In a quintessentially Marquezian way…life obliges people to give birth to themselves over and over again…Here, actor, director, activist and sportsman Rahul Bose talks about his various obligations…both epic and microscopic in scope…In conversation with Pritha Kejriwal.
Rahul, you have multiple identities…actor, filmmaker, activist, sportsperson…and there is this theoretical construct, called ‘social identity complexity’ about people with multiple identities, or about people who belong to diverse social groups simultaneously, which kind of suggests that these people, through their interrelationships with these various groups, ultimately give rise to a much complex, much inclusive value system, with a unique tolerance that challenges many universal constructs or values. So, in that context, I want you to think and analyse now, and tell me, how have you, your value systems evolved over the years of playing these multiple roles?
I think your theory is very well put. I think everything emanates from the kind of life that you have inhabited as a child. And as a child, I think I was exposed to a very tolerant, a very inclusive world. My world-view was shaped by my parent’s great tolerance towards people of all genders, religions, food eating habits… And so in that respect my world was very big. It was never constricted. I ate everything on my plate, my parents asked me to eat whatever was given – so whether it was vegetarian food for five days or pork or beef or chicken, it didn’t matter. You embraced the world for what the world gave you. Simultaneously I was continually encouraged to realise my potential. Not to be successful, but just to realise my own potential. So if my potential in chemistry was 55, then my parents wouldn’t settle for a 54. If my potential as an actor was 110, then they wouldn’t settle for 109. And I learnt that. They said that if you want to be a cobbler, then be the best cobbler that you can be. Don’t hold back. So in that respect, I think I learnt from my parents to maximise my potential; and from my school – Cathedral, I learnt to be fearless – to get into boxing, to get into rugby, to get into English elocution, to get into Hindi debates – everything. And so the twin influences in my life – my parents and my school, were all urging me not so much to excel, but to be fearless, and to try many different things, and on the other hand to maximise my potential. So as I grew up I realised that the only thing that I have to do and keep alive is my inner voice. So, everyday is an introspective journey, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes pleasant about the things I might be ashamed of, about the things I might be proud of. And then to look and say, what it is that you want to do…hang what the world wants you to do. So the choice of my films pretty much reveals that mind-set. I always wanted to do films that were meaningful, not in the social context but meaningful to me, that really pushed me. It didn’t matter that… I was never in this game to be famous. I was always in this to be happy. And it continues to be that way. Barring one misstep with Maan Gaye Mughal e Azam, I have never made a cynical, commercial choice that I have regretted. All my choices, whether they have been my first phase of art-house cinema from English, August to Mr and Mrs Iyer; and then my relatively mainstream phase of Pyaar Ke Side Effects, Jhankaar Beats, Shaurya, Chameli; and then back to, very consciously, my art house phase of I Am, Midnights Children, The Japanese Wife… so in that respect I have only chased what I want to do. My decision to get into Bengali cinema had a lot to do with the fact that I never had snobbery about Hindi cinema being the best cinema. We know it isn’t. We know that Satyajit Ray, Girish Kasaravalli, Adoor Gopalkrishnan didn’t come from Hindi cinema. So when Anuranon happened, almost 10 years ago, at the time regional cinema was looked down upon, it never occurred to me. And for those reasons I just chased scripts and roles that are great. Similarly I have just done a Kannada film with Girsh Kasaravalli’s son Apurva Kasaravalli. I have done two Tamil films with Kamal Hassan – Vishawaroopam 1 and 2. I am open to Marathi, Assamese, Punjabi cinema tomorrow – wherever … I am for hire, I am a taxi with a meter up and wherever there is a good destination to go to, I’ll travel. Then I was increasingly aware after the 1992 riots in Bombay that what was happening in the world outside bothered me. It didn’t bother me enough to do anything but it bothered me enough to be aware of it. After the 2002 Gujarat riots it bothered me enough not only to be aware of it, but also to do something. So that’s when I got into social activism as we know it. And I began to work on Akshara, I began to work on gender… the two things that still affect me the most are the communal question and the gender question. And so I decided to get my feet wet in those fields. And then gradually one thing led to the other and you know when you start giving muscles to your compassion, then your compassion only grows. It’s a great feeling. And so as that happened, I was like okay, now I’ll start my own foundation, and look to connect parts of India that are not connected to the idea of India which is to be a secular, democratic, republic affording equal opportunity to all, so how do we do that? So I said let’s go and look at the children from different parts of the country that are disconnected, that have no clue that they too have an equal stake in this country’s future. And let us try and work with them. So that’s the social activism part of it. As far as sport is concerned, I think that it only developed from my massive love as a little child to play sport. And that it grew into me fortuitously playing a sport that was recognised by the International Rugby Board. That developed into an international career, which I never calculated but it was glorious and till today I think it is the most important thing that has happened to me and to understand what it means to play for your country and then after that it has been a life-long affair with both rugby and sport in general, because I do believe that parents who are academically obsessed about their children’s lives will only benefit from their child playing sport. So with a zeal I have been telling parents that let your children play sport because it will increase their concentration in studies, it’ll deepen their sleep, it’ll shorten their sleep hours, it will make them better students academically. They’ll be resilient under pressure, they will be more organised in their lives, that’s what sports brings to somebody obsessed with academics. Yeah, I mean at no point have I ever calculated what my next step should be… I have gone by the seat of my pants, I have gone with my gut and I am prepared to not be as famous as so many actors; I am prepared to be not as well known in sport if I had chosen cricket or something like that as opposed to rugby; I am happy not to have a foundation that deals with bigger causes that draws much more money like HIV or cancer. I have to do what I love to do and you have to stand by that.
Then analyse this cult of celebrity activism for me. It always has this two sides. Because on one side sometimes it is criticised as being self-serving, uninformed and the other perspective is that it is definitely an important intervention…
I think both opinions…both are valid. There are some celebrities who do it just to increase their brand equity, and not for long will the public be fooled by that kind of activity. And then there are some people in public life who do it because they really feel the urge to do it and mean it. And very quickly we can discern between the two. As an emotionally intelligent country, we know who is the impostor and who is the real deal.
You and Aamir Khan both participated in the Narmada Bachao Andolan…but were involved in very different ways…
Yes, I did go to the Narmada Valley, I did spend some time, I did spend the night, I understood the problem, I met farmers, I totally understand the whole problem of displacement and it does bother me a lot and if I had to…the reason why I didn’t go to Jantar Mantar is because I realised at that point of time that this was taking on a complexion that I was not entirely comfortable with. And Medha was going on a hunger fast at the time, I remember. But no, I didn’t actually go to Jantar Mantar and I didn’t sit with them.
When Aamir Khan, went there, the Plachimada protests were also happening against the Coke plant due to which their ground water system was completely ravaged and Aamir was the brand ambassador for Coke at the same time. So there were protests against him to which he reacted in a transparently innocent way… “What is Plachimada”? Whats your response to that kind of uninformed activism?
Absolutely nothing, nothing at all.
Some probing into the world of sports…when we look at this whole problem of doping…we look at it as some kind of an elite problem of superstar athletes abusing drugs and cheating to win, but it is seldom looked at from the lens of the thousands of sportsmen who come from ghettoes, extremely poor, malnourished, with no proper infrastructure, and for whom, the only resort to some kind of success in sports are drugs…they are fighting against all odds and there is another side, where it is all absolutely state regulated, where athletes are contractually obligated to take drugs to enhance their bodies, performances etc…these god-like expectations, of higher, faster, stronger…these huge corporates which earn so much revenue by putting their products on these super natural bodies, us spectators who expect nothing less than superman like performances…so instead of finger pointing at one athlete or the other and shaming them…what do you think are the real structural issues that should be addressed?
First of all, I don’t accept the fact that an impoverished athlete is more prone to doing drugs than a wealthy athlete because in the Eastern European countries in the 70’s, doping was endemic. And it had nothing to do with anybody being impoverished. I think what it is, is a pressure that the system puts on an athlete to perform given the fact that we invested so much in you. And the Eastern European block countries really put that pressure on you because these kids were part of a system. So then at that point of time when you are beholden to the system in so many ways, to try and buck the system and say, I will not and then to look around and say everybody is doing it, why don’t I…look at cycling for example, that becomes a very, very difficult vortex to pull yourself out of. If you are a 17-18 year old trying to justify all the investments made in you, it’s a very difficult position to put a young athlete in – to try and strike out and say, no I wont do it. There are many, many pressures – pressure from parents, pressure from the system, pressure from the government, pressure from the coaches, peer pressure… so I would never lay the blame on the athlete’s dope. I will always lay the blame on the fact that the system wants to win at any cost and this, Pritha is a malaise that affects the people in any profession. What are these compromises on a person’s integrity and why do they happen? Whether its politics or it’s the field of business, or whether its sport, what is it that impels you to compromise when you know clearly you are doing something wrong? It is the fact that there is an incredible pressure to index your self-worth with success, your self-worth with having achieved something; as opposed to what I have been taught as indexing your self-worth with being happy. If I am happy, I am worthy. Certainly the non-negotiables like compassion and non-violence are there, and if I am not doing that I am happy. So that I think is very difficult unless you have learnt very early on in your life, and decided for yourself what’s important. I don’t mind people making decisions saying hang my excellence, hang my happiness, I just want to get there and be first. But in that case, it doesn’t mean you have to dope. That changes the entire complexion of why you live. Then, you are going to live crooked all your life.
But at a level it is not about happiness or winning, it is about sustaining yourself because to a lot of these people, sports is how they would get their money, its their only way out of the poverty that they are in…
That’s why I am not putting the blame on the athlete’s dope, I am laying blame on the forces playing around the athlete that puts so much pressure that the athlete says okay I will, because there is a lot of debt, both moral and financial that the athlete is under. So in that respect the system is to blame. And that’s why I am saying that the system deep down nurtures a fact that you cannot fail. If you fail the system, you will be a failure in life.
And what about the spectator? What’s his role? Everything has become a spectator sport, so you have to be higher, faster, stronger and to achieve those results, and when you sit there looking at a grand stadium expecting to see supermen performing in front of you…
That gladiatorial thing… I think we have to teach our spectators that it is not important for the next record to be broken… it is important for people if they break a record or not to fill you with their huge personal ability. It is not important for a film to get Rs 300 Cr at the box office, it is important for you to be moved by that film. That’s what I mean by… that’s a way of life that has to infect all parts of our consciousness. It can’t you know just be in sport. Its everywhere. And that idea that – yaar agar humne tumhe dekha nahi pichle dus maheeno se , iska matlab tum failure ho. Tumhari film kahaan hai? Kitne crore banayi film ne? So I have never consciously tried to buck that trend, but I know that I can certainly look back and say people who have any appreciation for me in what I do will realise that this guy is trying … this guy doesn’t care about the numbers, the amounts of times he has appeared in the newspapers. He is more interested in whatever he does, to do to the best of his ability. It’s a very amorphous, unglamorous and not a very magnetic lesson to draw from but its there. If you want it, you can take it, if you don’t, you can dismiss it.
Day before yesterday in the session about ‘Lost Narratives’, I asked you about why mainstream cinema doesn’t pick-up on lost narratives, and you said that that is not the role of the mainstream cinema, that it is for parallel or art-house cinema to do so. But if we were to compare it with the great cinema of Europe, even contemporary Hollywood films like Schindler’s list, Blood Diamond, Motorcycle Diaries, the Reader etc…more importantly, films from our own country…who broke the threshold of realism and abstract form and content, literature and fiction, socialist realism and art for art’s sake. Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin, V Shantaram’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath, Basu Bhattacharya’s Teesri Kasam, Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, Ritwick Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara, Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz ke Phool, to Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand, or even Amol Palekar’s Anahat (the list is endless). Like the great IPTA tradition of Sahir Ludhianvi, Sajjad Zaheer, Kaifi Azmi, Salil Choudhary, among the greats, they were true believers in the imagination of a new world where cinema and life were woven inseparably… and I don’t think one would call them non-mainstream…its just difficult to categorise these films… In that context…what do you think ails our cinema today?
While some of the films that you have named are mainstream…some are not…let me just talk about the mainstream…At that time mainstream were very different, they were blockbusters. However, I will accept one thing, there is a tide, there is a moment where a certain kind of cinema or book is very popular and at the time of nationalism, and I have a lecture on Indian cinema from 1930 to today, and you are very right, it played very beautifully into the mainstream zeitgeist which was nationalism. Lets do something for this country. And so a lot of mainstream filmmakers plugged into that. Today what is the zeitgeist? In the 70’s it was rebelling against the authorities…
Films like Zanjeer and Deewaar, were also reactions to their times…
Absolutely they were. But you cannot expect those films to pick up lost narratives. They can pick up the dominant narrative. So today for example, if there is an anti-corruption, anti-politician mainstream cinema emerging, that is the dominant narrative. So the question that has to be asked is what is the lost narrative today? What is the narrative that we don’t hear about today? And it is those narratives that might have been dominant narratives in the 50’s but are lost narratives today. Are they being made? So the zeitgeist will pick up. The filmmaker will pick up what is the zeitgeist today – say the abuse of women that suddenly becomes the zeitgeist and a mainstream filmmaker will make a story around that. But you cannot say that he has picked up a lost narrative. You understand what I am saying? So whatever is in vogue, even if it is socially revolutionary… they are only concerned with how do I actually get eyeballs today; what is the theme that is really going to catch; with youngsters it will be corruption; with the rest of the country, you know, it will be women and that’s fine. But my point is, say a lost narrative today is the plight of tribals. Tribals who make a living out of the land… you take the land away from them, you take their life away … you make your life writing and creating Kindle, what if someone took that away from you? So would that ever enter the oeuvre of a filmmaker? That’s a lost narrative. Now to do that, it requires a filmmaker who would… I am not going to look for the eyeballs or the footfalls, I am going to be looking to do, to highlight something that I believe this country, this country’s people need to see. And that’s where my answer is coming from. It wasn’t that some narratives that they are looking at are not socially relevant, they are socially relevant but they are the dominant narrative of the time.
But then there were successful films… like Teesri Kasam or Do Aankhen Barah Haath…which dealt with narratives, mostly ignored by the times…one spoke of exploitation of women in folk theatre…other dealt with prison reforms…
I agree…and thankfully there will always remain exceptions to the rule…but two swallows don’t make a summer…
Okay, I get your point. Thank you, that was my last question.
