Sujoy Ghosh: Badla is like two people playing chess in a room

Q) A big chunk of Badla is shot in a single room, it is quite unusual for a modern Hindi film. Why did you choose to do that, and did you feel it would be a risk to try something like that?

I think that was a demand of the story. The story was basically two people playing chess, and when you play chess, you play in a room.  Here, in the movie, someone is telling the story and somebody is making the counter story, it is basically like two people making chess moves. You think like ‘oh! she just moved her pawn’, so I will move my queen and she will make her move. It is about thinking ahead, the whole movie is about what you will think and what I will force you to think.

So that was the understanding behind it that it was in a room, that’s how the original writer had written, and that’s how I interpreted it.

When we talk about risk, I don’t know how it is going to be. I don’t know what works for you and what works for someone else. If I take that route, I will have so many things to consider before I tell my stories, I will never be able to make films. The route I choose is to do what the story demands, it is not about what I like also.

Q) The film is an adaptation of a Spanish film The Invisible Guest, but you have Indianised it with references from the Mahabharata. Tell me why you did that.

I was not making a Spanish film, I was making an Indian film. I made an Indian film in Glasgow which is based on a Spanish film. Today, people all over have seen it and loved it, but I wanted to make a film that my people, my friends, my mum, my peers, the generation above me should understand it. I had to put context to what I wanted to say. When we are watching kabbadi, it is fairly easy to understand, but when we are watching basketball, my mother will ask me questions about it, ‘Why are they all jumping? Why are they doing this or that?’

Similarly, I have to somewhere in my head make it into a story which belongs to India, because I am making it for an Indian audience. I don’t care if somebody who is not an Indian likes it, because that is bonus for me, I am not making it for them. I am making it for you, my daughter, my relatives, people from my country.

Mythology is something very close to my heart, I love mytholoy. I love putting in that conflict. I love the Mahabharata, the Geeta and the Ramayana. There is so much about life to learn in these books. So, I thought it would be a great way to play it in this story. For example, what is revenge and what does it stand for? When is it right to take revenge? When it is wrong to take revenge? I wanted that in my film and it comes beautifully from Mahabharata.

Badla will air at 12 pm on September 29 on Zee Cinema.