National award-winning filmmaker Janaki Vishwanathan forays into Hindi cinema with Yeh Hai Bakrapur. She talks to Karan Bhardwaj about her admiration for realistic cinema
With a national award in her kitty, Janaki Vishwanathan is quite a respected filmmaker down south. After dabbling for more than a decade in cinema there, she is finally ready with her maiden Hindi film Yeh Hai Bakrapur. The movie is a social satire set against the backdrop of rural India. A multi-layered film, it dwells, at the primary level, on the relationship between eight-year-old Zulfi Qureshi and his pet goat Shahrukh. “It is also a hilarious take on the complex belief systems in our society and the conflicts that ensue thereon,” says the director, who juggled in goat markets of Bidar (Karnataka) to find the ‘apt’ pet. “I was quite clear about the personality of the goat. So I auditioned over 400 goats. Since it is one the central characters, I wanted it to look like an intelligent goat with specific features. And it had to be the male. We found Shahrukh two days before the shooting was to begin,” she tells us.
Janaki doesn’t intend to poke fun at any Bollywood star. In fact, she was shocked to find how majority of animals in local markets were named on these personalities. “There were Shah Rukhs, Aamirs and Salmans...market was flooded with such pets. I find that ‘cute’ since these villagers are quite fond of these celebrities. It’s their way of expressing love. Co-incidentally, the goat we found was also named Shahrukh. So it was not me who gave this name,” she says.
Why did you take so long to foray into BollywoodIJ “There’s no clear cut reason for it. I am driven by scripts. The script of my first film (Kutty) was written by Tamil writer Sivasankari. The following films were also made in southern languages. However, Yeh Hai Bakrapur is situated in the Hindi heartland. It wouldn’t have been justice to make it in Tamil. Nonetheless, cinema speaks universal language. What varies is cultural context. I choose language and everything else on the requirements of script,” she says.
Janaki came across an interesting piece of news some three years where a goat called Khushi were brought from Rajasthan to Delhi. People went crazy to see her as it was believed that the goat had miraculous powers. “The news shocked me and also encouraged me to investigate more about such incidents. It finally took me to herd mentality of people and their belief systems,” she says. The film stars Anshuman Jha, Asif Basra, Amit Sial, Utkarsh Majumdar and Faiz Mohammed in main characters. “I took the entire cast and crew to Bider ten days before the schedule. I wanted everybody to absorb the surrounding. There should be a sense of belongingness to adapt the culture. The cast familiarised with the local people and we shot at real locations. Sometimes, people would not even know about the shoot,” she tells us.
Janaki, who has also been a journalist, has made realistic cinema so far but is open to all kinds of films. “I don’t limit myself as a storyteller. However, I will always find logic in mainstream cinema. I cannot do no brainers!” she says.