Sanjay Leela Bhansali: My constant theme, more than loneliness, is that you cannot be deprived of dignity – Times of India

When we spoke after Padmaavat, you’d said – ‘My first screening is always with my mother, and there is one empty chair in between for my father, who always wanted me to make films like Mughal-e-Azam and Pakeezah’. Was it the same this time as well?

Yeah, though my mother was not keeping well. For the first time when the print got ready, the first person sitting in that chair was mom, me, and one chair (empty) as usual. That has not changed. This time, I paid tribute to my father as well. In two ways. One was making films on the kind of scale that he wanted – like Mughal-e-Azam. And I also paid tribute to a film that he had made in 1958 called Jahazi Lootera. That is there as a poster on the theatre all through Gangubai.

And so this was a film (Gangubai Kathiawadi) that was even closer to me because I was paying tribute to his film that I have never been able to see. I have, sort of come out of it very happy
ki chalo, somewhere I have paid my salute and respect to him that whatever he taught me, whatever his unfulfilled dreams were – I’m trying to fulfill over the years.

And this was our area, this was our place. This was where I was born – I was born just one lane away. This was a world that I knew, this was a world we all celebrated, enjoyed our lives, went through our grief and yet strived for everything. So this was one place which was personal.

What’s the sentiment behind this ritual, of sorts, after each film is made?

My deep down gratitude that my film has to be first seen by my mother, and that I firmly believe that my father’s soul is always there . How would I otherwise come out of some of the most difficult situations that any filmmaker would face? I have come out of film after film after film of unheard-of circumstances and I have sailed through it. Something is guiding me, something is protecting me and something is making it possible for me to – as a very below average human being, according to me; nothing special – how do I end up making Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat and Ramleela, if not without a certain amount of spiritual guidance, or blessings of ancestors or prayers of parents… I don’t know. I believe in these things, although you cannot prove it, it is abstract.

I also feel that now I am finding that joy of making a film without thinking of box office and budget and how much will digital sell and how much will satellite sell for. I did Padmaavat which did 550 crores worldwide. I did Gangubai and I think we are getting a terrific response right now. Gangubai (the film), a woman-oriented film in India which we don’t expect people to go to because there is a myth that only hero-oriented films work and hero stories work. Who says that the nation doesn’t want to see a women-oriented story or a heroine-oriented story? Who says that they are not going to see it? But to be able to make that film with that honesty is when you spiritually thought – this is my way of offering a prayer.

You have earlier said that ‘Saawariya and Black have many moments of my life which I want to talk about, which moments, don’t ask.’ You said that you purge yourself through cinema and you leave behind traumatised moment each time you make a film. Now these two thoughts – purging yourself and leaving behind traumatised moments and the film reflecting moments of your life – how much of it applies to this movie?

Completely. This is my most personal work. There are so many references, moments even in terms of the colours of the wall. This is personal in terms of connecting with the character – that’s one. A story, a book that touched my heart the most from all the ten films that I have done. But there are lots of areas – Gangu’s angst, not just Gangu as a character, but somewhere it is placed as Birju. There is a boy called Birju in the film. As Birju I had watched so many things unfolding in front of me in that one chawl area. There is a lot of that I have written and put in. But besides Birju, there is a lot of me in lots of other characters. But Birju, primarily, is me. I wish I had not told you this (laughs).

There were so many layers that I have put in through what I have written in Gangubai. And where it reaches most, I’ve realised is that how I’ve understood how to express what you feel as a filmmaker, what you have heard and seen as a child, a child who was imbibing everything. I don’t know why I was imbibing it all.

My soul right now lives over there. It doesn’t live over here in my house where I am staying. No, no, no. My soul, my dreams, are all placed completely in those lanes. So even today, whatever I dream or whatever I think of, is all placed in those lanes. Before every film I go there, stand outside my building and look up. Even now, we went there two days before the release.

What’s the thought behind all the posters you have recurrently kept in your frames through the movie?

Posters used to fascinate me. This world is so beautiful. I remember I used to drive by this brothel to go to school – this lane, the famous lane. In that lane, there was a very strange way of depicting every film as a sexual film to the audience, and there were six theatres in that lane, out of which we’ve shown three. Each would have a poster, and that joy of seeing every Friday a new poster with the sexual tonality to it was fascinating.

I’ve seen films with these people. I’ve noticed the importance of garish posters to attract people. One of the biggest moments of giving them hope and joy was to see a woman as garishly painted as them on the poster. To see an equally garishly-painted woman smiling at them from the poster, reassured them of the possibility of hope and joy of what she has achieved, we will also achieve.

And all the films that were running there were not the popular ones. The popular films came very late in these theatres. Good theatres, where “good, decent people” would be where they would release first.

So all the posters that we have put up, except for Chaudhvin Ka Chand, are of not very popular films. Films of Dev Anand, of PL Santoshi, but also of very interesting, unheard-of directors. We may have forgotten about them, we may not have seen these films. Someone asked, ‘who is this, sir?’ And I was like, ‘what’re you saying, who is this? This is Nimmi ji, Suraiya ji.’ Today, for me, I was reliving the history and paying tribute to all those faces. Nalini Jaywant… there were lots of Nalini Jaywant posters over there.

My most important instruction was that do not get very famous films. So Barsaat Ki Ek Raat was there, but otherwise very few known ones.

In an earlier discussion, you said: ‘A sense of completion is something I have never pursued in my life. I find anything that completes, what should I say, I lose interest in it, it ceases to have been for me and they lived happily ever after doesn’t make sense to me. Incompleteness is something that I pursue a lot.’ Has that changed in this story? It almost ends like something good, something positive happened. Is that not an aberration for a Bhansali film?

No, no, no. It ends in the procession, but the battle is not yet won. That is from where she actually started to fight. A battle which she could not eventually win because it was not legalised, those women have still not been accepted, those children did not get a place in society.

Gangu’s life was not complete. What was that life? There’s that incompleteness in life of being betrayed and then struggling till the end to find respect, dignity, happiness – it is just struggling, groping in the air. That groping in the air is what makes it so special, so fascinating because she kept on till she found that one thread and she held on to it. Her life is not complete in that sense.

A topic like this, for want of a better word, is more arthouse than commercial, is it not?

See, this is one film where there are no trappings of a mainstream film. I felt that this film is giving tremendous hope to people to say that we all can get jacked in life. We all go through our toughest and darkest moments, nobody is spared of it, no human being is spared of it, but how you tackle that dark moment and get up, and rise from ashes and you soar. And to soar with that kind of resonance that it was 70s when Gangubai passed away, and 40-50 years later I’ve made a film on her and celebrated that spirit of a woman in Kamathipura, which is the least travelled area by civil society in so many ways. I am celebrating her.

I feel that audience today is willing to hear this. I think it is the first full-fledged film made on a brothel and women after Mandi. Shyam Benegal made that and this is after that. Today I have found far more acceptance than maybe a beautiful film like Mandi found at that point. A lot of people spoke about Shabana Azmi’s performance in the film, but it was not a box office hit.

Is there a social message to a movie on such a subject?

This film has no message. I never make socially relevant films, I tell you stories of people, women or a man who have gone through something. My constant theme, more than loneliness, is that a human being should stand for dignity and that dignity cannot be deprived. No human being should be deprived of his dignity, and in case of adversities and problems, how powerful are you to maintain your own dignity in that circumstances? And that is the recurring theme (of my films) constantly, be it Bajirao, who stands for the dignity of Mastani, that yes, I have had an extramarital affair and I am going to give her a place in my house, and not keep her hidden somewhere. These are the people who fought for dignity. Be it Vanraj in Dil De Chuke Sanam who stands for it or Michelle in Black or Deepika in Padmaavat. Even when Hrithik’s character in Guzaarish asks for death. He says that if I have the right to live with dignity, I have the right to die with dignity.

The most important thing to live for is to be respected in whatever capacity. Everyone knows that they all are not going to be rich and famous and name and all that. Forget all that. I need my respect.

Throughout Gangubai Kathiawadi, we see the after-effect of violence, but we never see the violence itself. Why is that? Did you not have a counterview that you are sanitizing it too much?

I thought that was the most fascinating way of doing it. I understood Gangu’s grief.
Woh violence
ko ek scene
mein dikhaaya humne, just to see how and what would happen. But even then, I think it’s just a part of what those women are going through. It’s too gruesome to even think of showing it.

I’m very adamant and very convinced of the fact that I saw a woman wanting to celebrate, enjoy, smile through that – even though she is standing in a cage.

This story, for you, is not theory, this is what you have seen first-hand, right?

This is what I have seen and therefore, I’m saying this is what I need to show. They should smile, they will laugh because they have a right to become friends and celebrate within the bars. They’re standing behind the bars and laughing and fooling around. They have no choice. What will they do? Sit and cry inside the cage? There is no escape for them.

That after-effect of what I saw, of these women standing, to express that how and why was more fascinating to me as a filmmaker than actually showing Gangu being raped or her first night with her first client. I was not interested in that. I did not want to be voyeuristic on that issue. In my mind, Gangu was family and I did not want to embarrass her one more time on screen, and see the nakedness and harshness of it all. It was not necessary. I wanted to see the after-effect of what happens. Also, the accusation of then maybe sensationalising Gangu and trying to show more elaborate sex sequences and then trying to encash – I didn’t want that either because that was not the idea. The idea was that she went through it. We know.

You so often refer to filmmakers such as V Shantaram, K Asif, Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy. How do you think you will be remembered 50 years from now?

I don’t think people will remember me 50 years from now. (
Pause) They will remember my work.