Vishal overcome!

GulzarVishal Bhardwajs musical combo is top of the chartsrsquo stuff But Vishalrsquos first mentor from the world of poetry was in fact Dr Bashir Badr whom he calls the ldquogreatest poet of the century an asset to his hometown Meerutrdquo who had to flee Meerut however because of the riots in 1984Bashir Sahab had heard rumours of a likely attack on his house in Shastri Nagar His home was indeed burnt down by a raging mob laterIn the rush that he fled for Bhopal Bashir Sahab left behind his diary with all his poetry written over the past year When he briefly revisited Meerut he asked for two peoplemdashone Mr Bhandari who was 70 years old and the other Vishal who was 19 thenVishal Bhardwaj with middayrsquos entertainment editor Mayank Shekhar PicsAishwarya Deodhar Ashish RajeHe asked both if they remembered the ghazals and his poetry from the destroyed diary Bashir Sahab had gone into depression Between the old man Bhandari and teenager Vishal they recalled all of the great poetrsquos works to him word for word as he penned them back again ldquoThis is how Bashir Sahab got out of depressionrdquoVishal used to spend every evening listening to Bashir Sahabrsquos words of the day With poetry he says he has a photographic memory ldquoAt one point I could recite the entire book of GulzarrdquoThis Bashir Badr story Irsquod heard before over drinks with his former associates once As is with such nights Irsquod forgotten most of it the next morningIncluding details of the tragic events preceding Vishalrsquos father Ram Bhardwajrsquos demisemdashwhich he recounted in detail before a live audience during this conversation Only a few weeks later he sent in a word if that anecdote could be omitted Itrsquos about father and son Too sensitive We left it at thatEarlier he would cry recalling the incident to do with his fatherrsquos death But he says ldquoI found my catharsis in that scene in Haider 2014 when Shahid Kapoor returns to his home thatrsquos burnt down and hersquos holding a cricket batrdquoThe other story about Vishal that I have stored in my hazy memory hanging with his former colleagues is about how as a kid in Meerut he was caught in a crossfire and he saw a dead gangster right in front of himldquoOh those are actually two separate incidencesrdquo Vishal says ldquoThere was Tyagi Hostel in Meerut where all these gangsters used to live There was a wall with a hole between my school and the hostel Thatrsquos the shortcut route we took to get to school This is where the chief gangster used to live in the wardenrsquos house The warden used to live in the hostelldquoOn my way I would see him lay out and dry his bullets guns grenade in the sun The gangster was very fond of me and other kids He would offer us to hold his gun tease us with pulling the triggerldquoOnce during school exams we heard gunshots fired We went over to the gangsterrsquos courtyard after And he was lying dead right there with fresh blood killed by cops in a gang war Thatrsquos the first time I saw a dead body I was in Class VII so mustrsquove been 12 or somethingrdquoMaqbool an adaptation of Macbeth was Bhardwajrsquos first film with Irrfan Khan The other incident has to do with HinduMuslim riots which Vishal says was common enough in Meerut ldquoBut even then the level of enmity that we see now didnrsquot existrdquoVishalrsquos house was next to a Muslim familyrsquos ldquoThey had a large bungalow The father was a learned gentleman He had three daughters My landlord was a police subinspector with 10 childrenldquoThose kids decided ki hum Muslim kama lete hain meaning scorekill Muslim people during the riots Thatrsquos how it worked I even heard them plan on going after one of the daughtersTabu in KhufiyaldquoThere was word from the police station that these boys had an hour to do whatever they likedmdashkama lo toh kama lo Thatrsquos before the police would charge inldquoThis is also how it worked I knew about these boysrsquo plans They had bought countrymade pistols They intended to enter the house and blast the gas cylinderldquoThe Muslim man inside had a Donali doublebarrelled gun that he shot in the air During what ensued I got caught in the crossfire and found my way out of it into another house My family got worried because I had gone missingrdquoVivek Oberoi and Saif Ali Khan in OmkaraThis is when Vishal naturally pauses in the chat ldquoThatrsquos the psyche of a mob I have seen it You ask an individual to kill another They wonrsquot You get 50 people to do the same without taking on guilt and moral responsibility They willldquoThis is why incidences like lynching and mob behaviour pain me The support comes from the systemrdquoAs with many great artistes you only have to dig into Vishalrsquos past to figure what informs his life as a filmmaker and public figure too Although pretty much all of his films as a director have been based on works of literatureIt might be fair to say thatrsquos only on paper Consider his last feature Khufiya 2023 on Netflix Itrsquos adapted from Amar Bhushanrsquos novel An Escape to NowhereI first read the book in 2013 basis a recommendation in Swapan Dasguptarsquos column in The Times of India Page for page the film barely reflects the original text which was more a survey of bureaucrats fighting over foreign postings Which is probably what RampAW really is on a daily basis anyway Rather than SalmanSRK like James Bond agency banging it in the killing fieldsVishal says ldquoThe book is a cold account of a surveillance operation The detailing is so good Author Amar Bhushanji was once the counterespionage chief himself Now such a book is not even possible Because the government has placed a ban No officer can write such a book anymorerdquoWhat about the leap of faith that he takes thereon from the bookmdashsurely he had RampAW agentsofficers vet the script in case it seems too farfetched The original research Vishal says came from ldquoseven to eight years spentrdquo working on a film based on the IC 814 hijacking of 1999ldquoI met Mr Ajit Doval currently Indiarsquos national security adviser several times He had then retired as the Intelligence Bureau chief Doval Sahab is a fascinating man and a great storytellerldquoI also interacted extensively with exRampAW chiefs Mr AS Dulat Mr CD Sahayhellip Along with Mr Vivek Katju the foreign secretarymdashthese were the gentlemen chiefly negotiating with the hijackers In any case they really tell you what they want to They might make you believe theyrsquore answering your questions But theyrsquore not Itrsquos their point of viewrdquoVishalrsquos film on the IC 814 hijack subsequently got shelved ldquoAfter the Tandav episode Amazon Prime Video got paranoid They pulled the plug on the project They said they donrsquot want to touch anything politicalldquoThe film actually had nothing to do with politics The whole country was humiliated in that episode It had nothing to do with a party Now Anubhav Sinha is making a series on it for NetflixrdquoDuring the IC 814 homework Vishal also met the IPS officer Arun Kumar who was associated with the incident In 2008 Arun became the first investigating officer from the CBI on the AarushiHemraj Noida doublemurder case still unsolved by the wayHence Meghna Gulzarrsquos Talvar 2015 which Vishal produced and scripted with preciousincisive details from Arun who in turn inspired late Irrfanrsquos character in the filmTabu Vishalrsquos other muse plays the lead in Khufiya while the spythriller follows this RampAW sleuthrsquos story of love and loss with her Bangladeshi handler None of which of course exists in the novel that the film is based onCiting his Shakespearean adaptations Maqbool Haider to works of Ruskin Bond The Blue Umbrella Susannarsquos Seven Husbands Vishal says hersquos essentially keen on the basic plot ldquoI have to know the drama Irsquom creatingmdashand find a threeact structure voice characters and my own politics and social environment in itrdquoTo illustrate this best no better example than to go back to the aforementioned Tyagi Hostel along with Meerutrsquos Kachehri Road full of gangsters Anand Shukla Rampal Tyagi et al All of whom treated Vishal as their ldquoblueeyed boyrdquo Because he could sing and play cricket well Watch them placed together in Omkara 2006 ie Othello Shakespeare feels like an excuseOne of the gangsters Vishal knew there was Langda Rathee who got onscreen as Langda Tyagi And thatrsquos Saif Ali Khan in what was easily the greatest castingagainsttype for the decade Vishal thanks Aamir Khan for this unusual choiceAround the time Aamir and him were zeroing in on a script Mr Mehta amp Mrs Singh to work together ldquoAamir was seeing the film a certain way When we were close to the shoot of Mr Mehta amp Mrs Singh he was uncomfortable about how I was seeing the filmldquoWe are both headstrong people We parted ways But hersquos great fun to spend time with and during our chats I told him about Langda Tyagi the character I was writingrdquoAamir was fascinated by the world of Omkara and Langda Tyagirsquos language in particular and wished to be considered for the part He got busy with his next Rang De BasantiVishal was too eager to hit the set rather than wait for Aamir which would take long But he realised ldquoAamir is intelligent and commercial If this role can excite him Irsquom sure it should excite another starrdquo Hence Saif 20 post Dil Chahta Hai Therersquos been was a similar hitandmiss between Vishal and Shah Rukh Khan They were to adapt Chetan Bhagatrsquos 2 States together later filmed by Abhishek Varman on Arjun Kapoor Alia Bhatt What happened thereVishal says ldquoWe had differences over the setting I wanted to set the film in a bank like ICICI and not in a college or elsewhere that Shah Rukh wouldrsquove preferred We felt the pain though I recently wished him for Jawan Every time we meet he repeats we have to do a film togetherrdquoWhile his sensibilities are innately artistic itrsquos evidently clear Vishal has throughout aimed for a spot in the mainstream and achieved it in his own right He emphasises ldquoMaqbool 2004 opened the doors for merdquo An apt way to introduce Vishal as we did in this conversation is as one of Indiarsquos greatest filmmaking talents ever There have been few polymaths with that many hyphenated topend talents within desi filmmakingmdashdirector producer music composer singer lyricist writer of screenplays and dialogues often separate in Hindi cinema because most donrsquot hold an equal command over languageVishal writes dialogues in pen on A4 sheets But gets confused with his own handwriting later One thing he misses his former associate Abhishek Chaubey Ishqiya Udta Punjab for is deciphering what hersquos written Now he has to figure it out himself The instructions on the screenplay he keys directly into the computerThe greatest polymath of all in Bombay was probably Kishore Kumar who Vishal tells me he shares his birthday with August 4But much before all of the above Vishal was an ldquoallrounderrdquo cricketer oncemdashbatter and rightarm spinnermdashwith an eye on international cricket Former Test player Gursharan Singh spotted him in a match in Meerut and suggested he move to Delhi Which is the reason he didldquoI couldnrsquot have made it to the Indian team from UP It was too big a state then Uttarakhand hadnrsquot been bifurcated The facilities werenrsquot up to the mark And the UP team barely made it up the chain in the Ranji Trophy So I would have never got noticedrdquoIn Delhi he played with the likes of Manoj Prabhakar Maninder Singh Sunil Walson Tilak Raj who Ravi Shastri hit for six sixes Chetan Sharmahellip Speaking of the latter did Vishal whack Chetan out of the park ever ldquoYeah I didrdquo Thatrsquos one thing he has in common with Javed MiandadReminiscing those times is a lot like as Vishal quotes Ghalib ldquoYun hota toh kya hotardquo Dealing in lsquocounterfactualsrsquo ldquoI came to Delhi Right before the match I broke my thumb Couldnrsquot play the whole year Next year my father died If cricket hadnrsquot left me thoughmdashhow would I have been in music or the movies then This world has no retirement ageldquoSince then Irsquove learnt that if something unlucky happens to memdasha greater reward awaits I feel bad of course when something happens But I donrsquot get disappointedrdquo From an early age Vishal used to dabble in musical instruments lying around Music was internal to his homeAlthough with a dayjob Vishalrsquos father Rammdashldquoeveryone called him Ram Sahabrdquomdashwas a lyricist in Bollywood He would often visit Bombay from Meerut with familyThis is when Vishal spent time with filmmusic folk in Bollywood On one such evening his dad mentioned to his friends about how Vishal ldquoaround 18 thenrdquo had composed a short tune over his fatherrsquos lyricsHis dadrsquos friends were hugely impressed They got composer Usha Khanna on the phone to hear it Usha loved it enough to include it in the finalcompositionldquoThat someone like Ushaji took my tune to expand into a whole song gave me my first validation That validation gave me confidencerdquo The song Khuda dosti ko nazar na lage is from the film Yaar Kasam 1985 At 19 Vishal recorded his first composition Asha Bhosle was on the microphoneAfter college in Delhi he moved to Bombay with a job at a music label to pursue music professionally Vishal also had a brother Rajeev seven years elder to him in Bombaymdashstruggling to make it in films as a producer ldquoHe had no money But he wanted to produce movies How do yourdquoRajeev passed away early Decades later Vishal became a formidable producer in Bollywood I wonder if he feels in some ways itrsquos the story of two siblings coming full circle He just wishes his brother was around to see itFilmmaking itself was an invisible milestone in his head he says ldquoI had no intentions I had seen nothing Manmohan Desai to Blue Lagoon for the sex scenes was the range of my film knowledgerdquoIt was during the making of Maachis 1996 that he was composing music for Vishal recalls ldquoGulzar Sahab told me Irsquoll become a director in five years He actually pushed me into it I used to ask him too many questions during the filming editinghelliprdquo The childrenrsquos film Makdee 2002 marked Vishalrsquos directorial debutGiven he was a musician first isnrsquot it strange that hersquos never attempted a proper musical in films He reasons ldquoIn my earlier movies like Omkara Maqbool I did have actors lipsync to songs Because I also wanted to retain my power as a composerldquoWith time the purity of cinema took over How do you then justify lipsyncing The background score is the directorrsquos voice Anyway India has a long tradition of cinema and music Even if I do a musical it would have to be on a subject that is totally nonmusicalrdquoBy the looks of it his current obsession may be mysterythrillers After Khufiya on Netflix his series Charlie Chopra amp the Mystery of Solang Valley based on Agatha Christiersquos The Sittaford Mystery dropped on SonyLIV Which he says happened primarily because of the pandemicldquoThe world was under lockdown I was convinced we were in it for five to 10 years or perhaps forever How does one survive creatively for that longldquoMany years ago I had been offered Agatha Christiersquos entire library of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple titles to adapt Well this is what we could do I thoughtmdashshooting in constrained settings during a pandemic I got back to the person who had connected with me back thenrdquoWhat does he find in common between films and music I ask Vishal He says ldquoThat they both work on the threeact structure inspired from life of coursemdashbachpan jawani budhapa childhood youth old ageldquoAlso like with films we donrsquot know what works in music It cannot be calculatedly recreated even though there are really seven notesrdquoHow about films and cricketmdashwhat does he find similar between the two ldquoCaptainship That you take along a team especially when things arenrsquot going right And they seldom doldquoAlso to accept defeat gracefully and learn from the defeatrdquo Are there instances from his films that hersquos learnt from in terms of failureldquoIt would be on the technical aspects Take Rangoon 2017 The release date was set But we were not getting the VFX for the final scene rightldquoI should have put my foot down Held the release like Sanjay Leela Bhansali does I was making a Rs 70 crore film in a R35 crore budget I had become overconfident from all that we had managed to achieve even on the VFX front coming from Haiderrdquo There is genuine integritysincerity that Vishal exudes during conversations and in general too as his former peersassociates always testify when his name crops upAt a recent concert in Mumbai with singerwife Rekha Bhardwaj their first time togethermdashthey met at Delhirsquos Hindu College in the rsquo80smdashshe called him a ldquogeniusrdquo Which was one way to put it as we watched Vishal go from soft ghazals to unexpectedly banging it with the vocals to Kamineyrsquos Dhan te nan on stageBut along with the lsquoshayranarsquo mellow there is also a hardcore side to his personality I reckon For instance I point to him a tweet I came across long ago where he made a political statement A troll in the comments section taunted him asking who did he thinks he wasNormally people ignore response when none is merited Scrolling down the screen I noticed Vishal 58 tell the troll ldquoTera baap hoon Irsquom your poprdquoHe laughs but declaims in all seriousness ldquoThere is a gangster in me Maybe in retirement the poet is taking over But the spirit is theremdashagainst injustice or if things arenrsquot going my wayrdquo Consider this untold story of Maqbool 2004 his breakout film that is on its 20th yearOne of the things I noticed about Maqbool seeing it after long is how little Bombay there is in terms of live location in a film about the Bombay underworld Which can also be said for Mani Ratnamrsquos Nayakan 1987 upon rewatchSome of this is deliberate Vishal says ldquoBy 200203 the Bombay underworld scene had shifted to terrorism We actually wanted to show a more oldworld mafia with Maqboolrdquo He had knocked on every door to fund the film Including the possible castmdashfor instance Kamal Haasan was the original choice for the title roleIDBI Bank had launched a scheme to finance films then Vishal applied there as well Producer Manmohan Shetty was on its script consultation committee As was producer Bobby BediManmohan had him over for a drink simply to tell Vishal that he had saved his ass ldquoYou have actors like Naseer Om Puri Pankaj Kapurhellip How would yoursquove ever recovered a Rs 286 crore loan I did you a favour by rejecting itrdquoBobby however showed interest in the script to come on board with the funds Thatrsquos how Maqbool kickstarted How does one arrive at the oldworld lookVishal says ldquoI had seen a haveli in Bhopal which is exactly where we needed to shoot Don Abbajirsquos world So 25 days in Bombay 25 days in Bhopal That was the shootldquoOnly that once we got to the Bhopal leg Bobby said there was no budget for it And that there is a mansion at the Filmsrsquo Division office on Pedder Road in Mumbaimdashitrsquos colloquially called the lsquoFilms Division havelirsquomdashwhere we could shoot I said I wonrsquot He said he wonrsquot make the film then I said letrsquos not make the movierdquoIt was a Friday evening Vishal remembers He got home made himself a few stiff drinks and switched off his phone for the next two days Bobby came knocking at his door on Monday asking why hersquod gone incommunicadoldquoI told him whatrsquos the point of meeting My fees for the film including music composition direction script was Rs 30 lakh Bobby suggested that the Bhopal shoot would cost Rs 60 lakh And that he was willing to put in R30 lakh and I could put in my Rs 30 lakhldquoI just saidmdashif you had told me earlier I wouldnrsquot have drunk so much on Friday Even to this day while I was the producer I didnrsquot make a single penny from Maqbool But how does it matter Look at all that I earnedrdquo