 Good evening. Welcome to you all to the launch of this book, The Psychology of Raps. I know the psychology of raps within quote marks, a quote from, in one sense, the subject of the book, Kundansha, that Saeed Mirza, his long-standing friend, associate comrade, has used as the title of the book. I won't tell you anything more about the book, but we'll start this evening's proceedings, except, of course, to introduce the panel to you, Saeed Mirza, my father left, I mean, right, Geetha Hariharan, who will conduct the conversation and not to get put wasn't. I'll say a few words. They don't need any introduction to this audience, but I'll say a few words about each of them, never the less. Saeed Mirza, filmmaker, writer, traveler, teacher, is a pioneer of the new wave progressive cinema in India. He has directed such milestones of Indian cinema as Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dasna, 1978, Albert Pinto Kokusa Ki O Atta Hai, 1980, Mohan Joshi Haajir Ho, 1984, Salim Langre Pe Matro, 1989, and Naseem 1995. All his films have won major awards, including the National Film Awards. He is the director of the popular TV serials, Nukar and Intzar, as well as documentary films on social welfare and cultural activism. Saeed was a student of the Film and Television Institute of India and graduated from there in 1976. And the relevance of that is borne out in the book he has written in his latest book. Later he also taught at FTII and went on to become chairman of the Institute. This is his fourth book, The Previous Free Being. Am I right, Saeed? Sorry, yeah. Am I, Letter to a Democratic Mother, the first book published in 2008. The Monk, the Moor and Moses, Ben Jaloon, 2012. Memory in the Age of Amnesia, a personal history of our times, 2018. And now I know the psychology of rats, 2022. To introduce Nachiket Patwardhan, again an associate and friend of Saeed, architect, artist and filmmaker, has been illustrating books since 1971. He started his architectural practice in 1972 in partnership with architect's wife Deyu and has executed a variety of mostly non-commercial projects across the country. He has been actively involved in theatre and film design since 1974, apart from numerous art direction and production design projects. Geeta Hariharan, who will be in conversation with Saeed and Nachiket, is a writer, has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her work includes The Thousand Faces of Night, which won the Commonwealth Rapewriters Prize for best first book in 1993. The Art of Dying, a short story collection. The novels, The Ghost of Vasu Master, when dreams travel in times of siege, fugitive histories. And most recently, I have become the tide which has been translated into several languages. She also has, to her credit, a collection of essays called Almost Home, Cities and Other Places. She has also written children's stories, edited a collection of translated short fiction and an essay collection. Geeta has over the years been a cultural commentator through her essays, lectures and activism. So that is to introduce our three guests this evening. We'll start today's proceedings with a short clip, a video clip, a delightful little video clip. I'm sure all of you will enjoy. In which Albert Pinto meets Jani Bhidoyaro. Over to you Anu. A terrific note to start the evening because in a way the craziness of your friendship with Kundansha, the craziness of the film also. And the craziness of the book, which we'll talk about this particular kind of craziness at greater length. But I'd like to ask Saeed to read a little bit to set the context of the book. I think he's going to read something about why he wrote the book. Why am I writing this book? Is it because I feel that it is necessary and my time is running out? Perhaps that is true. It is becoming more and more difficult to remember the conversations, camaraderie, intellectual debates and dialectical upheavals with a friend. Then I think, will all of this make sense to my readers? What are they going to make of it? I don't know but I have to get this off my chest. I have to present this wonderful, crazy and vulnerable friend of mine to the world because he deserves it. And also because I firmly believe he had not lost it, which is a comment made by some people at that particular point of time. In fact towards the end of his life his more and more surreal, bizarre and sometimes viciously crude representations of reality came so much closer to the sordid truth of our times that it was embarrassing to quite a few of his friends and admirers. Was it because they saw their own acquiescence to this state of affairs difficult to stomach? I also hope the reader will find the book interesting despite its social and political overtones because there is a story in it. A story about deeply passionate Indian and world citizen. A citizen who by using humour, the absurd and the grotesque attempted to unravel our times and the world we have inherited. I say this because he had reached a point in his journey which forced him to strip away the frills and facades of our reality and to see it for what it really was, its essence. Compassionless, grotesque with moments of beauty. That was the way he saw it, not just India but the world. It was not pretty. It was bleak, gloomy, immoral, yet starchy, poetic and at times ironically an excruciatingly funny. In fact each failure seemed to push him to further extreme to his final film which was a political metaphor of our scoundrel times. Yes the film was deeply flawed but was his grotesque representation of our political reality very far from the truth. The short unassuming man in glasses who looked more like a clerk than a filmmaker had been through a tumultuous journey and I believe it was a journey worth revealing. He attempted to unmask the big lie that all of us had to live to accept the political, economic and social circumstances we find ourselves in. In a strange way I also believe he was born to be inflicted with pain because he could no longer just be a filmmaker and this is his story. It's also a story about two people who could not have been more different from each other and who over time and circumstance built an incredibly strong bound of trust and friendship. You could even call them comrades, Kundan Shah and I, Saeed Akhtar Mirza. This book is our perception of the world we have all inherited. Thank you Saeed. I think just that brief reading warns us that despite the quirky cover, the playfulness of the title and the illustrations, this delightful rat with the magnifying glass who goes about examining big and small issues, funny and sad and tragic historical developments, that though it seems lighthearted and indeed there is fun and lightheartedness in the book, because how would all the important aspects of life be conducted, whether it's art or politics or anything, without play, without lightheartedness. But it is a very, very spacious book where all the big themes are taken up. How do you become an artist? How does the artist live with the citizen? What is freedom? Who's freedom? What is democracy? So all the really big questions are there but in a very human way. So because at the center of it all is friendship. So the friendship I think is a signpost for how do you achieve solidarity. Rather than being a patriot and holding on to the mic forever, let me be anti-national and turn to my panelists. I want actually for us to go back to the point how did Saeed and Kundansha get to where they did. So let's go back and especially for the young people here. We didn't always have attacks on institutions and the new education policy. So we will go back to the 60s and to a tree called the Wisdom Tree in FTII. Natiket has a drawing of it and we know it of course because in more recent times when there were protests in FTII, we all heard about the Wisdom Tree even those of us who haven't seen it. And I just want to say that he says about Kundan that the only time I saw him relax was in his encounters with the funny man under the Wisdom Tree. Thank God for the Wisdom Tree. Set in the plaza between the main theater and the canteen, it was the third point of a triangle and very strategically located. It was the meeting place for debates, the telling of tales, gossip and an open-air space for any student to express his or her opinion about any and everything. And when the students went on strike, which was often, it was space for sit-ins and speeches. So if we can go back and sit under that tree and ask Saeed and Natiket to talk about what education in the broad sense of the word was. The human beings, friendship, creating friendship even with people who are different, the kind of films they saw, the Battle of Algiers for example, films about resistance in different parts of the world. The Vietnam War, the movements and the books they read. What were they learning? In my book where I'm trying to understand, you know when you sit under the Wisdom Tree, it's a space, it seems so empty out there. But if you really look hard, you'll see all the ghosts wandering around there. There are so many ghosts. There's Kuru Sawa, there's Meezo Kriji, there's Ghatak, there's Satyitri, there's Manasen, there's Adu Rupam, there's Manikol, there's Rahat Yusufi, there's ghosts who wander around that space. It's a cinematic space. But those ghosts tell you a story simultaneously that create whatever you want to do, make mistakes, be wrong, it does not matter, rise up again, correct yourself, create. That's an idea. It's an idea. And you are allowed to make mistakes and you're allowed to dissent, you're allowed to say what you want and you'll be accepted. It's a space. It's a space. And in that, you have people whose work is seen. I have, can I read a little, a little part of it from there, because it was, who are the students who are, who are they getting, who are they being influenced by? And I, it's a little, it's a little... It is sort of Ghatak sitting under the Wisdom Tree and drinking rum and drinking water or film in life. So like put in, sir, give us an idea. Like once Kundan Shah asked Mr. Ghatak, say what is it, what is it, what is it, what, what does it take to be a good director? Yes. So this is only very simple. It's not in any textbook. So you have got to have your childhood in one pocket and a bottle of alcohol in the other. It's not in any textbook. And yet it has meaning. It carries meaning. And I, to me, there's a thing called the argumentative Indian. It's right here, I think. Yes, over here. Now who are the people whose work we were seeing as students? Let me tell you about them. They were entertainers, philosophers, inventors, comedians, magicians, anarchists, dreamers, Marxists, humanists, painters, architects, adventurers, dropouts, ethnographers, poets, writers and even fascists. All of them are iconoclasts. And the cinema that they created came in all styles, shapes and forms. You are just tuned out there and you're taking this in. Imagine what's going to happen to you. And then you were the Wisdom Tree to debate about what you've seen and heard and to talk about what it appears. Imagine the kind of space that it was. I have young students here who just, because we've had so many strikes, one after the other, they are right here. They've come from other generations, several generations after us. Sudhir Mishra is right there, who's worked on Janavidhara. In fact, one of the key elements of Janavidhara is right there, Mr. Sudhir Mishra, who's, you know, there. Now these are the people who have seen what it's all about. Did you ever have any trouble screening, say, any particular film as we do these days? No, not at all. Never. Never. It wasn't me. It would be interesting to, if you could just pull out one film that you still recall because it had such a, made such a mark on either you or Kundan. I think Battle of Algiers. Battle of Algiers was a film that, because it was a very strange film where you had a film director repute, but everything else in the film were real people. And it was their story and their reward as they fought against the French colonizers and your protagonists were real people as opposed to actors. And he's combining now that into a film and the power of that film on people. It was called the Battle of Algiers. I think it was made in 1963 or 1964. What was it made? Around that time. And it's incredibly powerful. And remember to see this film in the time of the emergency in India. We have an emergency on in India. You've seen this film in your theatre. What does it do to the students? It says, you can't revolt. You can't dissent. You can't say a thing. And of course the film, Saeed, if you remember, I think one of the characters, I can't remember the name, actually says, winning freedom is one thing, but the real revolution will start afterwards. Which of course is really resonant, not just for Algeria, but for us. I was wondering, Natiket, could you tell us something about the 60s education? Was studying architecture anything like this kind of experience with studying film? Architecture actually even today continues to be taught through textbooks without any real experience. Architecture is a work which has been made into a noun. And it's after you get your degree that you then decide what you want to learn. Luckily, students know this fairly early. So if in your first or second year your seniors tell you, look they're not going to teach you anything here, then you're on the lookout. You know that listening to music is important, you know. So you find your way out. And that's how architects have become architects. They are largely self-taught. And because you're not taught architecture in any real sense, you're open to receiving any kind of interesting, meaningful inputs that you can get. That's how we got into stage film designing as another form of architecture. I mean, the building is going to be removed when the day's work is done. But the principles of designing, supervising, right from concept to execution are more or less the same. The biggest difference was that there was a high level of informality in the education. We lived next to the Film Institute. Luckily, they didn't have a compound wall. We could go in through the broken hedge and walk in and see films, sit in and listen to Professor Bahadur or whatever. There was no sense of show me your ID card or where have you come from. And invariably every screening in the Film Institute, which at that time also showed films of the National Film Archives, were followed by a discussion because invariably present in the audience would be somebody who was involved with the film, either a director or, you know, it wasn't just seeing a film. The 15 minutes that followed the screening were, I think, very, very important. The mention of ghosts reminded me that the Film Institute probably still has the ghosts of the Prabhat film studios, which were a revolutionary institution through the 20s and 30s, where people came at 9.30, checked in, did their day's work, left in the evening, and everybody was involved with every stage of filmmaking. When a film was about to be launched, 80% of people would be working in the publicity. If they were shooting, people would be asked to get into costume and take part and located where it was, from a set to the hillside to a little forest to the Banaras Ghat. You had everything on campus. I'm going to hold on to that because this sort of, what shall I say, being anti-specialization and breaking walls between disciplines in that formal way, you know, science arts, but the fact that you can get this variety of things, it also means then, I'm interested in finding out when we're talking about friendship, that you have two very different sorts of people and also you're not, you're already married there and perhaps you even have children by then. Yes, you have two children by then. So, how this, in a way, there's a parallel here, the walls between reading and architecture and design and setting and everybody gets to do a little bit of everything, it also allows you to meet very different people and it's only later Kunban tells you how he felt. So, I think it would be interesting to hear about that, how the two of you, you found out actually that you come from very different places. No, it was much later, but I must tell you about when we talk about the kind of exposure, it was not just for directors and writers, it was also for the sound recorders and the editors and the cinematographers and the actors and the screenplay writers. Suddenly they were seeing a kind of cinema and you could see it coming to their work because they started turning much more nuanced, they started probing much more in terms of their work and if you see, at least we see Hindi cinema today and what you see in terms of its technologies, almost most of them have come from students from the FTI. The cinematographer was the cameraman, the editors, sound recorders all from school, who not from school, I was the SRFTI. But in other words, they were equipped but simultaneously they also saw a word cinema. They also saw and they knew what that meant and it gave them enormous amount of leverage in terms of their work because they were exposed to all kinds of cinema. In terms of Kundal Shah and I, I came from a kind of an urban background an elite school, elite college and Kundal came from the other side of the tracks in a sense and in the book I've mentioned this very clearly, he could see us when we discuss literature and painting and philosophy and architecture and Marxism and revolution and there he was from a trading family from Yemen and his grandma struggled to school and he went to Spain and he earned enough money to go to the first year of school and they hoped like hell for a scholarship for the next year. So he really felt in a sense, he felt that he was like an outsider to a much another kind of world and he always felt he had to catch up and in his final outburst which is there in the book and suddenly I realized how right he was and how wrong I was in terms of our approach towards life in a sense, you know and he taught me in that sense so much. The other thing is if I could, you know there's a little passage in the book which I wish I could know, can I read it out to you? It's a little passage. You know when I, and that outburst taught me a lot and then you know there's a little passage over there. Let me see if I can find it. It'll be further down. In fact that is rather good because you talk about the language of communication and I think it's a problem for today. Yeah, see if you can find it faster. It's something like 11 years later I think when the background side maybe you can tell people is that they make fun of Kundansha and a couple of others who spend a lot of time at night watching films and taking notes. So the rest of them are very amused that these are taking notes all the time in the dark. And that passionate and eloquent outburst he says, there's a line over there he says when I said you know we thought there would be taking these classes to get some kind of an extra edge but he says his last phrase was when he lost his temper he said this is what fucking extra edge he yelled angrily. And you read that passage anyway about what he said and that passionate and eloquent outburst taught me a lot. That outburst of Kundan in 1989 revealed a lot of other lessons that had to be learned. How had I not read the sign that he had talked about? Most of the valuable visible lefties at film school came from a certain background. They were from elite schools and colleges for English sneaking and exuded a casual confidence in social relations. They talked about justice and equality, discussed wars and liberation movements, debated about history, aesthetics and art with confidence. And yet spoken a language far removed from the rest of the students. They dealt with ideas for their intrinsic value rather than through a lived experience. How the hell could they reach out to the rest of the students? Did they even attempt to? But the argument went far beyond our campus to an extent to the world at large as social political activists attempted to identify with the right with the fight for the causes of the underprivileged, the unequal and the disenfranchised. They would have to realize that it is not good enough to talk about ideas, language and philosophy. What was also important was a language in which these were conveyed. As someone said, history is littered with the causes of our intentions. So it's ways of seeing but also ways of speaking. I am negotiating different languages, literally and otherwise. I thought we would move on to talk about the artist's life. How in the institute you chose to be a filmmaker, so the choice of a medium, and then over a period of time you sort of become a polygamist or polyamorous and decide that one medium is simply not enough, that you have to have multiple, which is a very interesting thing with both of you, that you're able to use multiple media, have one leaking to the other. This book itself is structured like that with snippets and soliloquies, and so it's not the kind of boring conventional book that people like me write, but there's all this other stuff going on. So if you talk about, were you always sure that you would be a filmmaker, how did that, before you tell us about the great divorce? No, the thing is that, I did want to be a filmmaker, I loved cinema, I remember the child scene cinema in my home, and my father getting these various classics for us to see, because he realized that same love cinema he also needs to know there's all kinds of cinema, not just the kind that he's seeing in the theatres, but suddenly at the age of 14, I'm exposed to horror cinema. That was my father's input. And the thing is that I loved cinema, but I was also in college and I wanted to get married, and I needed a job, so I decided to get it to advertising and get a job and get married because I needed to know to prove that I can support a wife and family or whatever. So it had to be done very correctly. And then of course I did that, and for seven years I was in advertising. And it was horrific, actually. You know, it was bad, and my wife realized that it was very difficult to get up in the morning and go to work. It was very difficult, but you don't know what you were doing. But she knew what she didn't want to do. Yes, and then she filled up the forms of the FDR, so she went to go there, and don't worry, I'll work full-time. You go ahead to film school, because I really felt that if I had to go to film school, I must myself in the study of it directly, you know, and that's what we did. The rest, as I said, is perhaps history, but I must say the support that I got from the family. I must say that you know, I have two little boys on my side, you know, go ahead. So it is, yeah, it's a journey, it's a journey, but I've never regretted that. I moved from advertising to film. But also, with films, at some particular point of time, you move into documentaries, it gives you a brush stroke, you go into television, see it, it gives you another brush stroke, and you're getting, you know, mixing films, television, see it, documentaries, travel logs, you're mixing it up, and then at some particular point of time, say enough, with films specifically, and that particular moment was when I said enough, I do have nothing more to say, and I made a film called Nassim. I had nothing more to say, and I said I walk away from films. But it didn't mean I walk away from cinema because a lot of students would come to me with their work and other filmmakers would come to discuss their script, but I opted out of films completely. And I started writing. First of all, I started traveling a lot. Sir, you drove up to the bike. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I started traveling a lot and then started writing. And I realized it gave me immense pleasure, I think. And to, actually there's a phrase, it says to understand yourself, you know, when you gather yourself, what better way than writing? You know, and that's what I did, and it gave me incredible pleasure. And I wrote my first book and then I liked it very much for myself, I felt good writing it. And then I continued writing. That's it, it's a journey. And when you... You thought, I must... I, when I write, because of my training as a dissenter at the film school, I made a point to dissent against the structure of the novel too. I objected to what exists. And I tried very hard to create a form in literature which I could call a literary installation as opposed to literature. You don't want to use the words. I am not interested in the wizardry of words. I'm interested in ideas that can be communicated and therefore you structure a book in a certain kind of way which delivers to a reader an experience. If it can, that's the intention. And I've always believed that this linearity of the novel of the beginning, middle and end is never, never... It's just something lacking in it as a form. As a form of a beginning, middle and end. So as soon as you start playing games with form and that was the attempt. How successful I've been, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. But you know that as a form I can travel on this path for some more time until I shift to some other kind of form. But right now I feel this is a path in which I can travel. I don't know what... In fact, I was going to ask you specifically about the book and then we come back to multiple engagements with different forms. But the way you have designed and structured the book and perhaps installation is the right word for the character. But also the events you have chosen, you've actually covered years of, you know, 16 years of change and mayhem. And so if you could tell us a little bit about how the... I know that psychology of rats is where the rat began. One concern was that the rat is actually a horrible virus in a dirty place, association in Allah. And as a contrast to that you have this cuddly Walt Disney. So I was very keen to not... to sort of strike something in the middle which would make it a little human but not an unreal cartoon character like Tom Inger here. So that took some time to get a rat which was still a little repulsive and still with human qualities. So that was one effort which took some time. Otherwise it was really following more or less because we would go through the book, he would read it, I would draw. So there was a lot of back and forth. It wasn't a case of illustrating a text. So it was really deciding whether there should be an illustration at all or not. Or whether the text was fine or what kind of illustration it needed. So it was... And we spent a little over a year over this. And part of the design is also, you know, there's a kind of amplification. Yes. Because suddenly you have a bold thought. The page was also very conscious of what shouldn't appear towards the end of the page but needs to come at the top left on the next page. Or something must be a new paragraph and not added on to the earlier. So there was... We were looking at not just the drawings but the text itself in terms of the islands that they occupy and posters which I felt can't be really represented as a drawing. So we've kept the posters, film posters as they are. And some photographs also didn't really need... There was no way one could improve on a photograph in some cases. So it's a combination of photographs, drawings, posters and the text used and positioned in a way that gives a sort of a pause or a... So that was a very challenging process. Is it too far-fetched like a set design almost? No, you see with a set design there is a very... Well, it is close to that because there is a demand of the script and the performance and you have to provide a visual context for it. So that's true in a sense. I have not really felt that doing a building or a film or a book design are vastly different things. The mental process is very similar. You just have a different method of presenting it. So we take a lot of pains in showing a building as a drawing where it's actually going in another direction. The building has nothing to do with us. It's all very different. I have never felt it is very different because there is an idea and a concept you have to build on and all of them require some amount of research. You have to read the history book or sociology book or something to find out more about the subject that you're dealing with. And then there is a way of doing it. Now you have a computer and you have various tools to help you achieve that. So I think the process is... I don't know if I'm making sense but I haven't really felt I'm doing very different things. Actually, the medium is different. There's a kind of drama in the words. I noticed that very often, Kundan Shah says something outrageous and you say, what? That's a kind of, you know, with a question mark and an exclamation. So there is this feeling of being on stage. So there is this feeling of an installation. I thought one fascinating thing about this friendship to come back to Kundan Shah is that you're such distinct individuals. Not just different, but individualistic side. You continue to be, but you were even then. But yet there is this feeling of camaraderie which is quite beautiful. So it's not like two identical people because they think the same and they speak the same than their friends. But it is a kind of argumentative relationship. That's the reason for it. Yes, tell me. Right through our film career, a film school time, three years over there, I always thought he was one of those nerds who keeps taking down notes. I think this is like an NBA film director. He wants to, even in the theater, in the dark theater, he had a little torch, a flashlight, and he'd be taking down notes. And I said, here, look, later, you go to your editing room and see the details of the film. See it. Take it in. And his argument with us, as you guys did too much in politics, politics was nothing to cinema. Cinema is separate from politics, so please don't contaminate us. We are free. We are free spirits. This is Kundan Shah. So in the end, he became slightly closer. It's only at the end when I saw his diploma film, his last final film, and we just barely become friends. It was a masterpiece of controlled anarchy. And it was such a piece of work, 15, 20 minutes called Bunga. And it was the best film in our class, that film, that diploma film of his. To me personally, I found it the best film. It's about bank robbers shooting. Nobody dies. They're shooting everything. And they're committing suicide. All kinds of things are happening. They're going nowhere. But it was a piece of anarchy. Beautiful. And the applause that it got in the class. And then we parted. It was a lovely film, et cetera. And I said, I'm going to do my work, et cetera. So I heard it pushed off to Hyderabad, because they didn't want to take the big city of it. They pushed off to do some little work over there. He and his gang of three, two of them. They were doing something. I kept hearing stories. And as soon as I completed my first film, I heard a story that Kundan Shah has gotten married, migrated to England, and he's no longer involved with films. And I said, oh my God, I heard this story. I said, oh my God, what a waste. What a waste, because what I saw, that last film of his, I said, what did he do? He's become a trader. He came back to something, but he came back. That's the story. He came back because he could not be a trader because he had tasted poetry. He had to come back. He had to come back. It's in the book. The special thing about the friendship, Said spoke of how he learned from that outburst all those years later. What I enjoyed very much was the same Kundan who said, why do you people see politics in everything? And then later he says, I see politics everywhere. Exactly. Which I think is a kind of finally what education is meant to be. That you are open to transformation. Absolutely. So if we move beyond friendship to the bigger world, not always happy, but there's a lot of that in the book. I think it's important to talk about Kundan Shah there, because in both instances, whether it's the emergency where he says, must stand against tyranny, or 2002, when he actually takes responsibility. So I think we can start with that and then talk about the artist as a citizen. No, because at the time of the emergency, at the FDI, my sister-in-law, my wife's sister-in-law, my sister-in-law, my wife's sister was arrested and she went to jail. At the time she was three or four months in jail. And the news spread at the institute that Said Mirza's sister-in-law was in jail for anti-national activities or something. And sitting in my room and late in the night, I knock on the door. This is the last year of I knock on the door, Kundan enters. I'm sorry to hear this news. We have to fight these fellows. We have to fight oppression. First time he taken the political stance. He said, this is wrong. You cannot go to know this is wrong. He took a stand there. I said, this is the first time he did something political. But in 2002 we have the riots. We are friends, we are partners. He tells me that he's right there. I am responsible for the riots. I said, don't be silly, Kundan. Had men out then. Oh, sorry. But he said, I have to take responsibility for the riots. I said, don't be silly, Kundan. We've got nothing to do with it. He said, no, no, I have to. I am a Hindu and I know nobody will be held responsible for it. I am taking responsibility for the riots. I am taking responsibility for the riots. Nobody will be held accountable. I know that. I am telling you, I am so sorry. That is passion. I am so sorry. And right now we've got a home minister who just said, see we taught those guys a lesson in 2002. Two days ago. Three days ago. We taught those bastards a lesson. Now they shut up. They are quiet. But the point I am getting at, that is Kundan Shah. No motion. It's a very powerful line. For those who didn't hear, Jennifer is pointing out that Kundan Shah said that the Babri Masjid should be rebuilt brick by brick in slow motion. Of course, it's being December. It's a good thing to remember. And you've got to say something. There was a word in between because last time translation, brick by brick. In slow motion. Yes. In fact, for reading, I was wondering because you have asterisks there, whether we should say a thing when we are talking or say fucking. But and beyond, beyond India, we sort of glancingly refer to Vietnam and Algeria. But in more recent times, the book talks about warfare with drones as if it's some sort of video game. It talks about Afghanistan. And Obama. He had to take on Obama, which is quite no, he was he was eclectic but so there so much there. He was just he was there. So let me ask in more general terms. Can you move you closer so that you're comfortable? No, no, I can move forward like that. I keep forgetting that. Yes. Yes. Okay. He's going to be uncomfortable otherwise sitting like this. It is on. It's on, all right. Yeah. All right. This is turning out to be a new scene from maybe we should both speak back to back. Thank you. All right. I feel good. Yes. Now you can sit comfortably. I do want beyond the friendship and what is in the book I think it's important to talk about how do all of us in these times whether it's through a book or a film or music or whatever or perhaps a building given the center of itself how do we actually express what we feel deeply I'm not going to say our politics because you have you know Kundan Shah's taught us that politics can be something deeply felt. How do we dissent? How do we say what we want to in these times? How do we become a citizen? Walk on the street with your slogans. Just walk, I don't know. See it. I don't know it's like you know I as Kundan would say if 10 guys say you're drunk you don't lie down. You stand up and see it. You stand up and speak your mind. What is the fear? I cannot understand what is the fear unless there are so many skeletons in your closet that you're frightened of being caught and I don't know and then the point is if you do have skeletons in your closet you shouldn't be speaking up anyway why are there skeletons in your closet in the first place? Why are there they there? And who the hell are you to speak up now? If you've done it in a certain kind lived your life in a certain kind then you should speak up. That's it, that's the only way. I really don't know why should one be afraid? I've called my home minister names two days ago because I'm not that I'm fearless I'm not suggesting that I'm fearless I'm just saying this is the truth and that's the way when he makes a statement like this about the 2002 why can't he be hauled into court for that statement he should be but there's an incredible silence there's a conspiracy of silence all around I'm not suggesting that one should be agitated the thing is it should be said what is it? it needs to be said absolutely let me ask you made a film on Gandhi of course there's a question of courage and leaving aside fear and so on but there's also the more difficult question of how do you make a film or write a book without it being crude propaganda how do you use that medium well to say what you want to think about but I was interested that you decided to make this film on Gandhi what do you think what is important is today you have far too many distractions all of us have a hundred distractions it's difficult enough to find out what my medium is but having found it to be able to pursue it without distractions with enough rears every day and hold on to it is very very difficult and if people do not know what their medium is they are playing cricket when they ought to be singing that's very difficult and this is not something which other people can decide for it we have all the whole world is a intelligent faculty if you're willing to look and listen so and yet a lot of children chase something because there's a good salary or because there's money and what do I really want to do at the end of the day is the most difficult step to cross and I think if we can all do that and do it with a sense of purpose and literally look at other things like an evening entertainment or the problem is that with the distractions you want to do a hundred things and then nothing works so I think if all of us did what we are doing very purposefully because I keep finding a plumber who actually wanted to be a taxi driver like plumbing but he's doing it and a taxi driver wanted to do something else but he's inherited this taxi and so he's driving a taxi so this is happening on a very large scale and students are chasing salaries or you know without really focusing on what they want to do what they can do the right word I think and as I actually that's partly what I want to get back to is to recall at this distance whether it's film or writing what is that dedication these are demanding very very demanding vocations, professions whatever you want to call it so that is really what I'm talking about so how do you get what you want to say into that your films I was watching some of the early ones again they're very passionate, they're very angry and I suddenly realized today people talk about the underworld they glamorize it they sentimentalize it but these are very real people so it's not some body would imagine so that is what I'm talking about the courage to say this is what real life is like this is what it feels like if you are desperately trying to find a place in the world if you are Salim Langre or Albert Pinto and I think that is what is very very interesting looking at back at your work I suppose also the fact is that the amount of research that went into each film that you worked on there's a lot of research that went behind it and through that something emerges and I would like to call that you might have made mistakes in your cinema or your books but the point is that the approach to it was not there was a certain integral approach to your work that to be very critical how do you approach something with integrity or is it is it for other reasons and that's the critical part that I was talking about how do you approach anything that you do and your approach if it's going to be for some kind of gain I think you've lost the battle halfway you've already lost the battle do it for the sake of it has to be done then check it out later as to what will happen with it later but right now I think the entire approach is with what you are doing and that should be total concentration total integrity as opposed to will it be going to this festival so unimportant will it be making a lot of money we have this particular scene because it is going to be what a waste of time write the scene if you believe we are not a hot house plant and you do your work that's it I was telling somebody I think I said Hindu there is that a lot of things that I have done you feel that the intention behind it seems to be more of a you question the intention behind it it appears to be worth now you can judge almost you can judge what is the intention behind it and that sets you thinking that's all I have to say you use the word poetry frequently and in multiple ways to mean the soul to mean poetry as we usually mean it and you say in fact you moved on from film because no longer had poetry and in fact you quote your father I thought that was amazing that the Soviet Union fell because it lost its poetry now you are using poetry in fairly complex ways would you like to say something about this finding the poetry in a form what is poetry to me if something has poetry has an intrinsic value in it when my father talked about the collapse of the Soviet Union he said it was an idea that had a lot of poetry in it what is the idea of the Soviet Union communism really all about what are the intentions behind it and then when it turns such turning into its own head the poetry is slowly sucked out of it and then it is going to collapse the other factors are also coming to play which help it collapse but there is an internal there has been a corrosion also simultaneously which has to be recognized and when I say there is a quote from this film called La Jolie Mai which I have used in La Jolie Mai and in that it says so long as there are rich so long as there are poor you can't be rich so long as there are unhappy you can't be happy so long as there are presents you can't be free these are little details of is there one definition of poetry? I think there are multiple definitions of poetry but what we are trying to get at is that it is fundamentally a compassionate vision of the world in a strange way that's what it's really all about a compassionate inclusive vision of the world beautiful definition on to the the floor I wanted to read the third soliloquy which in fact is about poetry and Saeed Mirza and Kundan Shah poetry it was a word that he used so often what did he mean by it I remember the time at film school when he was deeply moved by the voiceover in the final scene of the documentary film La Jolie May by Chris Marker so long as there is sadness you can't be happy so long as there are poor you can't be rich so long as there are prisons you can't be free great stuff Kundan had said and you don't have to be a Marxist to feel such emotions it was a jibe I still remember my quick response Chris Marker is a Marxist I know I was pulling your leg it was almost towards the end of our final year at film school and Kundan Shah and I were getting to know each other much better he was even pulling my leg by the way I discovered a great poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz so I decided to pull his leg too you did I thought he was discovered a long time ago well I discovered him today I was reading translations of some of his poems in the library very powerful a pity he's also a Marxist it was my turn to smile yeah a pity I like the way he uses metaphors to get his points across it's a very powerful tool to convey ideas what Kundan would not know was that a poem of Faiz would become a kind of anthem for a very large number of people in India in the year 2019 that would be two years after Kundan passed away the poem is called Hamde Kinge