A BOLLYWOOD 'KAPOOR' IN SEARCH OF AN AUDIENCE

Having directed nine acclaimed films in less than two decades, Rajat Kapoor is one of Hindi cinema's most prolific and underrated auteurs. Then why does he always have a problem getting his movies funded?

- Mayank Shekhar

It’s one thing to act out a part before a camera — however tough, over a 30-day shoot, after an 18-day workshop/rehearsal. Quite another “to watch someone who looks like you,” and wonder, then, “Damn, why did I do this [role]?”

Which is precisely what Rajat Kapoor went through, he tells me, when Mira Nair sent over the VHS tape of Monsoon Wedding (2001) to him — much before the landmark film’s release.

Monsoon Wedding was shot entirely in English, and Nair wanted to make it sufficiently bilingual (with enough Hindi in it), for Indian audiences. She had sent over the videotape for Kapoor to work on the translations — something he had done for Nair’s Kamasutra (1996) as well.

Only that once he pressed play, the image of the walking, talking, slimy, patriarch-like pedophile, Tej Puri, as himself, haunted him. As it did the audiences, for decades after. Kapoor never let his daughter (three-year-old, then) watch Monsoon Wedding since.

Looking far back, how does someone even play a pedophile, I wonder, when we meet, guessing that he’s probably not been asked this before. Evidently, it’s not a role he wanted — he had auditioned for other parts in Monsoon Wedding, including the equally iconic Man Friday, PK Dubey’s.

He recalls, “The biggest problem was to play someone older. It’s hard to play someone not your age; you end up faking it. I was 40, playing someone 60-plus. We took a month to figure out what to do with my hair — go orange, didn’t work; but now you can’t turn it black again; try white streaks.”