Sai Paranjape sent me chasing a donkey on my first day at work: Jahnu Barua

Yours is the first Assamese film releasing on this scale nationwide. Excited or nervous?

For an Assamese film this is a dream come true. I feel thankful that PVR saw the potential of its universal theme and agreed to distribute it. Having said that, we still have no budget for promotions with a marketing blitzkrieg. Though I am not hoping to see cash registers ringing, a good response is always encouraging. We are trying to reach audiences through social media and word of mouth.

The film opened the feature film section of the Indian panorama at the 43rd International Film Festival of India. It screened at the Kerala and Mumbai festivals and was awarded best film at the Bengaluru International film festival. We are hoping this and the national award will help attract audiences.

Baandhon reminded me of Mahesh Bhatt’s Saransh.

At one level this may be because it deals with the isolation faced by an elderly couple. But I can assure you that Baandhon deals with a very different issue. My film is about a universal concern over the growing spectre of terror and a very human reaction to it.

Its been five years since 26/11. Don’t you feel a film around the subject would have worked better earlier?

I agree. We should be ashamed as film makers for not being able to react to what was clearly a colossal event in recent times. I was at the Goa film festival and remember being glued to the TV screen when it happened. I expected many films on this theme but there was nothing. Once I complained about this to my wife Gayatri and she asked me why I wasn’t making it.

Though the budget made me hesitant, the thought refused to leave me. I then decided to make a low-budget film based completely on the human angle of 26/11.

Did the poor commercial performance of Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara (MGKNM) make you shy from making Baandhon in Hindi?

See the nationalistic content made me feel a compelling urge to make MGKNM in Hindi. While its true that I was saddened by the poor response, this has no bearing on my creative process.

Here I felt that the subject could be handled better with Assamese. I have plans to make a ‘different’ love story in Hindi. (Laughs) I know everybody loves to call their work 'different.' I'm still working on the idea. I want continue making both Hindi and Assamese films. 

Ram Gopal Verma too has made a film on the Mumbai terror attack.

I haven't seen Verma's film though I've seen its posters. I'm told it has a lot of blood and gore which I can’t bear to watch. In Baandhon we haven’t used a single frame of terror but stuck to what the hapless common man feels about being caught between the so- called ‘leaders of the country’ and the leaders of terror groups.

Do you feel audiences still exist for sensitive, unhurried films like the ones you make?

I was disillusioned few years ago. People would come up to me and heap praises and yet when I asked them, they hadn’t watched any of my work. I was so angry that I said, “I will never make Assamese films again.” But things are changing since the last few years of vacuum in content. It certainly seems an exciting time to be a film-maker.

Whether Assam in particular or the North-East in general, the only time one gets to hear of the region is when unrest makes headlines. Why don’t we see this conflict or issues like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act reflected in cinema?

Some films are made on topics like these but they don’t get talked about. There is also this thin rope one walks while handling sensitive issues neutrally. Unlike Hindi cinema where the risk or controversy can itself add to the hype around the film, here there can be a complete ban and worse one’s life and limb can be as risk too.

We have government funding and that is helping film makers. But again, there is only so far a state- sponsored project can go.

Fresh out of Film & Television Institute of India you worked with Sai Paranjape. Is it true she sent you chasing a donkey as the first major task?

(Chuckles) As production manager on Paranjpe’s 1977 Jaadu Ka Shankh, being shot at Dadar's Shree Sound studio, on my first day at 4 pm she said, “I want a donkey at 11 am tomorrow.” New in Mumbai I went till Virar to find a donkey. Finally, I found one in a Chembur slum. The owner wanted an Rs 100 advance which was steep. I agreed and asked him come at 8 am the next day. When he hadn’t reached by 8.30 am, I went back to his chawl to find him absconding. His wife said police wanted to arrest him for selling donkey’s milk as goat’s. Since they couldn’t get him they had taken the animal away. The inspector agreed to give the donkey to me for a bribe of Rs 100. I walked with the donkey via Wadala. There I had to bribe railway police with another Rs 20 to cross the tracks. All that hard-work and Rs 220 later I was able to get the donkey for the shoot in time.

Whether Locarno, Brussels Fribourg or Fukuoka, international film festivals worldwide have feted you since1988... You’ve also won 11 national awards for your films since 1983. Yet you were once mistaken for a chowkidar by passengers on a Mumbai local train and played along?

Yes, I was travelling by second class in the local and dozing. Some travellers began discussing over-exploitation of underpaid gurkhas and began talking to me. To humour them I smiled and kept nodding. One of them even wanted to offer me a job as a gurkha in his building for Rs 500 a month immediately. It was too funny.

All your films are firmly rooted in the lives of common-folk. Don’t you want to make a typical pot-boiler with item-songs, action or couples romancing in the Alps?

No, not yet. Nowadays we are adding things to cinema like visual drugs. We need such drugs when we don’t have a powerful story or message. Why would you need 200 people dancing in the background when the hero tells the heroine he loves her?

Commercial regional cinema, including Assamese, blindly apes Bollywood. Do you feel any regional cinema is bucking that trend and coming up with promising films?

Cinema is cinema. By boxing them into slots like mainstream or regional we are making audiences look at them differently. It becomes a block say for a Malayalam movie to be shown in Gujarat. Why can’t we simply think of it as Indian cinema, irrespective of language or region?

I feel Bengali cinema has always done amazing work and followed by Malayalam. Despite budget and infrastructure constraints very powerful Manipuri films have been made.

Lately Marathi film-makers too have been doing great out-of-the-box work.

You’ve had master auteur Satyajit Ray praising your work. Can you recount the interaction?

I was at a film festival in 1988, where Chidanand Dasgupta introduced me to Ray. He spoke glowingly of Halodiya Choraye Baodhan Khaye. “I’m amazed at your work though this is only your 3rd film. I've lots of hope from you,” he had said. I hope I've done him proud.

Who among the current lot of the new wave independent film makers in Bollywood do you think are the ones to watch out for?

I see a lot of appetite for exploring diverse subjects, a willingness to take risks and a fine understanding of the grammar of the medium among the younger lot. Taking names seems inappropriate but the work of Onir, Sujoy Ghosh and Anurag Kashyap comes to mind.