I still have butterflies in my tummy ahead of a film release: Anant Nag

At nearly 70, veteran actor Anant Nag likes being cut off from technology, as far as the world wide web is concerned, as much as possible. “I leave most of that to my daughter to handle,” he says with a grin. He does have a cellphone, and admits to using the internet only to seek answers to questions that help him gain knowledge, adding that he finds much of what he sees online frivolous. And while he is not on social media, he is acutely aware of the reach that these platforms have and was more than happy to join team Bangalore Times for a live interaction ahead of the release of his next,

Hottegagi Genu Battegagi

.
Here are excerpts…

Hottegagi Genu Battegagi (HGB) is a film with a unique premise…
Yes, in fact, I was involved with the script from the beginning. When director Narendra Babu brought up the subject, I loved the theme and the fact that the story is not linear and has many layers to it.
My character,

Shyamprasad

, is a man who was working in the private sector. But then the company goes bankrupt, he has no PF and gets no golden handshake. While he has a house, there is no liquidity, so, he needs a job, which he gets at a retail textile company run by the leading lady, Radhika Chetan’s character, Shravya. How he gets the job and moves from the periphery of the story to the centre, his and Shravya’s background, as well as that of the other central characters, there is just so much going on in the film and what begins as a small story takes on multi layers.
It’s a new concept, which makes it difficult to pinpoint a genre. The audience has to decide. I am hopeful that the young generation, especially, watches the film, as it addresses the gap between them and older generations, value systems and whether the conventional and modern can gel and co-exist side-by-side, among much more.

The central character of Hottegagi Genu Battegagi is a strong self-made woman. How much of an influence have strong women had on your life?
Well, my mother was a strong woman. We grew up with a lot of difficulties and she coped with all of that. Subsequently, there is my wife, who is also a very strong, disciplined, systematic and orderly woman and then, of course, my daughter who is very different and defiant. Overall, though, women are very strong. If you look at women in rural areas, they bear almost 80% of the household. I believe women are the stronger of the two genders. Hence, every time you hear of an attack on a woman, your heart sinks and you feel helpless in not being able to do anything to stop it.

The movie also deals with live-in relationships…
It started in the West and has made its way here. It’s all fine and society has not opposed it, but there comes a time when every relationship has to have a certain level of faithfulness and loyalty in it. But how much place is there for these elements in that relatioship? In the west, we have seen that relationships tend to fall apart over time. It makes one apprehensive of what will happen here too. In that sense, the theme of our film is very bold. Now it’s up to the audience’s verdict, which is like taking an exam for us.

After so many years, do you still feel butterflies ahead of a release?
Yes, especially for films like this one, which are rather sensitive, you tend to wait for people’s verdict as an affirmation of the team’s work.

You have been working with new-age directors. What is your take on the younger generation of filmmakers who are writing better scripts?
They are, no doubt, writing good scripts. For a long time, our biggest handicap was scripts. I come from a theatre background, where almost always you had a perfect play written by famous playwrights. That has almost ceased and not many playwrights exist in the country. Our issue was that in making films for the masses we copied from everywhere else and the scripts were weak. Today it is changing for the good again. A lot of the younger writers even send their writings to me for approval. They are taking the time to work on their scripts, which was the case many years ago too. If you look at most of my films, they were based on novels. Someone would take it and work on it for as much as six months before beginning the film, as everything depends on the script and the content. The younger generation is bolder and don’t mind calling a spade a spade. The only people who can stop them are in the Censor Board (laughs).