CINEMA INDIA–INTERNATIONAL
1988
By Bachi J. Karkaria

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We met Mira Nair at her suite in the President Hotel for an interview. Attractive and vivacious, Mira was all agog with stories and anecdotes of Cannes, Salaam Bombay! and 'my children', as she calls them. In the middle of the interview, one of them, Shafiq (the boy who plays Chaipau in the film) walked in. They obviously shared a very good rapport. That easy camaraderie between the two-director and actor, a sophisticated woman and a boy from the streets-spoke volumes about the spirit in which the film was made. A spirit of warmth, care and concern.

Excerpts from the interview:

C.H.: A film like this could have been sent to the competition at Cannes.

M.N.: Well, we were asked to. But since this was the first film, it was felt that it was quite fragile, also we didn't have the kind of money to do the sort of showbiz and spectacle that the official competition demands. The passion for -cinema that exists in the Director's Fortnight is wholly different from what exists in the competition. The competition is about dollars and showbiz and the Director's Fortnight is about cinema and the people. In the official competition, you have to wear a bow-tie and then only enter the auditorium. I mean we had to spend fifty dollars on a, bow-tie, so that we could enter to get the award.

C.H.: Whatever you say, Cannes is Cannes. No festival can beat it.

M.N.: Yes. There is a sort of myth about Cannes that one hears before, which is true. For us it was. After the tumultuous reception at the world premiere, my co-producer said, 'Don't leave your phone in the morning, it will start ringing.' and I just laughed. But it was true. The phone rang from 6.30 in the morning. I did thirty-six interviews in just three days. And this is before the award. The film was a phenomenon. No other film received that kind of warmth and passion. The people were just sobbing and crying and laughing. They didn't move from the theatre. When the film finished, there was a spotlight from the top focussing on me and the crew, where we were sitting, and everything else was dark. And the people just stood up and clapped for, I think, ten minutes. Then they brought me out into the foyer and everybody from outside came inside and the doors were locked. Nobody left. It was like a gherao. I just stood there and they clapped for another fifteen minutes. I was in tears. I was completely paralyzed. There was so much emotion in the audience. And it was truly the first audience of the film. Nobody else had seen it before. That was terrifying. As the maker of my first film, I was hoping it would deliver (the Triessage). They told me at the end of the festival that every year there was a fairy tale at Cannes. And this year it was Salaam Bombay!

CH: How did you do the casting?

M.N.: The main casting–the film is about children, as you know, and my idea from the beginning was always to use the children from the streets of Bombay, because it is my firm belief that the kind of story that Sooni Taraporevala and I conceived could not be made by children who are professional child actors. The film was inspired by their very inimitable style, their spirit for survival, their flamboyance and their humour in the face of what is obviously a difficult existence. We knew the film would be shot around Grant Road. So we wanted to hold the workshop in that area. We wanted local kids from the heart of the city and not the suburbs. We targeted certain areas–beaches, railway platforms and streets and told them again–day after day–about the workshop. We said we were going to do a play of their lives and whether they would participate. It would be like a job and had to be taken seriously and they would have to commit a certain amount of time to us and they were sort of intrigued. On the first day of the workshop, 130 children showed up. And the workshop, I knew, would be a very ambitious and a very exacting way to work with kids. And I needed a lot of help. So I asked an old friend, Barry John, who really has–a special gift with children, to come to Bombay and work as the director of the workshop. Raghubir Yadav came as an actor and another young graduate from NSD, Irfan Khan. came also. When we had this workshop, which was basically for six weeks, we auditioned the 130 down to twenty-five kids. And we had a whole series of exercises in movements and improvisations and discussions in which both the children and all of us talked. The whole idea, the spirit of the workshop, was meeting the children halfway and not dictating to them what to do but getting them to feel comfortable to speak about their lives and being themselves, with us. In the process, around the fourth week, we told them it was a film and began to bring in scenes from the script for improvisation and rehearsal into the workshop. At that point, we also got the video camera in. Basically to unteach them, as Barry would say, about Amitabh Bachchan and the whole idea of formula acting; teach them about camera movement and that when it's a close-up, how subtle the expression should be, because it's all magnified on the screen. This idea of subtlety-what is real and what is not real-was communicated to them not by telling them but by showing them on screen.

C.H.: How did you choose Chaipau?

M.N.: He distinguished himself in about three weeks in the workshop when we used to have these improvisations–very simple. Raghu would be the bhelpuri-seller and each kid had to simply go and buy a plate of bhelpuri and nothing, of course, existed, you had to mime. That was all we told them. Shafiq just picked up, from a trunk of props 'we had, somebody's flashy raincoat and strode in and sat there like a lord and said, 'Ek plate bhelpuri lau' and Raghu said,'Paisa hai to nikal, 'treating him like a street-kid. He said, 'Hum commissioner ka bachcha hai. Kya bolta hai? Licence nikaldega tera.' And he invented this entire scenario, and Raghu played with him. Shafiq nearly came to blows with him. Finally, Raghu gave him the plate. He ate it very slowly with great relish, which didn't exist, of course, then he winked at the audience–at us. He is a remarkable kid. Finally, it was so clear, that he should play Chaipau, when we had a screen-test with Nana, Aneeta and the other actors.

C.H.: How did you overcome the barriers between you and the kids?

M.N: We had to overcome them by a slow process. These kids, you have to understand, are really street-wise. They don't trust you a moment if you just want to exploit them. They live on the streets on their own wits every moment of their lives. And so, they are not going to open up and be your best friend tomorrow. It was something that was done really by the spirit that we created in the workshop. Barry's wonderful, egalitarian style made all the difference. I don't know how to describe it, how comfortable, physically even, we made the children. One of the rules we had set was that we -never promised them anything we couldn't deliver. We never promised the moon. There began a trust between us and then we expected the same from them. The responsibility became mutual. We stressed a number of things and one of them was discipline. Even though we had a lot of fun, they had to be there at nine a.m. and leave at six p.m. And anybody who was late would be fined. And the remarkable thing was–they didn't have watches–some came from Cuffe Parade walking during the rains, but they were never ever late. They were treated like good human beings which they hadn't probably ever been.Their desire to learn was enormous and very serious. Obviously, one got emotionally involved with the kids and they with you and that was constant. But we didn't give them any illusions that we were going to be their mothers for the rest of their lives. This whole process was not just to train them for the cinema-they trained us as well-but also to hope that we could communicate to them their own sense of self-worth and dignity because that would be their permanent asset once we had gone. We would like to leave with them something that would be more permanent than just some cash in the bank.

CH : How did you pay the kids?

M.N.: I'll tell you. We followed a careful method of paying the kids, so that they will get most of their money when they are twenty-one. Most of the money is in fixed deposit and is governed by a trust consisting of a number of people in Bombay. Then they have a savings account, from which they can get an interest. We've organized it with the banks.
We met them. They know the situation. Also, the kids got some money in cash just to make them feel good when they finished all this work.

CH: The script was ready before you started the workshop?

M.N.: Yes, the script was in its fourth draft before we started. But the workshop and the details that we gleaned and learnt from the children greatly embellished the script. We did four more drafts. The final film was shot from the eighth draft. Sooni, my scriptwriter, was always there–noting, observing; we would discuss things–details that some kid had said. But the script, you have to understand, is incredibly well-crafted though complicated. It is a film with fifty-four actors. So it cannot be an improvised film. 'Aaj dekhenge ke mood me kya aagaya'–it's not like that. To balance a film in a narrative way of six main characters is a very complicated thing. So the pieces of the puzzle were pretty much sorted out.

C.H.: So, did you leave room for any improvisation during the shooting stage?

M.N.: Absolutely. My eyes were always open. I come from documentary where you use what happens in front of you at that moment. If you don't get it, you don't. About the script, the story itself, the shape of the story did not change during the shooting, because it had to be very
well organized. Our resources were limited. And we had fifty-two locations to shoot in fifty-two days, which is heroic. I will give you an example. In our research, which took place a couple of months before we wrote the script, we had gone to the Chiller Room (Remand Home) and we had seen the children being herded together to say a prayer. Instead of singing it, the children would shout it. It was like a revolt every morning. We wrote this into the script. One of our kids was in the Chiller Room for four years, and he came to me and said that when the prayer finished, we say 'Jai Hind'. That was an amazing detail which I hadn't realized before. So I said, 'Say it, immediately.' It's the irony of the statement. It's really very powerful. Some kids improvised their lines. And some kids were cast entirely because of their personalities. We have a Bihari kid called Sarfu who is absolutely brilliant. He is this kid with a lot of style and he is wild, dark (Koyla is his name in the film) and he does lots of shairis, mostly bad shairis. Really bad, that he invents. And of course everybody loves it. We have this scene of celebration on the 'ghoda-gadi' and I just told Sarfu to do his "shairi'. And he said 'No problem didi,' and came up with something like 'Meri khushboo teri dadhi mein, mera gulab ka phool teri sadi mein.' And all the other kids doing'wah wah'. That's exactly what Sarfu is. So there was improvisation on that level.

C.H.: You must have been overwhelmed with such kind of details. It must have been very tempting to include everything making the picture either rosy or too grim. How did you maintain a balance?

M.N.: Well, Sooni is very gifted. Really most of the credit of the screenplay goes to her. We were constantly aware of this problem, not just of making it rosy, which we never intended to do, because it wasn't rosy, or making it too grim, because we really went all out, loving the flam boyance of these children and seeing how they survived in the grim atmosphere. But one of the main problems that we worked with was the fact that there were so many stories in this film. As I said, six major characters, and fifty-four characters in total. So, how to keep the narrative balance, so that the audience is with you at every second. That's a long process, where you are constantly asking yourself the question, 'Do you need this?' because everything in cinema is magnified. Iam of the firm opinion that economy and the dictum of 'less is more' is better than endlessly telling the same point again and again. I find that one of the greatest ills of most of the Indian films is that they are flabby flabbily constructed. It makes it really slow for no benefit. You know, the Japanese director Ozu, who makes films that have a slower pace, but they really have a cumulative power that hits you. Some of Ray's work is like that. But just slowness for its own sake, or pallidness is not my scene. Striving towards this economy was always something that Sooni and I had in mind. Actually, the direction is like stripping down as opposed to adding. And then, it's further height- when you are editing.

C.H.: Where would you then say your film was made-during shooting
or editing?

M.N.: Absolutely during shooting. The editing is of course innovative and very important. But it is a fiction film where every choice of the scene or shot is a conscious one. It's not like a documentary where you just go with your camera mid shoot things as they are and then you construct the narrative in the editing. In fiction film, you can't edit what you don't have on screen.

C.H.: Since this is your first feature film, didn't you want to shoot more and then edit?

M.N: Oh, we didn't have the luxury. We had very limited resources for essentially what turned out to be quite an ambitious production. We had not visualized before, so I didn't know what it meant to shoot in Fifty-two locations. I didn't even count the locations while we were writing it. Now, somebody tells me a scene and I say it's 20,000 rupees...

C.H: How would you describe your film now, after having seen the audience reaction, etc-the entire experience?

M.N.: 'What I am especially proud of is that it is a film made with many audiences in mind and it does not make any allowance for people outside who need to know about India in a certain way. We do not feel it necessary to subscribe to the practiced notion of having a western protagonist to interpret the reality of India as is the caw with many recent films that use India as a back drop. You know the kind of deals producers and directors make to get a wider audience. I feel that we have made this film in as true and as real a manner that we wanted to make it. And that also, it was made in the face of all odds, essentially without any compromises, I really wanted it typically Indian film–not the formula film–a film about India as we know it. And I think that has been achieved. And achieved by a group of people who have done it for the first time. A lot of new people have worked in this movie, never having worked in a movie before. On the other hand, it is a film technically made completely with international standards in mind. And it looks like that. That the film is a big success internationally is for a variety of reasons universality of the subject. But it is also a film about India, some of the people who bought it said that they had never seen such wonderful shooting.

C.H.: What would be your reaction to certain people who say that you have merely depleted the poverty of India?

M.N.: It is notion that is easy to have from the outside. It is a completely cliched response that we in India are very familiar with. Right from Ray, in fact. I think they should see the film before they judge anything. And after seeing the film, I don't think anybody will say that this is a film gratuitously showing the depression and misery in India. On the other hand they will conclude that it is a film that celebrates the survival of the human being in the face of odds. And, again, it doesn't pretend to make heroes out of the street-kids. It affords you a look at a reality which exists. If we don't look at that reality, it doesn't mean it is going to disappear. Also, many of us in our lives-instead of coping with the disparities of existence here become blind and numb. I feel that this film refuses to let you become blind and makes you feel strongly And I think that should be done again and again. Some films reveal such a terrible life that you feel like you have done your duty just by seeing them. Those kind of films numb you instead of Provoking You. Salaam Bombay! Provokes you. Our primary test for this film is the audience in India. So I really want the Indian people to see it.

CII: You have always been attracted by Indian subjects. Why?

M.N.: I think that to make films which one believes in is so difficult to see it from its conceptional idea to 'is execution is so difficult. I can only do work which I am totally impassioned about. For the past few years, I have been impassioned about India. It's what makes my heartbeat faster. And I just follow my heartbeat. Also, the fact is that I feel my roots are very much here. Besides, there me so many stories in India that are just crying out to be made.

C.H.- What is your next film going to be?

M.N.: I can only say that it is a film based in Uganda and in the American South. It is about an Indian family, expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in the 70s, and who now own a motel in America.

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