Sai Paranjpye at Idea Exchange: ‘When film censors feel they have the power to negate something with a pen or a stamp, it’s often misused’

I see the good things in life. Of course, I see the bad things too but I feel that the good outweighs the bad and that’s why I say my cup is never half empty but half full. I try to spread this and if something I have written can bring a smile to someone’s face, bas, I have got my reward. Also, I hate the idea of socially driven films. Who am I to give social messages? I’m just a person with maybe a little surplus imagination which I put to use. But who am I to tell people to do or not to do something? That’s presumptuous. In India, we are famous for telling the other person what to do. Even in our children’s stories at the end, there is a moral of the story. Why? Write a good story, the children will automatically get the message. So enjoy the film or don’t enjoy it. But don’t ask me to preach. I’m not a preacher. I do not dole out messages.

Sunanda Mehta: Your films have always been grounded in reality, capturing simplicity, everyday life and powerful social themes. So how did you manage to stay away from the allure of mainstream cinema?

More than keeping myself away from the glamour, I couldn’t drag myself away from the realism around me, let’s put it like that. So, I feel that everyday life, especially in India and especially in a place like Pune, or in Delhi where I was for eight very wonderful years, is just so exciting and the people are so interesting. No one Indian is like another and I don’t only talk on the basis of language and culture but even otherwise. I love to see life around me and possibly that could be because I have been an only child. I was always at our neighbour’s where there were any number of children and families.

I would be mesmerised by the give and take of these places. Like in a chawl, for instance, you are divided by walls but if something happens in one family, then there are reverberations all over the chawl. One family’s sorrow is shared by everybody else. So, that’s why a lot of my work centres around that, like you see in Katha or my television serial Hum Panchhi Ek Chawl Ke or Ados Pados. These are all chawl-inspired stories. In fact, Gulzar jokingly called me ‘minister for chawls’. So, the realism there kept me on terra firma, I wasn’t allowed to indulge in all kinds of fantasies. However, there are few glimpses of fantasies like in Sparsh, if you remember, there is this little story which Shabana (Azmi) reads out to a little boy. In that, the little boy is the prince and Shabana is the princess. The little boy is eight years old and she is 28 years old or whatever. So, I love to do these little funny things and indulge myself but, by and large, I like to deal with things as they are.

Anuradha Mascarenhas: Recently, you donated your collection of original handwritten drafts, screenplays and films in both Marathi and Hindi to Ashoka University. What inspired this generous contribution?

This is thanks to Ashoka University and my dear friend, Latika Padgaonkar. I have written so much, I’m not exaggerating. I have about five screenplays which are lying untouched because I found no financer or producer. When I write, I don’t just write one draft. I am one of those awful people who has to go over it again and again, perfecting and changing a word here and putting a word there. But, I can’t write like I used to and I’ve never turned to a computer. So, I have handed over a bit of my legacy to the university.

On censorship | We are bending over backwards to please a certain section of society. But we forget how to treat a human being and we see people through a label: what religion he belongs to, what region he is from

Sunanda Mehta: What do you think of censorship today? Do you think it’s more liberal or more intrusive? And is there too much moral policing in cinema?

I think we are bending over backwards to please a certain section of society. And we are trying to say the right things, do the right things. And I feel that unfortunately we are forgetting how to treat a human being as a human being but seeing her or him through a label — what religion he belongs to, what region he is from. This worries me.

Soham Shah: In September, two films had a controversial Censor Board certification issue. Basically, in Punjab ’95, a film starring Diljit Dosanjh, the Censor Board demanded over 100 cuts. And the second is Homebound, India’s Oscar entry, which has around a minute-and-a-half cut.

I haven’t seen these two films so I really wouldn’t like to comment. But I do remember that this has always been a niggling problem. Even in my heyday when I was making films, we always had our little tiffs with the Censor Board. When people feel they have the power to negate something with just a scratch of a pen or a stamp, it’s often misused.

Dipanita Nath: At present, what are the realities of society that have, if not inspired, at least stirred or maybe disturbed you?

There are a lot of things that disturb me today — caste and this feeling of segregation, of nepotism, of this holier than thou attitude. Just because someone had done something 25,000 years ago, you are retaliating now. Come off it, be adults, be forgiving. I often wish I had the strength I had, say, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. I would have done something. But now I can only sit and be disturbed.

Sunanda Mehta: Some time ago, Films Division (FD), Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI) and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) have been clubbed under the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC). Many artistes were upset about that. Would you like to comment?

I don’t think it should all be clubbed under one umbrella, it’s ridiculous. For instance, take sports. Badminton is different. Tennis is different. Hockey is different. Cricket is different. You can’t club everything under one thing and say have one body to control everything.

Anuradha Mascarenhas: Could you talk about your biography, which is now in its seventh edition?

It is called Sai which means remembrance. It is a biography of my creative work — my plays, writings, television, films, documentaries, everything, whatever I’ve done but I don’t talk about my love affairs! It’s about my creative work and the wonderful people who were with me on this journey. It started with my mother Shakuntala Paranjpye, a Padma Bhushan awardee, and the first woman to propagate family planning in an era when the subject was taboo. She had always been a courageous woman, ahead of her time, married a Russian painter, went to Cambridge when girls from her class got married before they were even matriculated. She was an only child. I was made to read a lot and by the time I was eight, I had read all the Marathi stalwarts. Later in Australia, I learned English and saw fantastic films. There was a rocking horse on our veranda and I would sit on it and imagine my own stories. I would be a princess, going to some land which had a magician, king,wicked ogres, speaking horses, flying tigers and so on. I would go on, for three, four hours, living this story. A friend of my mother even asked her if I was normal. Tired of telling me bedtime stories, once my mother asked me to tell her one, and impressed with my story she made me write three pages a day before I went out to play. I used to hate it then but it made me a writer by age eight. Not because I was extraordinary but because my mother was… Disha may not be as well-known as Chashme Buddoor or Katha but I consider it my best work. It featured Nana Patekar, Raghubir Yadav, Nilu Phule, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri. The idea began during a visit to Naigaon, where I met Vilasrao Salunke — the ‘water man’ and a villager named Soma (a typical villager with a Gandhi cap) who spent 12 years digging a well on dry land while everyone mocked him as ‘Yeda Soma’. When he finally struck water, it was a moment of quiet triumph. Later, I visited a gala in Mumbai — a dormitory shared by 30-40 migrant workers — and the scenes I witnessed there deeply moved me. These two experiences eventually became the soul of Disha. At the gala, I spoke to a man who had just woken up and was asked if he had enough space to sleep. He said, ‘Sone ki jagah hai, lekin karwat nahi badal sakte (we can sleep, but we can’t turn over)’. I used that line in Disha and people praised the dialogue. But really, it
came from this mill worker. There is so much around us, so many stories waiting to be told. It took 17 years but the pieces slowly came together — Soma’s well, Mumbai’s gala, women beedi workers — they blended like a jigsaw puzzle and became Disha.

Sunanda Mehta: And now at 89, you have started solo shows (Darwal)!

It has been a fantastic journey, I have selected stuff — a bit from a film called Angootha Chhaap (I share the screenplay with the audience), a little bit of my Sparsh screenplay. I read them out, and if I may say so, I don’t read badly. It’s so gratifying, at this age, to still be in demand, you feel good, honestly.

On film bodies-NDFC Merger | I don’t think it should all be clubbed under one umbrella, it’s ridiculous. For instance, take sports. Tennis is different. Hockey is different. Cricket is different. You can’t have one body to control everything

Chandan Haygunde: When a Hindi web series or a movie is dubbed, it is in English and other regional languages. Rarely is it done in Marathi. Why is that?

The unfortunate or fortunate reason could be that Marathis understand Hindi very well. So, there is really no need to do the extra expenditure or make the extra effort to dub the things in Marathi. I think it just has something to do with that.

Rishika Singh: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of sources of entertainment. It’s basically available 24×7. Is there a danger of constant stimulation dulling your enjoyment?

It’s a tricky question and you really need psychologists to look into it. I do feel that there is an avalanche of entertainment and if children are left to their own devices and are constantly watching one film after the other, certainly that is not healthy. But then, here is where the parents have to step in. Encourage children to see good programmes and keep a watch on what young people are doing. But you can’t really stop it. It’s like saying stop artificial intelligence.

Alaka Sahani: How did you write and build your male lead characters who are so vulnerable, flawed yet lovable? Especially the characters played by Farooq Shaikh and Naseeruddin Shah.

This is a very lovely comment and I do appreciate it. But I am at a loss to give you any proper answer because I don’t know. For instance, Farooq’s character in Katha, he’s a scamp. I had been in touch with a similar character, very charming mind you. I wrote him into Katha and actually it was based on a Marathi play by Shankar Sathe called Sasa Ani Kasav (The Hare and the Tortoise). It’s not the sincere, well-meaning, hard-working tortoise who goes ahead but it’s the glib, smart-aleck, fancy rabbit who manages to impress everybody with his talk. Farooq plays the hare and Naseer is the plodding tortoise. It was so delightful working with them. But first they were both very averse to doing the roles. They argued with me endlessly. Naseer said, ‘But Sai, you can’t make me into Raja Ram, this namby-pamby silly fellow. You forget how smart I am. Nobody is going to take me for a simpleton like that.’ And Farooq said, ‘You forget how lovable and nice I am. You made Chashme Buddoor with me as such a lovable, nice guy and now you want me to be this villainous, sly, badmash character.’ So then I sat them down and said, ‘Listen guys, are you actors or are you poster boys? Don’t you want a challenge in your life? Do you want to go on doing the same old thing over and over again? Come on, snap out of it.’ And finally, of course, I was the director and I was a bit of a bully. So I managed to bully them and they agreed. And look at the result, they were so fabulous.

Alaka Sahani: Would you like to comment on the hyper-masculinity portrayed in cinema today?

I think it began around 1925, with Ahilya Uddhar, perhaps, our first woman-centric film. But even then, the dominant narrative was that of the Sati, where the woman is expected to follow her husband not just through life but into death, as well. The Sati characters were glorified and there were nearly 20 such ‘Sati’ films. Paradoxically, in the same era, we had Shakti, a symbol of power. One standout example was Fearless Nadia, a lone figure of defiance and strength and hence in this land of paradox we have the Sati and Shakti concepts. But from those days, you know, it is always about the man. And the woman was always playing the second fiddle. She was just there as wife, mother, bhabhi and then, of course, a vamp. But never a woman of substance, who stood her own ground. She was always behind the husband, behind the male. Take our festivals, Karva Chauth in Punjab or Vat Purnima in Maharashtra, where women are fasting and praying for the long life of their husbands. But is there any festival where a husband does the same for his wife? Not in society, not in cinema. Not even in theatre. Now at least some of the women directors are opting for women-centric themes. Look at Zoya Akhtar, her films are so delightful. What about Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane? The Anglo-Indian teacher is one of the most superb characters in an Indian film. So I think women are doing okay.

On finding inspiration | For Disha, I visited a dormitory for migrant workers in Mumbai. I asked a man if he had space to sleep. He said: Sone ki jagah hai, lekin karwat nahi badal sakte. I used that line and people praised it

Soham Shah: You are also a script writer. What was the general practice in the film industry and in your films as well? Were the scripts written in Hindi Roman or in Hindi Devanagari?

My scripts are written with directions like ‘we see a village’; ‘camera is on top’; ‘a door opens’ — it’s all in English. The dialogue is in Hindi. And that is in Devanagari. So, I think right now, in the film industry, almost all scripts are in Roman. No actor really reads dialogues in Devanagari. I think it’s quite disappointing. They should be made to stand in a corner and write Devanagari 25 times a day. Many times, scenes are being written while filming is already underway. There’s no complete script. It’s just so sad. People don’t realise that a strong script is the base of a good film.

Anuradha Mascarenhas: Finally, what defines good cinema?

Good cinema is something that stays with you forever.