By Deepti Datt

Perhaps what distinguishes Farhan Akhtar from his contemporaries is his deep reality-check on himself. Or that he is readily willing to admit the influence Goa (the place and the state-of-mind) has had on him. Or that he’s terrified by cockroaches! “I’m petrified, I jumped out of a moving car!” Or, that he can beat anyone, hands down, at Trivial Pursuit.

When I first met Farhan, some ten-years ago, we were both reading Cleo Odzer’s autobiography GOA FREAKS, MY HIPPIE YEARS IN INDIA. While I went off, shortly thereafter, to live the book’s reality in the coastal state, he stayed back in Bombay to become, not just the branded film director he is, but also, the hot, new, celebrity personality of his time and medium… and the only one, in what is a hirsutely-challenged film industry, to sport cool hair-do’s now and then! Credit that to his stylista-wife Adhuna, with whom I go way back, sharing a history we can, now, actually recall as back in the days. While we interact often enough over our kids, this may, in fact, be the first time I am meeting Farhan within this objective space, given the nature of our sit-down.

As outside, so inside. As inside, so outside. The Akhtar’s home, an incubative respite for creativity, is a triumph of clean, blank, white walls and mute accents of beiges and browns. The vast sea for a front yard and pale, monsoon-afternoon sunlight lend the austerely minimalist space a warming California-chic. Nothing leaps out for attention. Unless it’s Farhan himself.

A brilliant physical comedian, Farhan can be, at once, a blast and leave you laughing hard at his antics, or be gravely sombre and introverted, a column of silent implosion. Mostly, and this is true for him well before his celebrity, he is hard to ignore. His public demeanor of concentrated, outer control is, however, jittery at best, betraying an ever-present surface tension, a shivering energy that could be credited to the turgid, electric, hyper-activeness that comes with authentic creativity. It is as though he just can’t contain himself and so the energy manifests in gestures: as he talks, he runs his fingers around the rim of a glass, or cleans imaginary dust off a cushion on his lap, or jump-turns to answer a phone ringing in another room – never just one thing. He also likes neatness, cleanliness and order. Even in conversation, he likes listing discussions, categorizing most of his dialogue with A’s and B’s:

Q. Is Goa still a big part of your life?
A. “For sure, I love the idea of freedom in Goa, A because it’s the one place, when I need, I know I can get away from everything, and B it’s the one place you can be where people don’t feel bad if you don’t answer their call.

While he carries lightly having become part of Bollywood lexicon, of the players in the school of commercial cinema, he is destined and notched class valedictorian, his work most likely to succeed on a global scale - you can already find reference to him in something as un-ubiquitous as Australian author Sarah McDonald’s HOLY COW, a hilarious novel about her India sojourn. Rather, and more precisely perhaps, Farhan’s work is most likely to be relevant on a global scale for the burgeoning audience that is the Indian Diaspora. The post-colonial complex that still pervades our domestic-mass-mentality is refreshingly quashed by his broader, culturally-self-serving take on Indian modernity with his films.

He has been called ‘the voice of his generation’, a big tag to carry only two films down, but one that doesn’t seem to faze him at all. In fact, his response is exhibit of a calm humility and laudable reserve against page-3-type hooliganism. “I think it’s rather vain and pompous to consider yourself a voice of a generation. As I learn more, understand more, my ‘voice’ will keep changing. You’re making a film to satisfy yourself, your storytelling, to a certain degree, but eventually you’re making a film for the people who will watch it. Already, I feel like if I were doing DCH now, I would do it very differently. As of now, two films have been made, one when I was 26 and the other when I was 29, I’m hoping there is a different voice in both those movies, some kind of evolution at least. It’s too early for anybody to call me a voice of anything. Once you’ve witnessed the next generation of people making movies, you can decide who the voice of the generation was. I don’t think anybody can decide that while it’s happening. Think back on anybody doing anything serious, icons, say like Bob Dylan, I think they were just doing what they were doing, making music. Its only now you can say, my god, this person represented that decade to me.”

What has also been said of Farhan’s work, not as flattery, and calling to fore that great Indian divide, is that it’s ‘the voice of his class’, the up-town speak of privilege, depicting and relevant only to an upscale, urban demographic. Again, his clarification thwarts accusations of a predisposition towards any social category in favour of the realistic nature of his characters instead. “I’ve heard people say DCH, and to some extent LAKSHYA, was very correct in its sensibility in terms of what people of that age were feeling and how they were, given those environments. Those films just captured something that does exist, people that actually do exist. I try to make characters as wholesome as possible. A lot of Hindi movies especially, and to some extent Hollywood films as well, are one dimensional. Very rarely do you see well rounded characters.” Given, he didn’t have to slug it out or ride the local trains to make it to where he is – that leg-up comes with being born into a family that accorded him insta-insider-access to the medium - if making films about what he knows, his life experience, designates him niche, so be it. “Whenever a director does a movie in which you see characters that are actually believable, he’s definitely somebody who’s observing what’s going on around him or around her, and writing a story around that, in some way makes him a voice I guess.” Farhan is politically-correct, self-assured and unapologetic about his place in the world.

As the son of India’s foremost story-tellers, his lineage is well known and, from his parents, he has inherited a love of writing. “I guess the way they think, on some level, is genetically encoded, and there is an attraction for the same things. I enjoy writing, so that, I think, has definitely come from somewhere, not so much the tradition of writing but the enthusiasm for it.”

Around ’93, a respected relative advised him to begin a serious study of film with the simple task of listing ten favourite directors and watching all their movies, then analyzing each in a breakdown to understand the semantics of good film. Farhan listed about 3 directors, but got the point and, in a Tarantino-esque bid at celluloid-home-schooling, began watching everything he could get his hands on. Film rentals of the time offered limited learning material, and he was fortunate both his parents kept fairly comprehensive film libraries, so between them he managed to watch a lot of movies – enough to earn a slacker rep, even. “I haven’t gone to film school. I’ve studied film by watching them. Different films work for different reasons, if there was one single reason why a film works then everybody would be doing it. So there’s no way of studying films – you study films by watching films. I’ve watched countless films! That was definitely an important part of me being able to clearly understand, A, the kind of movies that I want to do, B, understand through watching many different techniques, how it is I can achieve certain desired effects. I don’t mean scenes or characters, but how elements work – using silence as an element, intro-ing characters at key moments.”

The list of favourite directors Farhan cites shows a nice arc of diversity in film traditions, from the cerebral, guts-and-gore of Martin Scorsese, to Woody Allen’s lunatic, Jungian expertise on human nature, and the soaring splendour of the great artist director, Akira urosawa-san. “I started with Scorsese because I’m a huge De Niro fan. I watched a lot of Woody Allen. RASHÔMON and THE SEVEN SAMURAI, I enjoyed tremendously.” This is the only time in our entire sit-down, I felt him become somewhat self-conscious and justify the liking of the Japanese master’s work with, “…also I was just going through the VHS list alphabetically” - as though it may be pretentious to admit Kurosawa’s high-art as study material in the comparative context of the, still, puerile quality of commercial Bombay films?! I want to say, it’s a’ite Farhan my man, you an authentic, fer real, director dude! It flies and fits you jus fine to dig Kurosawa! It’s more buyable than, say, Steven Seagal studying Satyajit Ray. Then, for good measure, he adds Guru Dutt to his list… and throws me completely off that self-conscious assessment tip!

Does he think of himself as an artist? “I’d like to think of myself as an artist. I don’t think I do my work for any other reason apart from just wanting to do that. I really have to thank Ritesh (Producer Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan’s collaborator on all three of his films thus far) for making sure the movies are made within the budget. I’ve understood a lot more about it now. Budgets and marketing, with DON. I find all that distracting.” Spoken like a true artist! “I know it’s very important. Everybody wants to be happy, make money, make the next movie! But I find it distracting to work out things like, how many helicopters for a particular shot, or 50 extras or 30? It’s a bizarre space. I wish background could just magically appear! I find it damn difficult, say in a restaurant scene, deciding how many tables to have, how many waiters, how many trays, how many glasses on the tray?! Because suddenly that becomes about cost. You don’t think of that when you’re sitting writing the scene with ‘the background is a moderately crowded place’. I like immediate details. For me, it’s about where they [the lead characters] are sitting that is important, probably what’s just around them is important. But what three people way in the back are doing is not important. When you watch a film, you know when a director has taken a lot of time and effort to make sure the movie feels and looks the way it does.” I mention the prolific production design of Terry Gilliam’s work. “I’m lost halfway through the movie. I find that’s a really sad thing. The story becomes redundant. It’s what happened to THE CELL (Director Tarsem’s film with Jennifer Lopez), the visuals just overtake the film.”

In a personal collection of photographs in his bedroom, sits one of Robert De Niro… personally signed to Farhan. Director Apoorva Lakhia, a friend, was working on De Niro pic FLAWLESS, and knowing how huge a fan Farhan is, got him that signed black and white. And with a hands-caught-in-the-cookie-jar grin, he adds, “…apart from that I’ve got a picture of myself in front of De Niro’s house. I was there and I stood in front… but he never came out!” He is a fan.

In fact, he is a fan of the entire process of film-making. “Just the love of making movies, I thoroughly enjoy it. I can’t even call it a profession because it’s not really a profession. I find it really weird when people say career and all about movies. Like an artist doesn’t have a career, he just paints. I just love movies. I love being on set. Apart from writing, for me the main thrill of directing is working with actors on set.”

If two films can define a norm (and they cannot, but two is what we have to work with here), then DCH was Farhan all the way. Lakshya was not. “I don’t know how true that is. I’m familiar with the confusion of the LAKSHYA character. Confused about what it is I’m supposed to do, then making some decisions and following through to now where I’m very sure of what I want to do with my life.

And what is DON? “DON is the furthest I feel myself foraying into any kind of fantasy element. Although I’ve tried my best to make the characters as life- like as possible, the entire genre of the film and how its set, the environment and gangsters and all, that isquite unreal. With DON somehow the burden felt lighter because of the kind of movie that it is. It was a lot more about having fun. Also because it came after LAKSHYA which was so difficult to make.”

This has been discussed before, but not acceptably explained. Two things bothered me about Farhan’s second film. A, when some in the audience rose up in clattering applause during a scene when Pakistani soldiers are shot dead, to this Farhan responds: “I can’t shy away from the Indian Army’s victory over the Pakistani camp. It is what did actually happen.” And, B, the COMMANDO praisin’ scene, Arnie at his mindlessly-testosterone-fuelled-best - like what?! The reach and influence of film are a heavy responsibility, burden even, to bear on commercial shoulders. At his level of functioning in popular, Indian, commercial cinema, ‘careful’ is the least of what a maker needs to be - yet, in true Farhan style, he has a buoyant explanation: “That Arnold Schwarzenegger scene showed how easily influenced Hrithik’s character in the film can be. I know those emotions. I remember watching DIE HARD and walking around with this imaginary gun in my hand and going to mom’s room and opening the door, and in my mind there were two imaginary bad guys on the other side of the door! And I opened the door and went to whack one of them and Zoya [Farhan’s sister, writer/director Zoya Akhtar] was standing there and I whacked Zoya on the nose and she fell!” Hmm… Zoya being the dynamic creature she is, the consequences of that incident couldn’t have been very pleasant…

For those who don’t already know, yes, Kareena does the Helen number and SRK does “khaike”… that’s about where the similarities with the original and Farhan’s DON will probably end. As is obvious from the promos already out and the music vid doing the rounds, this DON is full-on boy stuff with high-tech-gizmo-and-gadgetery-filled-state-ofthe- art-apple-mac-laptop-using-gangsterism. Priyanka Chopra, Isha Koppikar, Arjun Rampal, Boman Irani and Om Puri create a coven of ultra cool, and a canvas for THE Gangstar of the century.

On working with SRK: “It was wonderful. I really enjoyed it. He has broadened my view on an actor’s involvement in a film. I find Aamir is an extremely involved actor. Hrithik, also, is involved as an actor. Shah Rukh, I found, a lot more interested, enthusiastically, in a very healthy way in the film. He’s a huge DON fan. We were approaching it not just as a writer, director and actor, but also as enthusiastic fans. We were being given this chance to do this movie again! We were in awe! Like we’re actually doing ‘khaike’!”

And the music? DON’s ost is, admittedly, SUPER CHIC!!! Lick-yo-fingers-wet-touch- ‘em-on-a-super-fine-assssssssssss-ouch!!! Delhi’s MidiEval Punditz and Pentagram’s funky-fly-fro-haired guitarist, Randolph, bring an edgy street-cred to the stalwart groove creators, Shankar Ehsaan & Loy. DON’s ost, much as DCH’s did, I anticipate, is about to rock the nation.

As we wind down the interview, I ask if there are any incidents during the making of DON that stand out for him, and get an answer, and an experience, that is quintessential Farhan Akhtar: “We were shooting in Boman’s apartment and Aradhana (set-designer Aradhana Seth) has dressed the set and there’s this book called ANSWERS TO RANDOM QUESTIONS. Lighting is going on, so we got the book, full time-pass reading, and going through it, I came to one question which said, ‘IS IT TRUE THAT IF YOU HAVE 23 STRANGERS IN A ROOM IT IS MORE THAN LIKELY THAT 2 OF THEM WILL SHARE A BIRTHDAY?’ So Shakun, my assistant, I put him on the job – we were shooting a hotel with a minimal crew, so that in Hindi film means at least 35 people were in the room! - told him just go around ask everyone their birthday, lets do this as an experiment and see if it’s true. He started getting everyone’s birthdates and the first match we got was birthdays shared on the 23rd of October. I was like, not bad! Everyone was a stranger on some level in that room. I started reading ahead in that answer and the mathematician who came up with this analysis had gone on the Johnny Carson show. So Johnny Carson asked how he came up with the theory, and said ‘lets test this theory on my show and see how many people here share my birthday?’ Johnny Carson’s birthday is 23rd October! Bizarre! So I told (key-grip) Sanjay Sami about it, and he says ‘look at the time!’. It was 5mins past 12 from the 22nd night to the 23rd morning!!! So it was 23rd of October and 23rd of October and 23 people in the room, that’s 5 23’s!!!!!”

Then he pauses…and says “What is today?!”….

“OH MY GAAAAAAWWWD!!!” we scream. It’s August 23RD!!!!!

Farhan shouts, “What’s the time?!!”

Its 11pm… 23:00!!!

Farhan: “AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!”

Ranjeev, my husband and photographer, quietly shooting pictures thus far, says “…we got married on July 23rd…”

I remember my birthday is on June 23rd!!!

“Gawd this is too much” says Farhan.

Trying to get back to final questions for the interview, I ask Farhan how old he is now.

32 he replies…

“Which”, says Ranjeev esoterically, “is 23 reversed.”

CONTRIBUTOR’S PAGE PROFILES:
Ranjeev Mulchandani is a sybarite, artist, photographer, television and event producer, dj, music composer, great cook, beach bum, trekker, wanna-be mountain climber, Discovery channel anchor, actor (on the stage of life), adventure seeker… seeker.




Deepti Datt is obsessed with art, culture, her 350cc Enfield Bullet and anything Japanese. She calls Goa and Los Angeles home, and finds great inspiration in all things marginal. When she’s not running AXiRVAAD, her restaurant and art gallery in Goa (which the New York Times cites as “legendary”), she writes and produces for television. “I’m a hustler, baby!” Deepti is currently heading up the Events portfolio for Conde Nast in India and the launch of Vogue magazine in the country.