Deep(a) thoughts

Wearing her salt-and-pepper hair long and wild,along with her patent red sneakers,Mehta feels labels do a great disservice to cinema,finds controversies boring and dodges the “adaptation police”. She is working on another adaptation,though,called Exclusion based on the book Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. “It’s about adoption,mothers and daughters,and unfolds in India and San Francisco. It will release next year,” is all the filmmaker will reveal.

Komagata Maru,her much-awaited magnum opus,is still on hold. “This is one story I want to take time with,for it involves enormous research,logistics and details. Everything has to be accurate and beautifully told,and I don’t want to shoot it in a studio. I want to shoot it on real waters in Japan,Kolkata and Canada,” she says.

Turn the page back to Midnight’s Children,and Mehta says she always wanted writer Rushdie to pen the screenplay. “He had refused,but I insisted,for only he could do justice to the story,” she says. This was a book she grew up with,with its stories of the Partition and upheavels such as the Bangladesh war. “I was in first year of college when I read Midnight’s Children,and I found it pathbreaking. It brought out the importance of nation as a family,” she says.

The danger of conflict,of losing a seven-year friendship with Rushdie was ever-present as they worked on the film for,according to Mehta,no two people are ever on the same page. But her conviction paid off. “I am attracted to talent,to sensible work and cinema,and don’t like to dilute it,” says the filmmaker,who chooses not to offer any explanation or sell her films as vehicles of change.

While India fuels her with passion and stories,it’s Canada where she finds a way to give her subject a cinematic expression. “I’ve had my share of controversies,and I am bored of them. These are just hooks for stories,” she says,with a laugh.

Born and raised in Amritsar,educated in Delhi,married in Canada,Mehta says she’s never had an identity crisis. “All this guts and courage,I attribute it to my Punjabi blood,” she says,with a smile. No,she is not thinking making any Punjabi film. “Labels again. I did watch a Punjabi film,Anup Singh’s Qissa starring Irrfan,and it is brilliant,” she says.

She also agrees that Hindi cinema in India is in an exciting phase — active in the festival circuit,buzzing at the Oscars,and full of new-age ideas. “Festivals are great markets,while the Oscars get the most press. It’s high profile and important,so why not be a part of it?” she asks. Mehta’s hawk eye scans the Indian cinemascope and fixes on filmmakers such as Dibakar Banerjee for his wit and imagination,Vikramaditya Motwane for being poetic and brilliant,and game-changer Anurag Kashyap.