Rajiv Rai: Raising Hopes!

he was gupt for four years and has now returned with a love story called pyaar ishq aur mohabbat. rajiv rai reveals the hardships and heartaches of being a director in exile to suresh nair what's the big idea behind pyaar ishq aur mohabbat? i was trying to make a mainstream hindi cinema out of india. even if i had scenes set in india, i had house sets abroad that looked like india.and i think with my budget and the time i gave myself, i am very happy with what i executed. so you have scenes in the film that are set in india? i shouldn't be telling you this. but i have a few scenes in the beginning that are supposed to be in india. but then whether even a steven spielberg passed off sri lanka as india in indiana jones and the temple of doom. the word we use for this is cheating. it's nothing new. so i have india in the film, but i haven't shot it in india. was it frustrating not being able to come back to india and make a film? if you can't function very well in the land where you belong... but i am proud of the fact that i am a bollywood director. but i am quite a realistic guy. a great part of my last four years were spent in america and canada. and during that time when i was around in hollywood, it dawned upon me that there was nothing better than doing a bollywood film. it was not like grapes are sour, because i didn't work over there. that was never the criteria. because we have to understand the psyche of the american audience, what makes them cry or laugh. as for me, i have the psyche of an indian audience trapped in my mind. did you at any time in those four years think your filmmaking career was over? of course, i thought my career was over. i left the country in 1997. honestly, for the first two years, i never thought i would make a film again. and it so surprises me today that i could have thought like that. but the fact is that i didn't know what to do. i had no clue. i didn't know whether i should take up a job. the only thing is that i have been kind of lucky all my life and things just seem to work out wherever i went. did you have to look for another means of livelihood? yes. but i was also trying to set up my office work here, settle my satellite rights. my father was not well. i was not making a constructive living. and because of that i had to make a film. because nothing worked out i realised this is what i can do _ make a film. so i actually planned the film exactly the way a new director would have started his debut effort. i had to go about the film realistically. it was hard. i had the foundation in india but i couldn't shoot in india. so i had to make a foundation abroad. and i did that. and what's the buzz now about your film? unfortunately, today my film is written off in the film industry -- not by the audiences. a lot of people come to me, groping for words. and i tell them: ``i know what it is. the film industry has written off my film without even seeing a frame of it.'' they say the music is bad. actually, they don't say it to my face. so i have no clue. all i want people to say is not whether my film is good or bad. the only acknowledgement that i deserve is that here is that of a director who's changed his style of filmmaking and gone out there and made a film. has anybody in my situation taken a new star-cast and gone abroad and shot a film in one schedule? even if lagaan was made in one schedule, it took six months. i shot my film in 60 days. i am not comparing my film to lagaan, which is definitely a better film than mine. but why keerti reddy as the heroine? ha, maybe i have lost my taste, is it? i don't know what's the big question mark! maybe i don't know what pretty girls look like anymore. everytime somebody asks me this question i wonder whether i have lost it or has my taste in women dwindled or my eyesight has gone bad! but let me tell you that i have very sensibly cast this film. i know exactly the good points and bad points of keerti reddy. so it was not blind casting. but why keerti? she wasn't even one film old when you cast her! i did see parts of her first hindi film, tera jadoo chal gaya. i don't know why people dislike her. she is quite sexy! but then it's each man's taste. i always had this fascination for south indian girls. so how do you rate yourself? tough question. it's like you are asking me to look in the mirror and say how i look. the fact is i don't look very good. i think, as you grow older you see a lot of faults in yourself. when you are young, you don't care. similarly, as you grow older in your profession, you come to terms with your strengths and limitations. but i have been rated as a good director. do you think you have been over-rated or under-rated? i think i have not been underrated. but then i don't think i have been overrated either. i think every director learns every year with every film. it's a huge learning process. i have never been the best. when i was young, i never got the best marks in school or college. i hardly got any awards. i have never been the number one guy ever in anything. so if i could survive in bollywood, make some money and name, good enough. you can't really get touchy about others doing better than you.