FINDING HOMI

Raghuvendra Singh meets Homi Adajania, the reclusive director of the critically acclaimed Angrezi Medium

- Raghuvendra Singh

He’d rather be deep-sea diving off Lakshadweep islands than make films or give interviews. Homi Adajania is more of a traveler, more of a sea creature than a filmmaker. One can say making films is a hobby and diving his vocation. Films came to him out of the blue. He says before Being Cyrus (2005), he didn’t know a thing about making movies. People thought of him as an ad filmmaker. But all he had done till then was shoot a prank video involving a bomb and two unsuspecting friends. He’s done some crazy things as a traveler, like living with a Vietnamese family for a bet. Also, he lived in Europe for four months working his way through odd jobs like babysitting, washing sofas, painting houses to save money to buy a ticket back home. These experiences taught him that it doesn’t matter what culture you come from. Human beings, at the core, have the same primal emotions, which help you both structure a story and sell it.

“A friend gave me a story and said it was being rejected everywhere because it’s full of profanities. I liked it and said I’d make a movie on it. My wife (Anaita Shroff Adajania, fashion stylist) and my friends were like, ‘Homi’s again going to do some f*****g shit,” he laughs at the memory today. The psychological drama, Being Cyrus, starred Saif Ali Khan, Naseeruddin Shah and Dimple Kapadia. “I have a visual mind. I can connect the emotional dots. These are my few strengths. Apart from that, I believe I’m an average filmmaker,” he states self-deprecatingly.