defines you. You
lived with your mother sen but in Shivaji parking an apartment,
and your father nonea by, but visited on weekends.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
He was a very busy man, filmmaker, more one hundred
films folks to reckon with in those days. I think
he was like all human beings, a human being lord
at times, very courageous but also timid. He tried to
(05:46):
do this tight trope walking. When I look back at him,
now my feelings have changed over the years seventy seven,
as you say, seventy seven. So when you look at
life through the of seventy seven years like looking at
something so the wrong end of the telescope. But the
(06:09):
emotional power of those memory wells which are there embedded
in your body when they wrapped, Oh my god, it's
like tsunami.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Even though Zaccomber was a very very bare, brave film,
I think you merely skim the surface when but in
this you talk about how basically the family was living
a lie.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Do you know my heart is beating very fast? Yeah, okay,
that happens when you are seventy seven and you have
your young child who forced you to re exactly like
the first sound you heard.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Was and then that's how getting stronger and louder, and.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Who looked like a mouse is too, the fattest baby that.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yes, So in this chapter you talk about the lie
that was being perpetuated, but you're not supposed to tell
outside k Daddy.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The lies that families live, all families.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And then the bombshell was dropped where finally you asked
the dreaded question that where's your father? Wise you drop
you off in that fancy car, right, So that time
you lied.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I gas lighted their conversation by saying, oh, mister X,
mister X shooting I went for mister X was the story,
the great, the invisible man story.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So they were distracted.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You know. I didn't push it because of course they
quote unquote decent enough not to push it, doesn't they
knew children of wish.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I wanted to read this out because this, for me,
I think defines you, and I think that's when you
were really born.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, I don't think one moment define somebody in my eyes,
because you see, it's it's that is how you've lived
your life posts.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That where you have not hidden anything uncomfortable or embarrassing, supposedly.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So I'll read this out and then what I dreaded happened.
In those days, there was no electric lighting, so gas
lamps lit the streets a bombay at night, as dusk descended,
I walked down the road towards home, watching earthworms wriggle
(08:29):
out from the crevices of the footpath, while a lamplighter
wearing a faded blue shirt carrying a long pole, ran
from one lamp post to the other, manually lighting up
the approaching darkness. That familiar sight of this aging lamp
(08:50):
lighter criscrossing through the streets of Shiugagy Park fascinated me
as a fragrance of the first train still lingering in
the air. Suddenly, four elderly boys wallayed me. They grabbed
me violently and pushed me against the wall. I panicked,
(09:15):
and from the depths of my heart therose a cry,
asking the gods to rescue me. But the gods were indifferent.
They remained silent. It took me years to understand that
liberators do not exist. One has to liberate oneself. Let
(09:36):
me go home, I begged, trying to break out of
the menacing circle these brutes had formed around me. The
silence was steppening. I was hoping, against hope that some
passer by would intervene and rescue me from these bullies.
But ordinary life flowed by, unconcerned about my anglish pulled
(10:03):
down his pants, said one of them. Even before the
boy could lursh forward and go for my trousers, I
began to plead and push the boy's hands back and screamed,
why are you doing this to me? We want to
see if you are one of us. Isn't your mother
(10:26):
your father's mistress. She's a Muslim whore and she used
to dance in cheap boys. So why is your name
my hash? I was old my profound grief and began crying, bitterly,
choking with emotions. I asked them to let me go,
(10:50):
or else I would tell my father. They laughed, your father, okay,
tell us where is he now? Where does he stay
in the house? Tell us the truth, and we'll let
you go. The questions dug into the festering wound my
family had been concealing for years. I stammered and meekly said,
(11:15):
I swear he lives with us. He has gone for
our door shooting. My words lacked conviction, they sounded hollow
even to me. Yeah, and then something snapped in me.
Looking at them in the eye, still crying, I audaciously said,
(11:36):
my father does not live with us, and he lives
with his wife and my other mother in Nhari. Having
confessed this, I was overwhened by profound grief. Strangely, the
air changed and the bearded boy eased his grip over
(12:00):
me and signaled me to go. As I walked home,
struggling to erase the memory of what had just happened.
I wondered what made them let me go? It began
to drizzle. When Mama and my other siblings heard about
(12:23):
what had happened that evening, they saw my confession as
an act of betrayal. You said that a real man
keeps his secret and suffers in silence. You have failed us.
My mother hopped with rage, and then she emotionally locked
(12:49):
me out of her life. The traumatic memory of being
ballied by the police got eclipsed, but the enormous guilt
of having failed my mother. I couldn't bear the feeling
of being looked upon by her as a coward, and awakening,
(13:12):
I began to hate myself. All I longed was to
win back that love, but that did not happen. For
a very long long time, I became an outsider in
my own home. As days passed, the neighborhood bullies hood
(13:33):
snigger and taunt. My sister stopped bothering them. That is
when I discovered what my mother thought was an act
of betrayal. Had fear us all they say, there's a
sacred miss in tears. They speak more eloquently than a
(13:56):
thousand tons can, and they touch even the stoneheart. Perhaps
that is what must have happened that evening, because my tormentors,
for first look like demons to me, began to look
like human beings. They would often wave smile at me
when I ran into them. It was because of this
(14:22):
so called traumatic incident that I learned that you are
what you hide. I'm grateful to my tormentors who made
me realize that life's most precious insights come from facing
(14:43):
the bitter truths that you're trying to run away from.
And above all, I'm grateful to those gods who remained
silent and did not come to my rescue, for it
is in this silence that I realize that there is
(15:03):
no power outside man.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So now this is not defining, they tell me, what is?
I think. I've also lived my life like that, where
I realized that the more you hide something, the more
they'll try to pry it out of you. So don't
give them the privilege.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
That makes you oddly like can outsider in the club
of very good, nice people.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
No, that's fine, we don't want to belong to that club.
But I always was able to come and talk to
you about the darkest thoughts, the uncertainties and you would
not judge.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I dare not judge you. Remember when I said, look,
I will not be living here, and please do not
mistake this as my rejection of you. There's another woman
in my life. But I love you and I will
always take care of your mind there in this house
(16:02):
till my dying day. I can't tell you, and I
can't thank you enough for that expression.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
It's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You looked at me. I did not judge me.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, no, I didn't judge you.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
But but I can't. I can't get that face out.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yeah, the innocence, the largeness of a child.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I couldn't judge you because I feel that somewhere a
lot of children use this. Oh I'm from a broken home.
In fact, I remember one time in my life when
you told me not to get involved with this particular person,
(17:11):
and I threw this line at you and I was like, well,
you shouldn't have left in that case. And you were like, really,
are you going to go to that route? And I
pause and I was like, actually, you're right. It's a
it's a very manipulative thing to do. So that's not
time I tried to use it. I think that from
the time when we were in Silver Sands. You came
back home one night stumbling. I think obviously you had
(17:32):
much to drink, and you went into the balcony.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Much understatement.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
You went into the balcony, and because obviously that must
have been a recurring nightmare for my mother, she has
gotten up and locked you into the balcony with there's
an ocean roaring outside, and then you were knocking let
me in, and I hear your voice echoing through this
with the ocean rowing behind you, that stump in my head,
(17:59):
drunken fine, trying to get up, and she was like,
you cannot go and open the door. This is not
good what he does. He drinks every night. It's not
good for him. He has to learn. And I said,
but he might follow over you. She's like, always on
your father's side. And I think that the truth is
(18:19):
that I firmly became and came out of your side,
and then never left that side after that, though. I
was traumatized when I had a fight with her once
and left home. You called me and you shouted at
me and said that if it's a choice, we've been
you and your mother, It'll always be your mother. First.
I was heartbroken and I went back home with my
six plastic bags with all my clothes in it. Anyway,
(18:40):
so that time is when I think I saw you
for the first time as a human being. And then
when I saw you sitting at the edge of my
bed telling me about a woman you'd met, Sony, and
the fact that you're going to be marrying her and
moving out. I was just privileged to be treated as
an equal where you told me this before you even
(19:02):
told my mother this in no uncertain terms. And I
could have made it all about me and thrown atandrum
and say I can't come from a broken home and
my parents have to stay together because of me. Oh,
I could look at it and say, you're two people
who obviously have lost something, which is why there's room
for somebody else to come into that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Equations are human beings.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes, exactly. So I feel that it's very important for
children to also give their parents a break. It's very
important for you to because look at your father.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Or your mother as a human very playing that role.
You know they're hardly that role. You know.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The problem is that everyone's into appearances. You know the
reality is something else, But you're just telling yourself that
no you're taking the boxes, so I understood. In fact,
I went on a w reki with Sony many years later,
I think around twenty fifteen, perhaps for a film that
we were supposed to do together called Love of and
(20:01):
we were sitting out in Kunor at the charge gateway
under the stars, and she just looked at me. She said,
I felt so guilty at that time, and she said
it in such a bare manner. So I told her,
I said, Sony, it's not your faulty. You couldn't have
taken him away. So I generally believe that. Yeah, and
(20:29):
you just started the podcast and we just began. Then
your mother told you go and get a job.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I was thrown out of don Bosco and I had
gone joined to said Michael's school. Whi's in Mihime. Why
are we thrown out because I locked horns with the
prefector studies?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Why what.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It was in this looking priest? It looked like the
face of evil to me. But what made it even
more weird was there was a translucent image of the murder,
you know, which was the symbol of compassion. When he
was standing before and he was complete opposite of what
his faith actually was. He was supposed to be there.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
He wasn't following the compassion he preach.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
The representative of he called me. I still refused to
wear uniform. So he called me one day and it
was announced on the speaking loud speaker. I remember the walk.
I walked the silent walk like I act just think
that was would be the walk towards the gallows. Right
(21:32):
when everybody in the classroom looked at me with awe
and the teachers were looking at me with contempt. He said,
why do you come here? I said what? Father? He said,
why do you come here? People come here for knowledge
(21:53):
and you already know everything, So why do you come here?
So I paul, I said, yeah, so I wonder why
do I come here? Actually I don't know. Father. He flipped.
He picked up a cane that was there, and he
hit me on my shoulder and he said, I was
(22:17):
announced that nobody's going to talk to this boy. Oh
my god, So so my dearest friend who's been immortalized
in archikey.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yes he would.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
He stopped talking to me, and then I was going
alone walking back. He ran up to me and said,
I'm sorry, I can't talk to you because they said nah,
I said to talk to me, and I walked. I
remember back home. My mother was very upset.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, but interestingly, I have been with you to don
Bosco School where they've called you back multiple times as
the chief. Yes, a paradox, that's the paradox.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I think I was fifteen years old and I was
in Saint Michael's Imber just come back from school and
I should stand up and eat, and my mother came.
And Mama came and sat down in front of me.
The house was quiet, and she looked at me and
she had tears her eyes. And so I said, what happened?
I remember moments to people's faces, and she said, asked, Tom,
(23:24):
I don't like the sight of you eating in front
of me. So I remember I was speaking of the moussel.
I said why. She said, your sister is working, she'll
become an air hostess, and you are doing nothing to
help the house.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I put the moussel down and I just walked out
of the house and she didn't stop me. It. Hannah
told the King Gata and all that. M I went
to my friend girl. I was ask I'm not lost,
shouting it. Yeah, he came down. What happened? I told him,
(24:09):
I said, I must, I'm want a job here? What job?
I want a job? I said, And he was working
at a Kelican extent with excellent but the direct slotted
angles and the making the shelves. I said, get me
a right job. He pulled my hand to you. He said,
have you looked at your hands? And said, what happened
(24:32):
to my hands? He says, see these hands? I mean
you had rough hands because they were cut and all that.
I said, so they will get like that. So you said,
don't understand my hes. You have to go all the
way far to you know from you have to go
to tour bay. So I'll just do anything. Let's keep
me a job. Man as well, he took me to
(24:54):
a Catholic supervisor of in Bandra. He was drunk that
man and he said, this guy, this guy just did work.
I'm using this is very good. Come on, but we
won't give you any money. We'll only give you a luance.
So I shall remember when used to work on a Saturday,
(25:16):
each one was given the conveyance the travel money for
the week. Yeah, and the first week I remember fifty
eight rupees. I got wow, and I took that money,
and I went to my mind and said that this
is it. And so she I remember, she threw other money,
and she looked at it and she put it in
(25:39):
her blouse and she said, I'll give it close to
my heart and sleep tonight. Ever since that day, I've
always worked, and today I'm seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You're still working, and I still work.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Not for myself anymore, but I do it for much
bigger reason, which is far more gratifying. It is to
help people who are much more talented, brilliant discover their
own potential and find their own voice. And that can
be so gratifying this phase of mine, which is started
(26:17):
post seventy five as the most political thing. When I
see people bloom and coming to you, But then.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
You you've always been somebody who's who's taken great joy
and seeing other people attain their goals and reached their destinations.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Because somebody saw in me when I was yeah, exactly,
that's going to come to you down or out. Somebody
saw that in me.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yes, that it happened when you were nineteen, when you
bluffed your way into my book studios and went to
mister rag Costlas's office.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
So It was my cousin, Reginie, who had recommended my
name to him. The word seemed to work on the
office boy, so he went inside. Surprisingly, unlike people who
have to go and wait outside film offices for aurs
for days, for months, for years, I was let in.
(27:14):
And I still remember the room. It was a schoolroom,
It was in air condition room, and it had black
magazine so fast. And there he was sitting down, he
had finished his afternoon siesta. There was sleep still in
his eyes, and he looked at me and he asked
(27:35):
me one question. He says, so tell me, young man,
you do you know anything about filmmaking. So I paused
as aid, no, sir, I don't know anything, And he
gave me the most generous wise says, greatest zero is
a fantastic figure to begin from. That's amazing, and I'll
(27:56):
never forget that.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
But you had told me about this incident when you
had gone on an outdoor and your job used to
be to get the junior artists together and transport them
by train to the outdoor locale.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And I did not have any booking on my name.
All the junior artists, plenty of them, was sleeping.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
You're traveling from Bombay too.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
From there we would go on a narrow gage and
go to Uddha Pool. I remember dust cat setting at
night was taking me. And when I was sitting down there,
and I remember distinctly that there was this man who
had learned later on his shot cut and he was
(28:39):
singing the song and I was misperized by his voice.
He was drinking and he was raging against the skies
and the words of that song was the ri kay
nat maya huda que Lanning. And I was all struck
(29:04):
by that song, by his singing, by the entire demeanor.
And based on that, me a production band and he
a junior artist before a lifelong relationship. I became rich,
I became successful, He got he withered, got poorer. But
(29:26):
he had that spell on me that only he had.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
But you told me this heartbreaking detail when he was
extremely agitated and very upset because his suit.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Had I had moved into my new flat after Nam
and I was sitting on this law which was marbled.
There was tone was still being made and I got
a call and it was Socker and he said, okay,
he will be sitting on a marble. I said, yes,
(30:04):
there will be a fan on your head or as
I said, no, you're not compound going on yet? He said,
you ask me where you am? I said, where are you?
This is my joy is being broken in Barampara. Have
to meet you. And then he met me and he
had a strange request. He says, give me some money
(30:26):
for a new suit because the rats had eaten his suit.
This is first of all, I've got a buthering body.
I am not faskin the world is changing. They want
younger people. Please get me a suit. That is my
source of living.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Just to give people context, the junior artists, if they
had a suit or the evening where I would get
two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They would get more money. But for that you need
to have a good suit.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
So his suit was eaten up by rats.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
If you go to the size of rats are like
cats huge. And he was dying. I remember I want
to see him there and he was lying on the floor.
And then I asked him to sing the song again.
He's called me mister director, and I made him sing,
so he sang from me and it was after I
(31:18):
I didn't see him. I learned later on and he
passed away. But I had a born with that family
take care of their children and all because of that
song which was sung to me when I was nineteen.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Can you sing two lines of it?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
I didn't notice going to turn into a musical session.
Terryka till me eg khuba mera del lo jo tsa
(32:04):
married de lukode monsieur esa kui milan takai to Mekolda,
and of the train for the train and the desert
(32:28):
and the camels in the desert and his wife. There's
something you're libating. Mariso is a gonkey kahania ish cookie
does kiss h jackisona quis neva? Uh? He said, uh jah?
(33:08):
Case Now who is Raha?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
So moving? So moving?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I see his face every time I'm saying this, Wow.
And it's to rage. He's to rage against the gods.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And that's why you and him connected. I think, do
you sing it so well? And I think that what
you always said to me is that singing is not
about a voice. It's about an expression of life.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
When I see him, his voice sings through me. I
don't think he came once to Nya Bungo Island all
the way to see you. So I said, what are
you doing? Yeah, there's no board today, no junior artists today.
But come me up, Sir, I said, what And this
gave me a two hundred piece. That's why two hundred
(34:00):
is worn. He says. I want to drink, said, devout
Muslim have some shame. A lot of love will follow
on you doing this. He says, yalysis, then is a lot.
He told Joanna r special and then I would give
(34:27):
him money. His family went to Pakistan and he went
to Parkistan and then he came back. So I asked
him why did you come back? There's too many Muslims there.
And then he told me. He says, you know, people
like us, we have no place, we have no home.
(34:47):
Actually there's a wonder in him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, I think it's these people in this shadows. These
are the ones that actually make this business what it is.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah, it is one of the treasures of mine is
Shock at Shock is my treasure. At the age of nineteen,
he kind of saw me and sang that song. It
telegraphed my entire life to me. It became a defining
melody of my.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yes it is, it has my heart. And for how
long did you work with Raji?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Not for long? Better I joined towards when Dora Say
was getting over with the great Rejashana. I was speaking
into this.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
From a start or super so people today even begin
to decipher the kind of stardom that someone like had.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
I don't think any actor or the generation that consumes
movies have any idea what he was something which you
can't believe. My memory of him, of helping him to
dub the at odd hours in the night, and if
(36:05):
you asked him to do one more take, he would say,
go to the Karsa Palihill and get the event. I
can't do beyond this. And then I, of course had
that iconic movement with him. I had gone to Patna
for this, but this Kala said Sati nobel prize manner.
(36:26):
And I was coming back from Partna. I guess who
was next sitting down there? He was a congress MP
Raja and I sat down next to him. By then,
the course we had better several times, and I started
talking to him and I said, so can I ask
you a question? He said, I said, when did you
realize that you're no longer the superstar? So he took
(36:52):
a pause, looked at me and he said, and one
day the flowers stopped coming. Ah, it was like poetry.
And then he went to memory. He said they should
come in trucks, tempos houses to get full. And one
day they didn't come.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I think that says it all.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, great people die twice, once when their greatness dies,
the second when they die physically. The gap between the
two is too much. Those days are spent in absolute anguish.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Reminds me of your experience with Kumar sub when you
went to the Bite the Mango festival in Bradford in
two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, that's one of my most treasured memories to have
this rare privilege of interviewing India's greatest actor, Kumar. Half
the industry tried to imitate him. Half the industry tried
imitate him. He remained the reference point. You're not really
(38:05):
open to interviews, but he aready to talk to me.
It's early in the morning and the train was empty
and there was this Bangladeshi guy I came to know
later on Bangladeshi. I thought he's an Indian, but he
came up to me, recognizing me, and then he said,
you laughed something, so so I said, just give me
(38:26):
a vegetable sandwich if you have his at falls. He
came and gave me pretty promptly the sandwich and then
he asked me, may I ask you a question? You
are from the movies, aren't you? Said? Yes, many know, Sir.
Can I ask you one question? Who, according to you,
is the best Indian actor? Shadow Khan with a butchin,
(38:49):
little kohal, He said, they will Kman. He just gave
me a smile and he just went away. And I
finished my sandwich and coming to my destination and I
called him, how much do I have to pay you?
So he said nothing. I said, this is on the house.
He says, no, it's not in the house. But the
(39:11):
idol that I look up to is that the command
and you also look up to him. So I mentioned
this Dilip Sad when I interviewed him, and he listened
to this story like a child listening to somebody else's story.
It was a jam packed show. You had Bangladeshi's, you
had Pankistani Indians, you had Koreans there, the lip Sab
(39:33):
was there with me in the wings and there was
this huge picture of dev das backdrop against which we
were going to conduct this interview. And I remember I said,
I'll go on to the in terms of stage, and
I said, aladies and gentlemen, today you're going to meet
somebody who represents the plural stream of India, celebrates the
(39:56):
diversity of India and has been the crusader who was
fought from the front. So he was holding my hand
like a child holds the mummy's hand the first day
at school, and he said, you're a qkre. When do
I have to enter to Polish English? So he said, look,
(40:21):
I'm not an old gladiator, right, I can't see, I
can't hear properly, and you're feeding me to the lions
in there, and everybody there's a lion wants a piece
of me, So you give me a cue. Went to
inter and enters. He says, that's why he told me,
(40:45):
if you're not nervous, that means you're not an actor.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I think these words I'm going to take too heart,
because I came to record with you today with a
dry mouth and an extremely heightened nervous system.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
That's a healthy sign and it's even pass del coom artist.
Then I asked him, I said, mister Yusuf Khan, what
it has been for you to play Dela Coumar in
this lifetime. His voice comes back to me through the
midst of time. He listened to the question and his
(41:19):
eyes were narrowed, Lennard, and he said, it's been enchanting, exciting, humiliating, uplifting.
It's been one great journey. But Sir, when I look
(41:41):
at that picture of that young man staring down from
that poster and this audience here, I wonder who that
guy is. I don't have any relationship with that fellow.
Nothing adds up. It added up to nothing. What are
(42:03):
these people doing here? I wonder what is it that
they expect to find here? In my conversation in the
very beginning, he kind of demolished the iconic status which
was given to that event by his presence. And it
was not put on humility. It was a fact. And
(42:29):
I found that those words were like nectar that forced
a very deep bond with him, and it stayed till
he passed away. I should go on his birthday and
to go on eve and as to meet him, and
weished to talk, and I remember when somebody told him, look,
(42:50):
he's not here because he's a filmmaker and he's a
very good conversationist. But he's a person who's locked horns
with the right being posts and spoken for the minority rights.
They say he looked at me and then looked at them,
the people his guests. He said, this boy's courage needs
(43:11):
to be investigated. So I said, you were an embodiment
on that courage. He had to fight the Congress regime
to get hair m that he says in Ganda Jamna past.
They said you can't have a Muslim actor of your stage.
Are saying here m and the climax of the film
(43:35):
is saying here m. Way he said here am. I
don't think any actor can say the plural heritage was
in his dna? Was it his bloodstream? And he's to lament.
His heart is to break when he say see the
world getting more and more polarized.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
I think that's why you become the lip Kumar, because
you truly live that truth. You're not just mouthing those
dialogues in a film.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
But that plural heritage, which according to me is one
of my defining attributes because of my genetic of nagar
rahaman father and she almost the mother. Yes, I am
the treasure that Gandhi spoke about spoke about who talked about.
(44:20):
We were brought up from that. We are the ideal
representatives of that plural values.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
You absolutely, And then we moved to Bandra and then
I went to a Parsi school and my mother was Christian,
and then I grew up in a home where you
know far more about all three strains of religion than
most people who claim to practice it. You're not quite
a believer in the obvious sense. My grandmother took me
to Sidney Manaik every Tuesday, and to navinas.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Never took me. I am glad she took you.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And then we used to go to Mount Mary because
she's to keep telling me that that's why she went
and prayed for you. And then my mother, who said,
I'm Christian, but I'm not going to force my religion
down your throat. You choose, and then Daddy who was
and my son back.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yes, every part of his body got tattooed with's image.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
But we had gone to Banaras I remember just after
my fortieth birthday, and we were there for this World
Religious Convention, Yeah, where they had invited you to speak,
and they were seers from every faith, and you were
talking about Ugie, and there was this American lady who
was quite taken aback by how irreverent Ugie was. I
(45:32):
remember you telling me this story about how you, as
a struggling filmmaker found yourself and bananas in front of
this tan trick trick. I think that's the craziest story.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
I was twenty and I met with my friend around Desai,
who was my age, who was also a son of
a filmmaker who had made a picture was under and
then he had gone into debts and ultimately became a
taxi driver. He died on the means while driving taxis.
She spiraled into capsule of poverty. So he said to
(46:06):
me that I have got a guy in Gaya, the
land where the Budha was enlightened, right, so we'll have
to go there. But we had to go. Why are bananas?
I said, why why are banaras? He said, because I
have to meet by Guruji. So we took a train
(46:27):
and we went to war and I see there's mobiles
on my station. I remember that at dawn we landed there.
It was the most amazing morning, the bell singing. We
went to her. There is one story building where there
was there's a queue of very poor people waiting to
(46:49):
have an audience with that guruji. He was a tantric
young man who held a bottle of ron in his
hand and keep on dancing. And the problems that people
came to him with, well, very strange. Somebody stole them
my cycle, and he would say, after the full moon comes,
you'll find it there, and then they would touch his
(47:10):
speed and go, and then he kept on looking at me.
And I was a bit of a skeptic. So he
used to say any month time away, any one time.
He did them a month away to go. I didn't
contest him, so he said come to me tomorrow. I'll
have your solution for you. Next morning we went to
(47:33):
him and there was nobody there and he called us
close and then he said, I'm giving you something. We
should do the trick, and we're wondering what it is.
And he opened his I'll go the rich kind of
a covered small one, steal one still one and inside
there was in a wrapper something which was like a ball,
(47:59):
and from that he pulled out a piece anywhere to
put you out of it, and he says, this is
from the human flesh, which is taken out from the
guards bodies which are cremated and half cremated. Now I
take this and feed it to your potential investor and
(48:23):
he will give you money. Now we had this key
to the kingdom of money. And then I remember going
quite this trained to both Guaya, the land of the Buddha,
and there were some Americans there, hippies to are discussing
(48:43):
with Meeklock for collage of Stanley Curiic. And there we
were poor Indians going there with a tant.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Transporting this was supposedly meant to be human.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Flesh, and the outskirts. Some guy there was this zamindar.
He used to sit behind this skate on it and
he had gun, talking kind of security men.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Wow, that's an amazing visual.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
And then he would ask about the heroines and all
kinds of stuff. Right, and now we were aiming to
feed him and it was not happening, so we had
to stay one more night. Then it struck us. I
think the idea came to him to buy a pan
(49:27):
and put it in a pan and give it to him.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
And then we went there and he was sitting again
behind the Now the idea used to give him this.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Parn with this charge, and.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I was talking and this he said capilli pan lions
or pan lion especially, And then finally I remember him
raising the the mosquito net and taking the pun. And
now we've watched it with the health breath, whether he's
(50:05):
going to eat it or leave it. The head the
plate next to him, and slowly he brought it into
his mouth and he started chewing it, and he felt that, ah,
they have hit bullseye. The more he came out from there,
out told me you leave because they have to pay
twenty bucks always And cut to one month later, no
(50:27):
news of this guy. And then I got to know
that he has come, but the security man is not
allowing him inside my studio. I was looking at the
large ghost, so I said, oh my god, my future
is yeah, and standing it made to stand at the gate,
and I went there and I signaled to the security man.
There By then we had become friends. So I saw him.
(50:48):
I said, come, but his walk was very slow compared
to my enter the album. You knew that I know
him before he came and told me so many words,
nothing happened. Wow, then nothing has happened.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Oh god, this is quite a story. So Manzilla RBA
seventy four, which was seventy seven wrong seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I got because of because in the rising star and
stars are sought after. Commodity is so shunka p s
s up. The great distributed producer went to him and
he said, get marriage.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
But and you cast Helen in a very the first
film fer I WoT that as an actor.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yeah, it was an unusual casting. I remember there was
the late dance master I don't want to name him.
He said, your picture. You have cast a cabaret artist
in the mother of the role. People will not accept
her and the only thing accepted.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So after this more people will not accept You made Earth.
You got this brave man called to actually who.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Was the kind of a gambler by temperament.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
And you made this film which was again about your
wife as this.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
By trauma with Pervine and your mother my guilt tanks.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
But you did do something unusual. You made the wife
the protagonist.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Of the film, which was unusual by the Indian standards
in those days. That's why for one years were laying
unsold proofs.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Again, the industry knows nothing. The insiders know nothing.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
The audience is like a flowing river, the dynamic. It's
changing all the time. India's changing, the people changing, lives
are changing. And suddenly Arthur revealed that the aspiration of
the Indian woman, middle class woman it to day, chose
to be defined by being what she is, not necessarily
(52:44):
by being attached to a male figure.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
I remember as a child, me and my mother driving
past Banda Talkies and that's the first time we saw
Houseful board for your film. And there was actually a
line of people and mainly women, who were thronging the
the yes yes to watch it because they felt very empowered.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
I would have the wives and the other women both
come to me privately and say, how do you know
about her life? So I don't remember your life and
only about my life. That what is personal, universal, electorally.
Mommy came to me and said, my mother. Now I
can go into the world and say, mother, that was
(53:28):
validation of the highest kind. There I finally bring validation
to her life. You know, the woman who went to
the Mount Berry's church and played for a moon and
felt that she had birthed a fiend who can't get
along with anybody, has made a disastrous start, broken the marriage,
rouse gone and had an extra marteral affair. Then he
(53:49):
makes a picture about his own sordid life. But then
he discovers the world wakes up and applauds him. And
as she discovers something there in Hassan's birthday for exactly
the same reason to get her identity. So in a
way she was right that she got her identity. And
(54:12):
if there's anything to storytelling and whish is coming true?
The boon that she asked for was delivered.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yes, absolutely, And then after that came sar I was.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Thirty three at that time, Yeah, thirty three year time
and then came.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
So Saraj was meant to be made with.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Yes, still no, it was a bit meant to be made.
But Sanjeev was my friend. Everybody knew it. He loved me.
He just loved me, and he indulged me and need
to take me for three shoes shooting. He'd go and
he would pay for my ticket and he would say,
come and stay with me in myitute, go and see
the film festival. And he was a remarkable man.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
So when you went to that film first that I
want to take you back on the ticket on the
seat that had given her. There was an experience.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
Experience was one hell of a humiliating experience which I
was safe from by one iconic director. And I went
and sat down in the seat which was assigned obviously
in the elite zone. So I went there and was
remember it was jelly and it was winter, and I
didn't have shoes, and I went with slippers and I
had to keep on covering my feet because it was
(55:23):
pretty cold. And then some bureaucrat came cladydn suit and
all that, and said, oh are you and what are
you doing here? I said, this is my seat, sir,
and I shoot him the card he said, and he said,
got up from here. And then there was a voice
that came came from the back way. Why are you
(55:44):
doing this to him? And I turned back. Mker, one
of the greatest directors India. Scene, he was there. He
was waving his finger. Why are you doing that to
my boy? You keep sitting there, You sit down? He's
got a card? Who are you to stop him? And
that guy just withered and ran away the stale between legs.
(56:08):
I was just so moved by. I didn't know that
well he had only he had only done this because
he felt that one of his kind was being belittled.
Speaker 2 (56:21):
Th he did tell you to send earth for these.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
Later on wed me that it had passed the date
of entry to the National Film Awards, and I met
him accident when Robert Wise had come to the USI
s and we were all invited, and I went there
met Dan and he said, believe your picture is very good.
Have you entered it at the film festival? Said the
date has gone. He said, oh, I'm the shame, and send.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
It to me.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
I said, you said, no, send it to me. So
I and the produce science had send it. That it's
too expensive the process. You will send the print there
someone you connected again the same saying, I said, send
it yard. Thanks to that visit to and then she
got a National Award and it also got the Best
(57:11):
Editing Award. And that was the intoxicating high of art.
And I was twice born. There was a budding genius
according to the world in twenty nipped in the budge.
By the time the twenties ended and thirty there was
a rebirth. But I just made it in time. If
you're not successful before thirty five, then you might as
(57:34):
well forget it.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
So Saraane happened, and then the story about how you
got rad Street to produced it was quite a fascinating Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:44):
I made odd story as you know, Aunt the old
man old coupment losing their son, which was quite an
unusual tale. So I went to borrow money from Rajen Lal,
the businessman triend from downstairs two and a half thousand peace,
I remember as a feast for them to screen the
(58:07):
the script and find it whether it's worthy of being
backed by the state. Based on that, they gave me
an appointment and I was supposed to go on a
said date for the final meeting wherein they would take
a call about film being financed and what budget they
will give us. And when I went there with armed
(58:29):
with the letter which they sent me because it costs
money to go to town from Bandra to go there
and then eat food there and then come back. So
when I went there the reception she told me you
can't meet him. Mister Rabbi Malika was the bureaucrat who
was heading this finance thing. And they said, no, you
(58:52):
can't meet him myself. Why I've got my appointment, I've
come all the way from Bandra, he said, because miss
is Sean Benicholas. Come. Sean Benkel was a big man
and it was a star in that alternate cinema. So
I said, but the NMTC has been created for people
like me who have no money but have ideas. She said, look,
(59:16):
don't give us lectures. Please go away. Come again, So
I said. I got angry. I said, give me my money.
So that made him even more angry. He said, this
is not some producers. We'll send it to you by post.
You'll get it. I'm so angry. From there, I caught
a bus and I was coming back. So it was Tuesday,
(59:39):
and the bus slowed down. I said, vena. But then
I'd seen the banner of Ratchbe picture. So something told
me you was get down here and go to rachis
a voice in my head, and I went there. She
was a bold receptionist. There, I said, to speak to
(01:00:00):
body found a product protection. What is it about? I said,
it's about the picture? You know? Who are you? I'm
a director? No, No, nobody is here, I said, please
see somebody must be there, okay, ware she said. Then
she called up and then the person there across said go.
(01:00:23):
When I walked up and there I meet Rascal mar
It looks at me and then we they mess it
down decent man wove glowing face and then I told
him this is my story I want to make for you,
(01:00:43):
so you listen to me. And he only asked me
a question. This is you have one film right that
you are not being able to sell also not being
sold level. I said, yes, can we see the screaming
of that? Mm hmmm, said okay, So I went running
to Paul. I said, listen, yeah, they want to see
(01:01:05):
the film an air condition market. So yeah, the air
condition market. They are no taxi fair So I said,
come on, he's asking for it. So we had the screening.
He came out into intermission. Wow. And that was the
night when the National Award was also announced. It was
(01:01:26):
a double one something could stars journ and that then
last we came a top of the town the film
where it's got the coverage that no in tel of
mine my life has given me, even in those days.
So I asked him, I said, would tell me how
did you back up film where an old man had
(01:01:47):
lost his son. There's a woman who believes in the incarnation.
You know you already said, gee bought your hunger. You
became like a hungry man, possessed. Correct. A lot of
people come to us, they come flogging a project. Nobody
(01:02:07):
brings his handa And we had had a streams of flops,
and we wanted a hungry man. And we have achieved
that for us. We've given us a respectability back.
Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
But that's so astute.
Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Was my sister to that. In fact, I shouted as
soon as when he was to be the editing room,
I said, look to call you the producers, and you
can't keep on my head. I should really want to
learn something going right, So he when he specifically and
smash it mana here. He wrote me a long letter,
he said, so you told me that in those days, right,
(01:02:43):
you'll never be a director. So right, every gurup put
you Monday, he calls me. He comes from that flock.
And then.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
How did you find him? How did he find you?
Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
And one day happened to you. The bell rings. I
opened the row and Mark Zubar and Dick Tina was
sitting down there. Sonny is playing on the ground. You
know one, right, So he starts talking to Sonny baby language.
(01:03:18):
So I said, this guy knows how to hold a
child's attention. There's something I liked about him. But then
what happened was they got greedy the production they wanted.
Senjikumar Anaboon got very upset. He came to me and
he said, you're a liar, You're a fraud. I said,
(01:03:40):
do the other role. Now. You came looking for a
small role. Sonji was a big star and they want him.
He said, no, I am the man to be born
to play this role. Be plan. He fought to such
ferocity that there was no way I could back off
from that certainty ad and to He said, okay, so
you Sanji wants to do it, but you don't want
(01:04:02):
him to do it. Now before you come and you
want him to do it, I said, yes, sir, it's fine.
Then he fought you the entire plan of his and
they were also with their back against the wall because
they had a string of flops, so they needed something good. Said, no,
what he says will happen.
Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
So Ana made it impossible for you not to cast him.
Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
It impossible. And then I remember Puja and his shorts
and leave the picture in Lashwai. Finally he saw it
alone and they were waiting outside Me and an Obam
and he used to hear from the soundtrack now which
just solding to an end, And just when it got
(01:04:45):
over in the cinema hall with quiet, I heard an
animal wail. I went and I saw him lying on
the ground, curled up between seats. Pulla really yeah, and
he's supposed touched out his hand. My age, she said,
my something he had seen because he was he was
(01:05:10):
dealing with his health problem. He had a series of
heart attacks. I think he had come face to face with.
Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
H and.
Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
The gig Anthony. I think in that moment he had
faced mortality. And then I remember he took me anom
to his house and offered us Bat sixty nine. And
then he said something very very gracefully. I couldn't have
done this role the way you did.
Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Wow, how generous.
Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
And then he did a trailer endorsing the picture.
Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
But I mean he just became that himself.
Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
I don't know I did it. I said, some ghosts
came and mad, but he.
Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Was so so good in that scene. Of course, the
TV scene.
Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
The iconic scene has burned into the consciousness of the nation,
and four thousand people in Moscow giving your standing ovation,
sitting behind me saying up, get up, get up. Spot
Light came on me. I started scaring on him. I
didn't know what it's going on me.
Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
So Sarah was chosen as India's official entry.
Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
And it got the Best Special Jury Award.
Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Moscow International Film Festival nineteen eighty five. You had to
wear shoes, I remember, So there was this whole operation
about how to get shoes to put you in and
Aurora without telling you put a dubba of alatas in
your bag and when you unpacked your bag at that
National Hotel, which you said was U Moongay's, there was
(01:06:47):
rotten alaradas in your bag. And you couldn't believe that
this supplause.
Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Was for you. Four thousand people and was telling me
get up, get up, And there was mister gard Gil
who's the Minister of Information Broadcasting. Spot Lights come on,
speak bixtus. But that was an unbelievable moment. And then
I came out in the corridor. I remember people coming
(01:07:13):
to me for autograph and Amaza walked ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Yeah, so that was Sarang and then Janava happened and
it was a very unusual film again came on.
Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
It was backed by reliances communication and the person who
came on mister Christian Muti. He said he was to
work the report directly to the um Buni. When the
cultural center of the Ambanis were being opened, I met
Avocation Bunny and his wife Nita, and I told her,
I said, do you remember, I said, I'm the first
(01:07:50):
person who made a film for you? Was me for
seven hour flags on the piece. It was made in
sixteen eleven and it brought the nation to a halt
for the first time in the history of news. Thirteen
minutes was delayed because the PMO was instructing don't break
the floor. And I got the maximum number of calls
of seniorschi a casebook. He called me the great Raskomar
(01:08:14):
called me congratulating me. Those are the traditions of the industry.
The elders would call the juniors ambition then and congratulate
them for their achievements. And then comes now and but now,
what is amazing is that even Salim Sab Salim Saba,
who was going through a very unusual painful phase where
(01:08:36):
there was doubts about him playing a pivotal role in
the Salim Javit s tream, came into his own and
just took charge of things and we created that document
for ra and I must say that he gave us
all the support that we needed, barring that he was
always apprehensive that ultimately it will be Sandja Dat who
(01:08:58):
will steal a tanda because he had the intelligence to
see the role had that kind of a tragic quality.
And and Sanchu was again twice born. He has never
worked more sincerely on any film like she worked on.
Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
La Chittii, which was listed by the BBC in the
top one hundred songs from Hindi films. Ever, yes, just
two weeks ago a friend of mine who now lives
and works in Russia, I was down, so I had
a CD my hage Birth greatest hit slag in my
car and Chitta came on and he said, yeah, yeah, Ghana, Johanna,
(01:09:36):
it's in his salobaddus Yeah Ghana. But and they get nostalgic.
My favorite Nam story is a story that Amrita Singh
told me. She says, we were shooting at a hotel room. Puja.
I landed up for my shift in the morning and
the room was reeking of alcohol. She's said, I saw
(01:10:00):
my edge but lying in a heap in a corner
of the room, and I thought, okay, low artca shooting
to Gea. There's no way he's going to be able
to film del But I went to get ready and
when I came back out, I saw a man who
was transformed, and he had this demonic energy that came
(01:10:22):
from I don't know where. He was up on his
feet and he just infused the air with so much
of energy, and I shot the best scene.
Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
In my career, Wild Days for Wild Days.
Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
So alcohol was a part of life at that time.
Most creative people who have.
Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Had a you know, Austria upbringing and not one enough money.
Success meant being able to buy a black label whiskey,
black label.
Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
I'm just jumping, but I remember when you worked with
the legendary whether I'm on on Am, she said, my age,
but it is a very unusual filmmaker. He's the only
filmmaker who yells shut up when others yelled silence on
the set. So I remember that, and I think she
was quite amused. So suddenly that came to me. I
(01:11:15):
don't know why. We were talking about how Nam became
your first big hit that actually made you a darling
of the masses. Really, you'd won your award. But like
you always said that you can't eat reviews pooja. Yeah,
but you also say that there's nothing that feels like success.
Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Success is like surviving a bomb blast. So I had
phenomenal success. I had other than the nads ranch and
that I had the intoxication of genoen And so you
are high. You're already high, and you've had a life
of deprivation. Betwere twenties and all the waste land right,
(01:11:56):
dorbitaries were already written. And then suddenly you you resurrect yourself.
And then you have the industry coming because you know,
first three films they were trying to figure out is
he in middle of the road filmmaker? What is he
a art filmmaker? Because though when you have movies, work
(01:12:18):
with the people of the country, that's when the bucks
come in. And then when the bucks come in, you
don't go to your body's house looking for half a
bottle of rum left flover. Then you have bootleggers coming
to you and giving you the best of whiskeys, and
you have the means to destroy yourself. And that began
(01:12:40):
my spiraling going into dust.
Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
So hold that thought until we come back for another episode.
With mister Hutt, where we discuss failing forward, winning backwards,
and everything in between. The show is produced by Mammoth
Media Asia and Big Entertainment and distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
The executive producer is Jonathan Strickland.
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