Dibakar Banerjee: ‘I’m an Indian; an Indian can be everything, I can be Hindu & Muslim, Bengali & Kashmiri’

When asked if he is one Bollywood director who can give Hollywood a run for its money, Dibakar Banerjee lets out an emphatic ‘no’. By his own admission, he has moved out of the middle-class echo chambers of his early films (Khosla ka Ghosla!; Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!).  Tees, starring Naseeruddin Shah, Huma Qureshi, Manisha Koirala, Kalki Koechlin, Neeraj Kabi, Divya Dutta, Zoya Hussain, Shashank Arora, among others, begins in an algorithm-controlled future (2042), moves to the current times (2018) and the past (1989) and interjects the three narratives, which segues into one another through the intergenerational story of one family, and the recurring symbol of house and identity. Tightly edited and subtitled by Jabeen Merchant, Tees marks a fresh departure for the director whose no two films are similar, not even the sequels.

At the recently concluded 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), where his film Tees, which was commissioned and then shelved by Netflix, was screened to a packed house and an unceasing standing ovation, he spoke about making cinema in post-modern, post-truth times, on being an Indian, on Gen Z, on the sameness in Bollywood films, why Malayalam cinema is successful, and more. Excerpts from a Moneycontrol exclusive interview with the quiet rebel who has always belonged:

Shashank Arora in a still from 'Tees'.

When Netflix shelved Tees, what mindspace were you in? Was there anger, frustration...

All of that. Anger, frustration, depression and, at that time, I didn’t know but both my daughters said, ‘Papa, you’re always angry.’ Then I started therapy and I got better.

Did you pour that frustration into LSD 2 (Like, Share and Download)?

Of course, I must have. But LSD 2 had a different story and LSD 2 wasn’t a single experience. It was a collective experience. Mine, of the writers Shubham and Prateek (Vats), the cinematographers, the researchers, the actors, the workshop, everyone made it together. That we did right.

Did its reception affect you?

Right now, it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Because, you know what films will have what kind of impact and why it happens, you get to know that. And when you look at unauthorised internet media and see what’s going on with your films, when you read Letterboxd (social film discovery platform), when you read other sites which are not part of authentic, organised media, then you get to know that your film is hitting where it should.

The second thing is, those people who get very angry and agitated when they see a film, that is also a sign that the film has hit the bull’s-eye. Because transphobia, gayphobia, queerphobia runs in our blood. So, if you make a film on that where there are two characters who are transgender, and they are not shown as victorious, rather what happens in their lives is the same as that of others, then that, perhaps, is hard to digest for many. But slowly, all my films, stumble a little in the beginning, but slowly, after two-three years, people remember that I made that film. While Khosla ka Ghosla! (2006) did release in theatres, people began talking about it only when it was shown on TV for the next four-six years. Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008), LSD (Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, 2010), it happened with all the films, when they are released, in the beginning, the audience are a little scared and gradually, they get acceptance.

People still remember Khosla ka Ghosla! and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Few filmmakers have had a decadal evolution like you, Dibakar. Do you belong to that league of filmmakers who hate watching their old films?

I don’t know about any league, what I know is that after a film is made, the mistakes of that film are so visible to you that you want to do something different from it, something new. The second thing is that it takes two years to make a film. Now, in two years, you made a film, from the screenplay to the final film. By the time it’s two years, you’ve also grown, right? So, by the time a film is made, you’ve gone a little ahead of the film. Then you have to make another film to catch up. So, by the time that’s made, you go ahead of that too. So, it’s a vicious circle.

The poster and a still from 'Khosla ka Ghosla!' (2006)

Do you think you’re losing out on your older audiences, that of Khosla ka Ghosla!? You always had a dark sense of humour. Would you say that, over time, your sense of humour and your films are becoming darker? 

When I made Khosla…, Oye Lucky!..., Shanghai (2012), there was no audience for any of these films. That audience was built. That audience was created because these films were made. I don’t know anything else beyond making films. And I have learnt that by making films, you also make the audiences. My thing is I make a film and then move on to the next. Depending on whether the film is a hit, flop or an intermediate one, you have to choose a budget. That the earlier one if I made on Rs 10, this one I’ll make on Rs 6. Beyond this, I don’t know anything. Now I’m making my next film, then the one after that, then the one after that, and one day I’ll die.

After your screening at DIFF recently, you said there is a lot of depth in Gen Z, who are more exposed than us, and that Bollywood is not capturing in its films.

I think, Gen Z, at least the super rich in the cities, or those from affluent middle-class background, I’m speaking of that Gen Z. They have not seen deprivation and impoverishment at home. So, in them the sense of guilt is diminished. And because of that they ask straight questions. When I ask my daughter to take her plate to the kitchen, she retorts, ‘why, then, are you calling the help?’ I tell her, I’m making you practise, so she says, ‘there’s no need, I’ll always have a help.’ They don’t feel entitled, it is normalcy for them, and, so, they are asking. I also feel that Gen Z, because of social media and because of understanding themselves, they are a little ahead of us. In 1990s and 2000s, we didn’t know so much about ourselves. We had to find it out by making mistakes. The Gen Z knows what is or is not happening to them, and they are clear. But, here in India, we keep saying Gen Z this and Gen Z that, but this section of Gen Z is as much a minority as you could ever imagine. The larger Indian youth, from smaller towns, who are still sexually repressed, are still unemployed, who watch films to overcome their inner loneliness, they still watch movies like India used to watch, say, 20 years ago.

It’s being said that content has killed cinema in Hollywood. Something similar is happening in Bollywood. Big-budget films are tanking at the box office. As an industry insider, how do you gauge things? Do you think Bollywood’s marginalisation of outliers like you has contributed to its crisis and its degradation or degeneration?

I don’t know what is degradation or degeneration. What I think is that currently, we are going through a fearsome phase of sameness. One film looks like the other. One trailer looks like another. One actor looks like another. Everyone speaks the same way. The music of every film sounds the same. Shooting and lighting is the same in every film. Everything looks like copies of each other. Same to same. And in that whichever film is a little different, people are appreciating those. This sameness has set in because we are compelled to make films in a factory system. What that means is, the Maggi you sold on Wednesday is the same Maggi you are selling on a Saturday. This works for Maggi but not for a film. The executives working in (OTT) platforms have to keep their superiors happy, their bosses have to keep their superiors sitting in America happy. And they are getting a certain amount of salary which they won’t get outside. They are in a conundrum, too. So, to ensure their content is successful, they are looking for an insurance, which comes from a star and the algorithm. Directors, scriptwriters and producers are being compelled to make the kind of films and tell the kind of stories that these platforms want, basis algorithm and star power. This used to happen earlier as well. But, because, behind these platforms, there are some companies who run the whole world, they control the internet, the markets, from shoes and oil to satellite and ships, as well as movies. So, what is happening now is that many other things are making our films. One has to toe the line, else their films won’t see the light of day.

Single theatres were shuttered to make way for multiplexes. That, too, contributed to the downfall, right?

That’s our doing. We have cut off the nose to spite the face. After liberalisation, when we wanted to become richer and ape the West, we made multiplexes. In multiplexes, each ticket costs Rs 500, Rs 600, Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500. Just now you said you’ve seen Khosla ka Ghosla on a single screen. Today, Khosla ka Ghosla or Oye Lucky! won’t get released only. Forget about LSD.

So, you have made your peace with it?

I think, I will never make my peace with it. That is the fun. I have become an addict now. I enjoy fighting, again and again.

That’s what I wanted to ask. Do you see yourself as an agent provocateur or a moralist?

I see myself as damaged and partially insane. Until I consider myself mad and blind, I won’t be able to understand that I am with the society. We have gone mad, blind, and deaf. What is happening in front of our eyes that we can’t see. I call it the great project of unseeing. So, I have also started unseeing things. I unsee who is telling me what. I want to make films as economical as possible.

You held a masterclass at DIFF on making cinema in post-modern, post-truth times. Truth and history are being contested today. What is truth to an artist, who creates an imaginary world in his work?

As an artist, truth is what you have tested, researched, seen and you are saying it fearlessly. But it should be your own truth. It should be an experienced truth. What you are seeing in front of your eyes. I can see that a Muslim person can be lynched. I can see that a Muslim person is not getting a house in Bombay and is asked to change his name for the same. This happens, happens everywhere. If we see and understand this simply, without making a fuss, then, it is correct. Another example would be if you are transgender, then you will be sexualised. One of my LSD 2 viewers said, ‘I saw your film, it has *derogatory slur for transgender*, right?’ So, this is also there. This is exactly what I want to make films on because I am damaged now. Along with that, I will also make entertainment films. But who tells me that I am famous for Khosla Ka Ghosla!, they are wrong. I am not famous for Khosla Ka Ghosla. I am famous for Khosla Ka Ghosla!, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, LSD, Shanghai, Bombay Talkies, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, Lust Stories, Ghost Stories, Tees and LSD 2. If I had made copies of Khosla Ka Ghosla!, I would have had more money but I wouldn’t have been as famous as I am now.

Dibakar Banerjee's films.

You left Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! open-ended. Will you make a sequel?

I am trying to. I will miss Sushant (Singh Rajput), but someone or the other will come. But the reason for the delay is not that. It is a period film and that requires a lot of money. Now, my market is down. I will have to hustle a little. I will have to roam around and earn a little. But this is the life of a filmmaker. You should not be scared of it.

You wanted to name Tees as Ghar?

That was one of the titles.

Where did the idea of Tees come from?

The idea of Tees came when Gauri Lankesh was killed. We were sitting in an apartment. Some elites were beating their chests. I stepped out of that house. I was a little inebriated, but I said to myself, I will not beat my chest, I will make a movie. And I am glad that I did not make the film about that, but about something else. I made the film about Otherising.

There are many kinds of Others in the film. Was that an afterthought?

Yes. So, we came up with may titles: Ghar; Apne; Doosre. But we did not get them.

While the film shows three timelines and three generations, Tees is basically a film about Ayesha, a Kashmiri Muslim, played by Manisha Koirala. So, she leaves the Valley in 1989?

No, not in 1989. As Huma Qureshi (who plays Ayesha’s daughter Zia in the 2018 timeline) says in the film, she left the Valley in 1994. What happened in 1989-90 with the Pandits (insurgency-triggered exodus) was one thing. But after 1991, there was a big wave of abductions and terrorism in the Valley. Until 1994-95, many Kashmiri Muslims had died, faced tragedies and were compelled to leave Kashmir.

But this is just a detail in Tees, the film is not about that. In Delhi, you’ll have a Kashmiri Pandit friend and a Kashmiri Muslim friend. This is how dispersal takes place from a troubled zone.

Is Tees the most political film of your career?

I don’t know, man. See, without politics, you can’t even get married. There’s politics in everything. But if you say ‘everything is politics’, people get scared. We, especially the bourgeois middle-class people, are taught not to get involved in political things, we are told it’s dangerous, which is basically to say, you won’t get marks or money; your career will be ruined. That is a different thing. But there’s politics in your marriage, in your name, in the school you are sent to, in the job you do, in the house you get or not on rent.

How did you conceive structuring Tees through three periods in time?

I don’t know, man. I have forgotten. It was in the treatment note. I liked it. Then I spoke to [co-writer] Gaurav Solanki (Article 15, Tandav). He said it was a good idea.

You have cast top-class actors in the film.

Thank heavens!

What did Netflix say?

Nothing really. They helped a lot. Until we finished the film, we didn’t face any problem. Except for one casting negotiation. I won three casting fights and lost one.

For whom was that fight?

Can’t tell. (Smiles)

So, we got a lot of support to make the film. After its completion, we even gave them a list of changes that can be incorporated since we were self-censoring ourselves. Netflix, in fact, told us to instead ‘come from a position of strength’. After that, as far as we know, the entire production team changed. It happens in all companies. When a regime changes, the films approved by the older regime get shelved, partially or fully, and projects start from scratch.

It happened to Anurag Kashyap’s Maximum City, too?

It happens with everyone. In the case of (Ali Abbas Zafar’s web-series) Tandav, what happens is that a lot of film executives, who are working in studios might have been engineers previously, who were drawn to Bollywood studios to earn better and for the glamour of it. Say, attending Shah Rukh Khan’s party to meeting a Jaideep Ahlawat at (Mumbai’s) Soho House. Now, if non-bailable cases are filed in their name, if death threats are given, if media trolling happens, if they are forced to pay lakhs of rupees to lawyers for political cases, they will get scared. After that, they start self-censoring. And that’s a great tactic to keep the helpless and weak in check because they have a lot to lose.

People are told not to play with one’s set cultural traditions and values, but it is art’s duty to play with set values, that’s why we tell stories, so that new values are formed. When the Ramayana and Mahabharata were written, those were new stories at the time. From those came new cultural values. Stories are, thus, written to create new values in society.

In India, families also say ‘respect your values and traditions’.

Yes, but that very family has broken many values. That mother has also, for the very first time, fought and stepped out of the house to go do a job. Like Ayesha in Tees. We tend to forget that. But when you are compelled to conform, when you are told what stories you can tell — which is also Kalki [Koechlin’s] dialogue in the film, that ‘this is the story, you can write it whichever way you want’ — then…

…and that’s why you are wearing a T-shirt with freedom written on it?

And that’s why I have gone insane.

You are neither a Kashmiri nor a Muslim and you made a film about an intergenerational Kashmiri Muslim family. What do you have to say about cultural appropriation?

I am not a Hindu either.

Are you an atheist?

I am nothing. I am not even a Bengali. Can you tell from my Hindi that I am a Bengali?

Who are you?

Indian.

What makes an Indian?

A lot of things, not just one. In me, you’ll find many things. I can speak Hindi, Punjabi, Haryanvi, Bengali. I can eat dosa, chhole bhature, paneer and I’ve eaten all kinds of meat, too. This is what an Indian is. Rarely can anyone in the rest of the world do all of these together. This is the strength of India, that I am everything. Today I am a Muslim, tomorrow I am a Hindu, day after tomorrow I am a Bengali, next week I am a Kashmiri. And it’s not that there is no connection. In Kashmir too, people worship Shiva. In Delhi, people worship Allah. Mosques are found in Trivandrum as well. If I talk about religion, everything is connected. But in that connection, there is a lot of range. There’s no sameness. India means the lack of boredom. You can’t get bored here. But the minute you are told that this is the only way things will be, it means that you might have the facility of Dolby 7.1 surround sound but you are watching a film on mono. This is what is happening.

Were you the brat who did exactly what his parents warned him against?

I was not like that. But, yes, I have stopped telling my parents what I do. (Laughs)

So, a rebel?

A quiet rebel. I’ll go show my defiance in the neighbour’s house.

Your family was an immigrant?

My family has forever been an immigrant. My grandfather, who is Bengali, relocated from West Bengal to Ranchi, and then to Delhi in 1951. I migrated to Ahmedabad to study and then went to Bombay to live.

Does Othering come easy to you?

I have never felt Othered because I have always belonged. The first time when I went to Bombay, I had long hair. While on my way, someone squawked, ‘hey, Rahul Roy.’ And I felt, ‘this is Delhi. Everything is the same. I belong here.’ Now I live in Uttarakhand, I know how many trees are being cut, how much pollution there is, where the debris is falling. In India, there are so many places and so many experiences that if you keep travelling, you will never get bored.

Malayalam cinema, for instance, is quite ingeniously using the mockumentary, among other formats, to tell stories. Other film industries, including Bollywood, aren’t even experimenting.

I feel, today, Malayalam cinema is the most successful cinema in the country because, in Kerala, there’s no thousand light-years’ gap between those who make films and those who watch them. Today, a succesful Bombay producer is playing in crores of rupees but (a majority of) the audience watching his film is, perhaps, penniless, the difference between the two is that of aeroplane and bicycle, so the gap between what is shown and what is seen is wider. So, in their films, we’ll never see any equality, we’ll only see big stories, in which the villain will be no less than cataclysm.

In Kerala, however, there is a little more [class] parity in society. The filmmaker and his audience are both drinking in the same canteen, for instance. So, he knows what is happening. So, such films are being made, on less cost, but they run in single screens, and the money is recovered. That film director doesn’t want to drive an Audi, he will stay in his flat in, say, Trivandrum and make his next film. He is middle class, and so is his audience. So, in the absence of affluence and huge difference in social status, then films are more connected.

Do you watch Bengali cinema?

A little.

Do you see its degeneration?

I don’t know about degeneration. I’m talking about sameness. We are all victims of sameness. Most filmmakers have to run a business. And we all come a little glamour-struck that we want to work with so and so star. I, too, harboured those aspirations. I was, fortunately, disenchanted soon enough. But a lot of people who come from poor families, have parents’ loans to pay off, or other responsibilities, and still want to make a film, for them, it is not easy to say ‘no’. They will have to conform. Someone just asked: ‘where do we stop? We are asked to not speak up. But in keeping mum, our ability to think is also diminishing’. I’d say, you walk on the road of established meanings and then take the side road to create new meanings through your work.

What’s next?

Next, I’m working on two films. One is a crowd-pleaser and the other…

…a self-pleaser?

A crowd-pleaser is also a self-pleaser. If you are not happy with the film you’re making, it shows. It’s evident in all my films that I’ve had great fun while making them. So, a crowd-pleaser to make a little money and another that might put me in hazard’s way. We shall see.