Danish's real life inspires 'Break Ke..'

Danish Aslam, the director of ‘Break Ke Baad’ tried his best to steer clear of showing monuments in the film, but, it wasn’t meant to be...
My life in the capital
I was born in Kashmir, but we didn’t live there much ’coz we travelled a lot. I lived in Delhi for 11 years, then left for Mumbai. I lived in Asiad Village, studied in Mother’s International School, did English (Hons) from Venky College, MA in Mass Comm from Jamia, and then I worked on two movies in Delhi.So for all intents and purposes, I’m a Delhiite.
My college days
In our time, Dilli Haat was actually a place for college kids to hang out and eat momos from the Assam or Mizoram stall especially in the winters. Priya was another favourite. We weren’t the ‘yo’ crowd, and never went there, sat under the tree and looked cool for three hours. We went there only ’coz we wanted to watch a movie, eat at TGIF and go home. The Venky canteen was our main hangout, and then the Jamia canteen, and the area around it – the market and the community centre nearby – where they have fast food joints and a shawarma place. The anda parantha in front of AIIMS at 3am was another favourite – the post-party anda parantha, actually.
My dilli in my film
First time directors have a tendency, especially if they’ve written the script themselves, to make their film slightly autobiographical, ’coz that’s what they are most comfortable with. “Break Ke Baad” is about urban relationships, so a lot of it is from my life. Before moving to Mumbai, I was living with family and not working. Then I moved to Bombay, started earning and living on my own for the first time. In the film, the characters are also living with their families to start with. Delhi’s what I was most familiar with as a city, and the characters are real people whom you’d find in Delhi.
Then there’s Pammi bua – Lillette Dubey’s character in the film. She’s a modern, yet retro Punjabi, who speaks with a Punjabi twang. She’s divorced thrice, but is looking for a fourth hubby. She’s a peculiar breed of urban, modern, upper middle class, yet traditional woman, which I’ve seen a lot of when I was growing up.
I’ve noticed that a lot of filmmakers who come to shoot in Delhi tend to do so from an outsider’s perspective. They will shoot in front of all the monuments – India Gate, a customary car driving shot on Rajpath, going up to Rashtrapati Bhawan, Red Fort, etc. I lived in Delhi for 11 years, and I went to India Gate twice in my life! I wanted to show Delhi the way I saw it, so we shot in Dilli Haat, AIIMS and South Avenue. I wanted to show a Delhi you haven’t seen before, or at least a Delhi that most filmmakers don’t show when they shoot here.
The Deepika and Imran drunk scene was supposed to be shot on the roof of Statesman Building in CP. But it was really high up. I have shot the background shots, but have recreated the ledge in a studio in Mumbai, and shot the scene in chroma. The vista actually is Inner Circle CP. Also, I didn’t actually want to shoot at Qutub Minar. I wanted a rooftop, and happened to find one in a building on front of Qutub. So despite my best efforts not to show a monument, we shot one!
The permission to shoot in the Metro got cancelled two days before because of the CWG. We ended up shooting in Dilli Haat, Pitampura which isn’t crowded. In the original Dilli Haat, we’d have had to control a crowd of 50,000 people.
Delhi in the movies
Delhi has started to be showcased a lot in the last four-five years. Delhi is a little more unexplored – most people say there’s nothing more to see in Mumbai, which is true ’coz 95% of the locations have already been seen in films, but we still continue to shoot there. Delhi has a lot of character to it – it’s a nice blend of the modern and the traditional. It’s visually rich ’coz of the spaces, roads and greenery, which Mumbai lacks. We’ve started noticing it a lot more as people have started shooting it a lot better and more interestingly. They’re going to places you wouldn’t normally go to – like “LSD” and “Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’ – a kind of Delhi that non-Delhiites have never seen. It’s a huge city with a lot of different subcultures and variety in terms of visual aesthetics, which has now started being tapped a lot more.
(As told to Chandna Arora)
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