One of the biggest issues faced by women in India is not having a toilet at home. Some 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have adequate toilets and among them 1 billion defecate in the open fields, behind bushes, or over water bodies — putting themselves, especially their children, in danger of deadly fecal-oral diseases like diarrhoea.
As per UNICEF, 50 per cent of rapes in India happen when women go out to defecate. The issue has raised concerns all over the country, the biggest proof of this fact lies with the biggest name in the Indian cinematic industry like Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Narayan Singh and Akshay Kumar getting involved to make the issue come to a forefront. Toilet Ek Prem Katha and Mere Pyaare Prime Minister are two such movies from Bollywood that are receiving a lot of hype for being based entirely on rural population not choosing to and not being able to have proper toilets in their houses.
Mere Pyaare Prime Minister, directed by Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra, is a story about an eight-year-old boy and his mother, who live in the slums of Mumbai along with millions of others, facing a common problem — not having a toilet.
This boy decides to write a letter to the Prime Minister detailing his plight and travels to Delhi to hand deliver it to him. The movie details the stark horror that people living in the slums face every day. However, the story as satirical as it sounds is presumably a story of hope in the face of adversity and celebrating life.
“For the longest time, we had these Westerners looking down on slums, Third World and poverty. I want to change that. I want to show that there is life and harmony and that people are more forthcoming and helpful in resolving issues around these areas,” director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, on a quick visit to Delhi, tells you.
The story also details the friendship of four boys living in the slums. “Kids living in these slums are full of life and they have so much life, in fact they have more life then the kids in Jorbagh and Greater Kailash” he says adding that the endeavour is to build the brick between Indian cinema and world cinema. “Not Bollywood and Hollywood. These two places really don’t concern me too much. There is an ocean out there that you can appeal to with your movies,” Mehra says.
This movie was shot in the actual slums, the supporting actors were chosen from the slums it and even the homes shot were real households. With this movie the visionary film maker wanted to correctly portray the actual life and difficulties of the major part of the population of our nation.
Sharing an anecdote, he tells you that each day day was one. “Everyday something unusual happened because we were shooting in a real location with real people. Even the kids, were cast from around that area, so every day was a new day of learning for me. There are these pipelines through which the water is distributed. One day I was walking on these pipelines, and I found a bunch of kids hanging around. They were all on their smartphones and tablets, they were lounging behind a 5 star hotel, and they said we get free Wi-Fi here. And they knew more about Real Madrid, and Manchester United and WWF than I did. For the longest time we had this western gaze of looking down on slums and the Third World and poverty, I want to change that. I want to show that there is more life, more harmony, people are more forthcoming more helpful,” Mehra says.
Then there is the matter of making these movies reach the middle and lower middle strata of the population in the country.
“I think we haven’t even started distribution, we have to invent screens there are too few screen sin India and they don’t reach the people. And that not only affects the reach, it affects the wisdom, it affects the growth of the industry. You really can’t take out your mother and sister and wife, sorry I sound like a man right now, and they shouldn’t need to be taken out. Also you can’t take them to a theatre because they are so dirty, they don’t have loo’s, I am not talking about multiplexes and Delhi, Mumbai, Banglore I am talking about India. So even now I have been working on the whole research for it for the last three years. We are short of approximately about 2,400 screens in India today, right now there are around 800 Hindi speaking theatres and altogether there are 1,200. Single screens are shutting down; we are only making theatres for the rich people. India does not reside in the upper class, India resides in the low and lower middle class so we have to take cinema to them,” he says.
The reason for making movies on social issues, for him, stems from the fact that whatever you do is the choices that you make in life, it’s what defines you also. “Your work is extensions of your personality so what you deeply feel about, you try and express those stories. I think it’s not just me it’s been going through the ages, what you feel what you really want to say whether you are a painter, or an actor or a film maker. You express your thoughts through your work. Yes somehow, quite a bit of my work has been socio-political also,” Mehra says.