I DID THINK OF COMMITTING SUICIDE AFTER MY WIFE DIED
Sudhir Mishra, 54, is a selfproclaimed Ghalib fan who makes non-sensational films which talk to people. Ahead of his upcoming urban relationship fable Inkaar, he talks to Bombay Times about his edgy brother, his complicated wife and why he finds Chitrangda interesting. Excerpts:
How did you come to be a part of the film industry? My father was a professor of Mathematics and I travelled with him to several places, including Sagar, where I grew up in a university campus. So, my formative years were not spent in a city, but in a cosmopolitan atmosphere of a campus. As a result, when I shifted to Mumbai at the age of 22, I felt at home. I was doing my M.Phil in Psychology in Delhi University along with a lot of professional theatre. I was greatly influenced by National School of Drama (NSD) and admired theatre a lot, but realised that I was not that good an actor, but was interested in films. My friend Vinod Dua was interviewing Vidhu Vinod Chopra for Doordarshan and asked me to ask Vinod questions as I knew about films. Vinod, seeing my knowledge about films, asked me to come to Mumbai. He was at that time making his first film and I asked him, ‘What will I do’? He said, ‘Learn to hold the boom’. I went to Mumbai and met this liberal bunch of people Kundan Shah, Ketan Mehta, Javed Akhtar and Shekhar Kapur who became my family. Kundan would come to my house where he started writing Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and I started co-writing the script with him. I hung out a lot with Mahesh Bhatt who liked me and was like an elder brother and half adopted me. Shabana and Javed sahab’s home became a surrogate home for me. When I moved to Mumbai, my younger brother Sudhanshu joined the film institute and we had a kind of pact that what I learnt as an assistant I would teach him and he would teach me what he learnt at the institute. I don’t know what I taught him, but he taught me a lot. Everything that I learnt is due to a provocation from him. He died in 1995.
Were you attached to your brother? I don’t know about conventional attachment, but we were one. I would have been a much better filmmaker had he been alive as he was edgy and knew everything about me. My attachment with people stays. Even though people have wandered away or died, I continue to live simultaneously with them. For instance, my second wife Renu Saluja was my partner later in life and now she has died, but I still talk about her a lot of times and other women get angry because of that feeling that I have still not forgotten her.
Renu was married to Vidhu Vinod Chopra before you. Did that make you and Vinod uncomfortable? I started assisting Renu as an editor and was six years younger to her. Renu and Vinod had already parted by then and I had separated from my first wife Sushmita Mukherjee when Renu and I again met. All of us got along really well as it had nothing to do with each other. CHITRANGDA NEVER TALKS TO ME ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE
Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s next film is based on Renu’s life. What was she like? She was wonderfully complicated and funny and had a sense of independence that I have not seen before. For instance, if my eye wandered, she would easily tell me that go figure it out and come back. The confidence she had in herself was quite mind-blowing. She was successful, was happy and people loved her. She was one of the great editors in India and was totally involved with her films and was a woman who could never totally belong to you. Even after our marriage, she kept her relationship with Vinod alive. She always went on his film set and it was wonderful how her professional relationship and their friendship never seized. She belonged to all the people she worked with, be it Mahesh Bhatt, Ketan Mehta, Shekhar Kapur, Subhash Ghai or Kundan Shah. So the problem or the great thing about being with her was that she would not be yours 100% and you got used to living with a woman who spoilt you forever as you could not adjust to another woman who would start claiming you. I don’t know how she and I lived and paid our bills as she never looked at my accounts and none of us asked each other about how much money each of us had. The beauty of this is that it was set by her. With her you either accepted her or did not but she didn’t take shit. I was not her best director. She enjoyed working with Kundan (Jaane Bhi Jo Yaaro and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa), with Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen) and she enjoyed working a lot with Vinod (Khamosh and Parinda). Vinod and she grew up in cinema together. She would not ask you to adjust nor would she adjust to you. For instance, we never met on Saturdays and had the freedom to do whatever each of us wanted to do. In the beginning it felt odd, but at the end you started to enjoy it yourself and felt free. I once had an affair while we were married and she kicked me out of the house. And then she called me back and said ‘I have figured it out’. Let’s start living with each other again in separate rooms. We did that and eventually we were back with each other as for me I did not want to lose her.
Do you still miss her? She died of cancer even though she thought it could not happen to her. Yes, I have gotten on with my life and have done a lot of work after she died but I keep trying to find the ‘Renu cut in my films’ — that rhythm she brought to my films. The value of a good editor is that they tell you what you have actually made while you are caught in what you think you have made. I did think once of committing suicide after Renu died. I do go through periods of sadness, but I don’t think there is much value in that. My association with Ghalib is that he is not a sentimental poet. So whenever I am depressed, I read him. When Sudhanshu died, it was easier as Renu was there, but when she died it was far more difficult.
Are you in love with Chitrangda Singh? For me, she is an actor and as an actor I find her interesting. I like the fact that she is somewhere else and she comes and works well with me. I have done three films with her, two with Soha Ali Khan, five with my cameraman and four films with Shantanu Moitra and Swanand Kirkire. I like working with the same people. The roles of women I write are slightly mysterious and they are women who will never totally belong to you and are yet feminine and attractive. Chitrangda personifies that for me and I don’t have to convince her as she just comes and plays it. She is quite strong-willed and has said no to me for a role. She never talks to me about her personal life. She works and goes away. When I work on a film, I am responsible for it and need to preserve its professional integrity.
Did you fall in love with anyone after Renu? One person whom I cannot name, but who is not from the film industry.
Sudhir Mishra
Sudhir Mishra
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