Kiran’s as headstrong as ever,
Aamir says. After all, she made him do his first ever audition for a role!
Long back, in June 2008, when you spoke to TOI, you’d explained your extremely low profile by saying, ‘I’ve always felt that until I have something to say as an individually creative person, who’s not just someone’s partner or aunt or mother or sister, it’s pretty pointless having a point of view.’ Now we see you everywhere, your pics with Aamir come in quick succession alternatively as the creative couple and then as part of Imran’s wedding festivities; so now you’re willing to be in the news both as a creative person & as someone’s...
KR: .... Aunt slash wife slash, yeah, yeah, that’s true! (Laughs) I guess we all play multiple roles. I’m very comfortable being knows as Aamir’s wife also, so there’s no problem with being Mrs
Aamir Khan.
But here, now, I feel I would like people to see my work and to connect with me as a creative person who has something to offer. And that changes the equation slightly. You’re not looking at me only as someone’s partner but as someone whose work you’re going to see. For me, that’s a relationship I’m building with people who may feel they know me, but don’t know what I do, or what I can do...
Would they feel they know you? I guess they probably feel that they don’t know you, at least, not yet.
KR: Yeah. I don’t think so either. It’s not always possible either. How well does the audience know
Vishal Bhardwaj, or Anurag Kashyap? Filmmakers are known by their work. An audience can very rarely even recognize a Raju Hirani or a Murgudass or a Kunal Kolhi. Some people may’ve been on TV and had their shows and so you may know them, but by and large, creative people are known by their work. I have the advantage /disadvantage of being married to one of India’s biggest superstars, so it’s something that I am happy to have alongside the tag of artiste or filmmaker.
When you attend something like Imran’s wedding, what’s the change this time?
KR: For one, I have many people coming up to take my autograph or a photograph, which two, three years back, they didn’t. A lot of people didn’t recognize me two years ago – which was blissful anonymity! Now, at the wedding, I even had people telling me that they were great admirers of my work – and I was saying, ‘You haven’t seen anything yet, but thank you anyways!’
I think people have been very generous towards me and that is partly on account of the love they have for Aamir. I guess I come under the great umbrella of goodwill that Aamir has developed over the years. I know every first-time filmmaker doesn’t have this sort of enthusiasm or support.
For someone who had to submit a paper on ‘Rangeela’, who saw ‘QSQT’ as the first movie on VCR, this is rather niche. You deliberately went to make something that’s the polar opposite of the mainstream stuff that Aamir’s been churning out to great commercial success?
KR: I don’t think I want to be pigeonholed and typecast as arthouse. Yes, my debut is arthouse, and I’m proud of it, but I am also very interested and engaged in commercial cinema. I, for instance, have now been watching a lot of action films, stuff I have not watched earlier.
I’m very excited by cinema today, and I don’t want to be known as one kind of filmmaker. The kind of films Aamir and I instinctively reach out to watch are different, but it’s happy coexistence.
You’ve said you’re idealistic about cinema. The question of idealism in the industry per se – many people in the course of their cinematic careers have to accept a lot of...
KR: ... Compromise.
Compromise, market adjustments, person to person adjustments, lobbies and all that – so converting any pure art form the way it is visualized onto screen is not the easiest of things. You have the luxury to follow your track and not worry about keeping anybody happy, right?
KR: That’s true, that’s absolutely true. Which is why I say Aamir is a godsend of a producer. If he believes in your film, he asks you to follow your vision – and no filmmaker can ask for more. It’s that kind of trust he puts in you. And that’s a huge luxury. I don’t think I could have made this film with any other producer, this way at least.
To my mind, however bad it sounds, I have already fulfilled my dream, even before it goes to the cinemas. I already feel fulfilled.
When we spoke about this project, there was a point I’d mentioned, I guess it still holds true: apart from you, there don’t seem to be any other directors married to each other in Indian cinema, do they?
AK: Correct. Both directors – no, nowhere.
KR: Yeah... I never thought of that!
AK: and also, no top star has been directed by his wife. None. From Shammi Kapoor and Ashok Kumar to Shah Rukh and Hrithik, no top actor has been directed by his wife.
And the reverse?
AK: Top actresses? Actresses have been directed by their husbands. Kamal Amrohi and Meena Kumari. Mehboob Khan has directed his wife. Shantaram has directed his wife.
Wives, maybe not, directors have directed their muses pretty often, have they not? The gender equation is firmly one-sided here.
(Emphatic agreement followed by off the record placement of most of the ensuing conversation – ending with “but on the record I can’t say ****** is ******’s muse, yaar!”)
AK: A top star directed by his wife is a very rare thing.
That too post-audition?
AK: Yes, audition karaya saala! Yeh to life mein is a first!
KR: I’ll never live that down (laughs and laughs) I’ll never be allowed to forget it!
Isn’t that the only audition story we’ve read about you?
AK: The only film I’ve auditioned for to get a role is this one.
KR: Yeah, my love? Really? What are you saying? You never had to do an audition before?
AK: Before I became an actor, I had to do a couple of auditions. After I became an actor, I have never been asked to do an audition. Never.
KR: It wasn’t that I doubted his acting abilities. I simply felt that he was, simply, too big for such a small project. Such a big and familiar face in the midst of something that was supposed to be extremely real; ordinary people you pass by on the road and don’t recognize, those were the sort of people I needed in my film. He’ll obviously become the highlight among all these people.
The second point was that I was shooting in a very difficult places. Aamir shooting in those places would be impossible – I thought. I would have to recreate everything. He was the one who helped me solve it. I believe you will sublimate Aamir Khan and become Arun – but how will we shoot?
AK: I said I’d solve it. And I solved it for her. The house we were shooting in, I just went and lived there. The problem was that that house is very open, it has 10 windows. People will be standing on all the roofs and balconies if we shoot with people knowing what’s going on there. So how do we manage that? I entered that locality at 3.30 in the morning one night, went into the house, to the fourth floor, and then didn’t come out for three and a half weeks. So they didn’t know I was there, till the end. At night we shut the light, or draw the curtains. It was great to live there, actually, I really enjoyed staying there.
“Ghajini” ke marketing decisions sab usi ghar mein hue hain. We were shooting in October and Ghajini was releasing in December. There was only one room and the bathroom. Room mein shooting chal rahi thi meant that the bathroom had to be my office. In that bathroom, I had many meetings. Raju Hirani came to discuss “3 Idiots”, it was beginning in January. That commode has seen many famous directors sit on it for meetings!
Kiran, you’re prepared for a large, disproportionate amount of scrutiny once you enter the industry this way?
KR: That’s natural, I expect it, and I’ve grown to be normal about it. People, I guess, are interested in me, Aamir Khan ki wife yeh kaise karti hai, kaise Aamir ko direct karti hai, and so on.
Delhi has recently been in fast forward mode so far as being a cinematic city goes. And there are a fair amount of Aamir’s movies involved in that transition. When you were watching movies as you grew up, the VT station and Marine Drive would be essential recall moments in most movies. Now, isn’t it more often India Gate, Jantar Mantar, Rajpath... Aamir in a jeep driving around India Gate and on a scooter zipping down Rajpath.
AK: ...Yes, and even “Fanaa” was in Delhi. Dibakar’s films are Delhi centric... Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is from Delhi. So when he writes “RDB,” he writes about Delhi naturally. In fact since a large number of directors and scriptwriters are from here, and they are the ones who will decide the paradigm, this may well increase. Even Imtiaz is from here, na?
The crux of the first time the two of you spoke together was that you – Aamir – have changed personally after you got to know her, while she has changed professionally. Does it hold as true in 2011 as it did in 2008?
AK: Yes, I have changed a lot personally. I have opened up, relaxed, got less hyper...
But you have changed nothing in the way you work. So she’s a major personal influence on you, but not a professional one. She, however, is the same personally – but has changed a lot in terms of her growth as a filmmaker, a creative artiste.
AK: What do you feel, Kiran?
KR: I feel it’s a bit of both. Personally, I feel I have mellowed a little bit...
AK: No, no, no, no, no!
KR: My love, you have NO idea. I used to be very, very self-absorbed.
AK: Earlier, she’s used to a single woman’s life. So when we started living together, she took to that.
KR: Yeah, I was a happy single woman
AK: She now lives as a person who lives with a partner. That’s the only change. She’s very loving and demonstrative, and you can’t be demonstrative when you are living by yourself, can you, so that obviously has changed. But that’s about it.
Is she any less headstrong?
AK: She’s as headstrong. Her nature, her personality has not undergone a change. What has undergone a change is not her personality but her circumstances.
KR: That’s true. That’s probably true.
AK: On the other hand, my personality has undergone a change.
KR: Professionally, yes, I’ve learnt enormously from him. He’s become very much an influence in some ways. By being with him and seeing how his mind works, I’ve learnt a lot – and I hope I keep learning from that. I keep telling him that both sides of his brain are equally well developed. The logical and rational side is as well developed as his creative side.
Kiran, you’ve said that when you are happy with someone, your personality does not change, your perspective does...
KR: I still agree with that. My perspective of life before I met him was with me at the centre of the world.
Aamir, will Kiran have to carry the burden of having to disprove that things worked – or didn’t work – in her projects because of you?
AK: See, if people want to speculate, they can speculate about anything. The fact of the matter is that people have been speculating that I have been ghost-directing my earlier films. There’s no truth in that. If you see all my films, they are all uniquely different from each other. “Rang De Basanti” is totally different, in style, in form, in everything, from “Lagaan”. “Lagaan” is totally different from “Dil Chahta Hai”. “Dil Chahta...” is totally different from “Ghajini”. “Ghajini” is totally different from “3 Idiots”. “3 Idiots” is totally different from “Fanaa”... if you see X’s films, saari filmein ek jaisi hoti hain. So which actor interferes and which doesn’t, aap khud andaza laga sakte hain.
In the way they are cut, the way they are shot, the way they are pitched – all my films are completely different. Why? Because there are different people directing them! So her film will be as different from the rest of them – because it is her direction. That is the truth of the matter. Speculate karna chaahein to log kuch bhi speculate kar sakte hain.
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