Click to play videoTo mark the release of filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s next film Delhi-6 CNN-IBN’s Entertainment Editor Rajeev Masand spoke to some of the key members of the film.
Rajeev Masand: Rakeysh, you have grown up in Delhi. What are the sights and sounds of Old Delhi, which have stayed with you? Is it true that there was a time when you fell out of love with Old Delhi?
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: When you dig into your childhood, everything is so larger than life, colourful and beautiful. Everything has such a vibrant memory - essentially the people, place, tastes, smells, kites and pigeons and the gullis (lanes) one played in. I fell out of love with Old Delhi when I got into college and I found it very congested, dirty and smelly. It's the same time I started touring the world as my job used to take me all over.
I saw beautiful cities all over the world, I went o Tokyo where I was working for six months and I travelled to UK, US and Australia. I thought this is a country where there are bridges over bridges and under bridges, metros everything. But the more I travelled, the more I began missing Old Delhi.
Rajeev Masand: Abhishek, your character Roshan has lived and grown up in the US and comes to India to bring his grandmother to her home. Is it a stretch to ask you if you found parallels with your own life since you spent a lot of your childhood growing up in Switzerland?
Abhishek Bachchan: That is one of the reasons why Rakeysh actually asked me to do the film. I'd known Rakeysh for really long so he knew that I'd spent 10 to 11 years abroad in my childhood. He thought I would understand Roshan and would be able to relate to the fact on how he would feel about the place in Delhi 6. It just so happened that even more parallels started lining themselves as the film's journey went on. When I started the film my grandmother was critically ill in the hospital. I lost her during the shooting of the film; Rakeysh and Ronnie were very kind to let me go back to Mumbai to be with my family.
Strangely, when I came back after finishing all the ceremonies after losing my grandmother, on the first day of shooting I was taking Wahida aunty (Wahida Rehman) who plays my grandmother to the hospital in the film. So the film has been sprinkled with such real-life parallels for me. So it made the journey very personal for me.
Rajeev Masand: Sonam, as someone born and brought up in Mumbai, how is this character of an Old Delhi girl different from the Mumbai girl that you are?
Sonam Kapoor: My character is a middle class girl while Mehra thinks I am a brat. So in that sense there is a difference. But there are similarities too. She is an Indian girl and I believe that I have been brought up with Indian values and culture. My parents have brought me up with those values. It was easy for me to identify with her in a lot of ways because she is like any other young person in India right now. It is like we want to stick to our culture, we don’t want to hurt our parents, but at the same time we also want to do things our way. We want to have our own identity and make our own choices. So I think that rebellion or dilemma that she is in the film is something that I am going through in my age. So I could and couldn’t identify with her at the same time.
Rajeev Masand: As someone who has produced two films recently and given two different portrayals of Delhi – Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and Dev D, how is the Delhi of Delhi 6 similar or perhaps different from these films?
Ronnie Screwvala: Very different actually. The way Rakeysh has stylised the film is different. The spirit of the film is represented in the bustle of Chandni Chowk. It is quite unique.
Rajeev Masand: Abhishek, Sonam, you have repeatedly said that working with Rakeysh is a different experience than working with any other director largely because he does not tell you what to do or how to do it. Tell us a little about that. Organic is a word that I have heard a lot.
Abhishek Bachchan: The only thing that Rakeysh tells you is what food to eat. That is what sets him apart with the directors that I have worked with. He was the only one who wasn’t obsessed with my weight. He was only too happy to add to the waistline.
Rakeysh’s keyword to everybody in the film was that let everything happen organically, which we never understood initially. We are used to very stringent direction, and here was a director who says there are no boundaries and let us make the film as we go along.
I have never worked in a film where we rehearsed half the day and then shot the entire scene in one hour. Every scene was predominantly a one-shot scene. Rakeysh actually invented a whole new rig for the camera which we called the bingo cam. It was a mixture between a Jimmy Jib and a steady cam which we invented for the film. That allowed Binod and Rakeysh to shoot each and every character and scene in one go.
Rajeev Masand: Sonam, coming from a film like Saawariya and a director who is known to insist on what he wants even to the point of handholding, was doing Delhi 6 different?
Sonam Kapoor: Mr Bhansali and Mehra are diametrically opposite. Both of them have given me a lot of time to me. We spent two months in discussions before the shooting of Delhi-6. Their films are different and the way they interpret their characters are different but I worked on my character just as intensely as I did on Sakina or Bitto. A difference in style of direction is there with every director. It is how actors adapt to their directors.
Rajeev Masand: Sonam, your song Masakalli is beautifully shot. You dance with a pigeon on your head. Was it tough, were there any rehearsals?
Sonam Kapoor: Initially it did creep me out. I had a bit of a teething problems with the bird but after that I got used to it. Vaibhavi Merchant has done the choreography for the dance. I think we rehearsed for two days in Mumbai and it was only two portions of it. After that she said “you are not rehearsing any more.” And that is when I come from the thought process of rehearsing for two straight weeks in a Bhansali film. She did not let me rehearse because she did not want me to look like a trained dancer. So after the Mumbai rehearsal, I shot for nearly three months and I had completely forgotten what I had learnt. But she just put the bird on my shoulder and said start.
Rajeev Masand: The Masakalli song I believe was actually not recorded for Delhi-6. It pretty much fell into your lap.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: All songs have fallen into my lap and I consider them a gift. It was quite an elaborate album. It was a journey doing that music. For Hey Kala Bandar we were shooting in Sambhar outside Jaipur. We had created a mini-Delhi there. So Rahman flew down and in Abhishek’s room we had set up a studio and there he rapped for the song. Finally, Abhishek felt that there should be some other voice for it so we got someone from London to do it.
Rajeev Masand: You weren’t confident about your voice?
Abhishek Bachchan: I was very excited to sing for Rahman. I remember doing it on my birthday. For the rap bit I just thought that someone who is better qualified should do it. I think it sounds better now.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: You might find a portion of it still in the film. It is a surprise.
Rajeev Masand: Abhishek, tell us the memories that stayed with you while shooting Delhi-6.
Abhishek Bachchan: There are lots but the one that is definitely up there is the first scene that I did with Chintu uncle (Rishi Kapoor). He has been someone whom I have admired all my life. So when Rakeysh said that he had agreed to do the film, I was over the moon. He is such a fine actor. Thankfully, I had worked with Waheeda aunty before. The last time we acted together she played my mother in Om Jai Jagdish, this time she plays my grandmother. So I used to make fun of her that she is getting older while I was getting younger. But I think some of the most memorable moments were when we did a lot of community readings before making the film. The way the film took shape in those days and the actors who were involved in the film were so fantastic. I wish we done a family photo because I used to call it the dream team of actors. The who’s who of the acting community are all in the film. It was such an honour to be in the same frame as these people. Sonam and I got to work with them so early in our careers. It was a fantastic experience.
Rajeev Masand: Rakeysh, Old Delhi is a vibrant and bustling place but quite impossible to shoot in. You shot some portions of the film there but most part of it was shot in a constructed set in Sambhar near Jaipur.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: It is not that we couldn’t have shot in Old Delhi but in shooting what happens is that you disrupt daily life. While shooting nights you disturb old people and students. So one did not want to get in the way of other people’s daily lives. But even then we shot around 20 per cent of the film there. For the rest we were lucky enough to find a town called Sambhar. It is like a ghost town and the gullis were very similar to Delhi. And we shot with minimalist construction, at best we can say it was make up on the face of the town and it really started looking like Old Delhi.
Rajeev Masand: Sonam, your director has said that you remind him of Waheeda Rehman and Nargis. How do you react to that?
Sonam Kapoor: I don’t know how to react to this, honestly. He is being extremely generous and biased. I would just take it as a huge compliment because Guide has been my all-time favourite film. Waheeda Rehmanji is my favourite actor. I have seen each and every one of her films and I even imitate her style.
Rajeev Masand: Abhishek, you have worked with Waheeda Rehman and Rishi Kapoor in this film. Did you find that they look at the process of filmmaking differently than younger actors like yourself?
Abhishek Bachchan: Yes, definitely. They are a lot more patient than we as a generation. This generation has very little time to say a lot of things but we manage like that whereas there is a lot more therao in the older generation. The younger generation is very clued in and confident of what they have to do while what I loved about Waheeda aunty and Chintu uncle is that they are like children. They are always wanting to learn. They still approach their work as if this is their first and last film.
Rajeev Masand: Much like Rang De Basanti which on the surface looked like a film about the youth but it unfolded as you watched the film. You discovered that it was about so many bigger things. Delhi-6 also seems to be the story of this boy’s journey to self discovery. Are there deeper layers in this film too?
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: It was a journey for all of us. The film is narrated in Roshan’s voice (Abhishek Bachchan). It begins and ends in his voice. Though he may have taken this short journey from US to India but it was the longest journey of his life. When we were doing the first reading at his place, Abhishek had a pencil with him and he was playing with it. When I got his script back I saw a couple of things were underlined. Every place had little things made near it. Those were the moments in the film, the things which were between the lines. As it is I think he has all of 10 lines in the film. He has worked with his silence which is absolutely brilliant. She (Sonam) worked with her voice. So it was two absolutely different approaches. I am blessed that I could work with such people.
Rajeev Masand: Delhi is such a spectacular city and rich in personality. Do each of you have your own Delhi story? It could be your childhood or any other memory.
Ronnie Screwvala: I have been a Mumbai person all my life. Between everyone here I must be the least Delhi person. So it was a process of discovery for me. It was all about getting in the morning flight and taking the night flight back. It is as short as that.
Abhishek Bachchan: I have tons. I have lived in Delhi for three years. My grandparents used to live in Delhi. The earliest memories will be that of the Delhi winter, which is why Rakeysh wanted to shoot there. I remember being wrapped up in woollens and being taken to India Gate by my grandmother to eat candyfloss and ice cream.
For Rakeysh, Delhi is Delhi-6 so go watch it.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: Yes, true. When Abhishek says something he actually means something else.
Sonam Kapoor: My mother and my maasi (aunt) are very much into art. And I understood the importance of art for the first time when I was in Delhi.
Rajeev Masand: Thank you for joining us. We are eagerly looking forward to the film. We hope your vision translates into the screen and the audience embraces it.
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