This came in from Bhaskara :
“Today I was watching a local kannada news channel. There was a news that, people in Bijapur were furious over water supply. The reason was for weeks there was no water supplied to homes. When the public attacked the local water regulation body, they found out that there was water in the tank, but it was being supplied only to influential people like Politicians and Business men. You needed to have political influence to get water in the tap !!”
So this is the story of Paani. 12 years ago when I was trying to get funding for Paani, every one said that I was talking about a fantasy film, that no one would identify with the problem. Today they say I must make the film because it is so relevent.
The Yellow Shirt and Christoph Waltz
Suresh (he, the one that got kissed by Cate Blanchett) laid out my favourite shirt. It’s a yellow shirt that does not fade, and crumples in a way that speaks of casualness and not shabbiness, and it’s so loose that I can slump around anywhere and it will hide my body posture. Plus every time I wear it people say “hey, you look great and so healthy”. As a director I know that is just the bright yellow reflecting on my skin to create an illusion.
So I save this particular shirt for special occasions.
Which it was not today. Just one of those days where I was going to drudge around complaining to myself about not believing in the scene I just wrote for Paani. I did not get goose flesh, I did not shed tears, I did not get angry, so just convinced myself that 50% of all great films too, are just connective tissue between moments of honesty,
So just as I was going to save the yellow shirt for a better occasion, I thought, perhaps it was placed there for a reason ? I mean why did Suresh pick this shirt. What did he know about the events of the day that I did not. Or maybe he did not. Maybe there was a special reason that yellow shirt lay there, staring at me, saying
“you have a Destiny today, wear me and you shall know it”.
Is there an event that calls me, and the yellow shirt a portal to a whole another experience that is already there ? A door that opens every moment in our lives and we either walk through it or not ? Can something as insignificant as the colour of the shirt you wear lead you to an existing experience, or am I causing it by thinking and believing in it. Whichever. I wore the yellow shirt.
No one thought I was looking great. They did not have to. I believed it. Optimism filled the air around me and I smiled. People looked around and thought “why is Shekhar Kapur smiling at us”. I sat and it suddenly came to me. Something I have been wanting to do for long. Very long.
I picked the phone and called my agent and said. I want to speak to Christoph Waltz, the amazing actor that won the Oscar for his performance in ‘Inglorious Basterds’. I must have sounded passionate, the kind of passion that comes from optimism and belief. And so that evening I spoke to Christoph and pitched him Paani. I told him the story and the world of Paani. I told him about the character I wanted him to play. And he said he loved it. And we decided to meet to see how we can work it out etc.
That evening I wrote the troubled scene in Paani. I had a great actor in mind so it suddenly got easier. Reluctantly I took off the shirt and put it the laundry at night. Maybe it will come back through the wash unexpectedly again, and I will walk through another portal !
‘break a blade of grass and you alter the universe” says a Buddhist saying. In this case it was “wear a yellow shirt”
shekhar
Mohammad Yunus and Social Bussiness. Poor people are more socially conscious and honest.
Spent a day in a discussion and conference with this amazing man. Prof or Doctor, whatever adjective you want to give him, Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and many other Grameen Enterprises has changed and continues to change the lives of millions of people in Bangladesh and all over the world. Bringing people out of abject poverty and hopelessness into a life filled with hope, enterprise and dignity.
Grameen Bank has consistently lent money to those that not only banks would not entertain, but you would not let into your homes. Destitute women, (90% of all loans are to women include some that had never touched money before), beggars from the streets encouraging and funding them to turn into door to door salesmen.
For every problem, Prof Yunus has a socially meaningful and an amazingly creative solution. He turns the problem into a paradox and then upside down to find a solution. When the kids who were educated through the raising of standards of living by Grameen Bank loans found they could not get jobs, Prof Yunus started to think of solutions to unemployment. He thought their were not enough employers then !!!
“I went to the kids of the families that had grown prosperous through their relationship with Grameen Bank and said :: How many people can say that their mother’s owned a bank ? ”
The Bank is owned by the women (mostly) that borrowed and returned money. He then loaned their kids money to start businesses to generate employment. He effectively turned job seekers into job creators through loaning money to what he effectively calls his 10 million strong family. And to those that wonder, Grameen Bank has the lowest rate of non – repayment of loans anywhere in the world. A record of 95% good debts. A startling proof that honesty and social consciousness if far far higher in the poor than in the rich.
Prof Yunus now is on a mission to inculcate the same values in the corporate world. The values that he found in the poorest and the most downtrodden in the world. He wants to encourage and create Social Business. He does not want, and never has, encouraged charity. For he believes in sustainable business models and feels charity is not sustainable.
All he wants is for enterprises to understand that it is possible to make a difference by ploughing back the profits of your enterprise into the community, once again, not in charity, but in viable creation of social enterprises. Danone (the food and water co) for example has already started to produce yoghurt (Dahi) in Bangladesh that goes out to school kids that is specially formatted to include all the nutrition a child needs in a day. The factories are small scale enterprises spread in the countryside so they are not heavy on the environment, and the milk can come from local farmers and does not need to travel large distances. The technology was developed at Danone in France in collaboration with Grameen engineers, and the price of the nutritious youghurt is such that almost anyone can afford it at least twice a week.
Danone makes money, they show profits after all expenses. It’s just that they do not take the profits out, but plough it back in to the community. Prof Yunus is now, on a campaign to spread this to the rest of the world.
He and I are talking about a Social Media business. Any suggestions ?
Does true love only come with age and wisdom ? Heath Ledger’s screen test
When I screen tested Heath Ledger for Four Feathers I said to him that I wanted him to perform the same scene two ways. One as a young man without the experience and chaos of life. In which love means all about taking. And the other as the same man, having gone through chaotic experiences in which he had to let go structure and understand that the power of love lay in giving and not taking. Heath was brilliant in that. In the same position, with the same girl and the same lines, his eyes changed, and you saw strength of wisdom flowing out of him. I knew I had found someone special.
I have been trying to get that screen test and not yet been successful, for Heath has often said that was the most grueling day he had experienced, but also the most rewarding.
The following video (not of Heath ) has been viraling on the net and if you have not seen it, please do. It will move you to tears and asks the question “does love only come from age and wisdom” ?
We are the stories we tell ourselves. My talk at TED.com
I am a very shy man.
I went in and came out of my TED talk a little uncomfortable. I am not a speaker, but if I do, I use the platform to hear words from myself that I have not heard before. I like to surprise myself and see if I can get in to a situation where my mind has opened up out of the sheer panic of being in front of an audience that is judging every word that comes out, an audience that has heard the best speakers and the most brilliant minds speak to them.
What, after all is the point of being there if you do not take the opportunity to bare yourself, not to the audience only, but to yourself. How often do you get a chance to do that ? To allow the truth to come out of you rather than manipulate it through the prejudices and manipulations of your own mind.
So what have I to lose, I ask myself ? Only my pride, and that is not much of a loss in the face of the truth is it ?
So I know I left people a little perplexed at the and of the talk. And later people asked me what I meant I could not really remember the words I had spoken. Why would I when the words were really not mine ? But suddenly I am seeing a huge interest all over the world in my talk, and through others interpretation, I find the meaning to my words. What a wonderful and surprising life this is.
You can see my talk at : http://on.ted.com/8DK0
Here is a point of view from Caroline who reviews Ted talks @ http://www.talktalk.ca/
“Context – Ted India Hollywood/Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur (“Elizabeth” & “Mr,India”) 2009.
Analysis – There is something about this guy that I find not only fascinating but there is a part of me that feels compelled to watch him. Is he the most phenomenal public speaker in the sense that he follows ?all the rules?? Nope, he follows no public speaking rules, but that is just fine with me because this guy, this guy knows himself. He?s honest with his emotions and deep with his message. I found myself having to go back and listen to sections a few times over to really digest its contents which isn?t the most favourable environment to create when doing a presentation but I?m not going to be terribly harsh with Shekhar…I have fondness for him and thus I excuse some of methods in which he presents, I think you will too. It is fascinating to me that the audience will excuse a lot if they like the presenters character.
Finding moments of what Shekhar calls ?organic truths? in film is the goal…”if you can get 5 moments like that in your film then it is all worthwhile”. Shekhar walks us through how organic moments can be harnessed; through panic, visual storytelling, not measuring…but for me the key to his message comes down to how we talk to ourselves. If you?ve been following this blog at all you know the term ?Pep Talk? and what I would consider to be one of the keys to doing a superb talk (and, I might add is the key to: life, the universe and everything…shout out to the Hitchhiker fans out there)
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Continue reading “We are the stories we tell ourselves. My talk at TED.com”
The economics of consumerism
I always wondered the logic of President Obama’s economic stimulus package. It was based on restoring confidence. And confidence (whether Obama meant that or not) is measured by the people consuming more. Every Christmas, for example, the economy is measured by the amount people spend in stores. And this is becoming a measure of economic resurgence all over the world, In India for example, the increasing number of automobiles sold is touted as measure of an economy that is surging ahead.
But isn’t excessive consumerism the one basic problem facing the planet ? And the fundamental problem with the US economy is also that it’s model has to be driven by increasing consumerism (aside from trade in military hardware) that cannot be accelerated beyond a certain point ? How then can ‘consumer confidence’ be a measure or a long term solution of the fundamental problems facing us. How does it help that China and the US have become co- dependant on each other, fundamentally doing the same things. Driving each others consumerism
Please, it you have not already, watch this video :
The Spinning Coin
spin a coin and make every decision.
heads I do,
and tails I do not,
hold the coin and let destiny decide
but did the coin really stop spinning ?
a trillion, trillion coins spinning
while I ponder
has the decision already made itself ?
while my mind pondered
The man who stood with the tree
He came one day and settled under the Banyan tree that grew in the garden of my building but branched carelessly into the street. Clad in saffron clothes as many wandering holy men do in India. Nothing special except if you looked carefully, his legs were unimaginably swollen as if he carried the weight of his self in his legs. Strange that it did not bother him at all.
We were curious, especially as he seemed to decide that the tree was his home. This after all was no forest. It was Juhu. Smack in the middle of one of the more chaotic, bustling and yet up market real estates in suburban Mumbai. And there he stayed, night after night. Curiously never, ever sitting, or lying down. Day or night, the man always just stood. No wonder his legs were so swollen.
Khare Baba ( The standing holy man) as we affectionately began to call him, fashioned himself a kind of children’s swing which he slung over one of the many branches of the tree. And late at night when we would come back from drunken parties, Khare Baba as would still be standing, but with his arms strung through the swing, so that he would not fall down if he fell asleep. We would hoot greetings, while he would just look disdainfully at us, or sometimes raise a hand back in an affectionate greeting. Khare Baba soon became a fixture.
If you asked him why he always stood, he would just say that it was his penance. To never again sit or lie down. To never rest again. What sin could a man have committed in his 20’s that required this kind of punishment upon himself ? He never told us. And as is believed in India, if a man is going through his Tapasya with such extreme penance, then he deserves to be worshiped. And so people from around Juhu would come to be blessed by Khare Baba. Into the same tree they carved a small temple to him. Khare Baba would calmly bless anyone that came, but at no time did he ask for anything. People just gave him food.
I remember sitting silently with Khare Baba late into the night waiting for dawn to come. Smoking hash sometimes, but never saying much. He would in any case refuse to talk about himself. And one day we suddenly noticed that Khare Baba had disappeared. Not just gone wandering around Juhu. He did not return. We never saw him again. We never found out where he went, but then we never knew where he came from either.
The temple is still there. Occasionally I see Coconut shells and lit incense sticks, so I know that the temple still lives. People probably do not know the origins of the temple after 20 years since Khare Baba left. But so what ? it’s a temple in a flowing Banyan Tree, and how many of those are left in Mumbai ? The temple ensures this beautiful tree will never be cut down as thousands others are in Mumbai. And perhaps that was Khare Baba’s purpose. To stand tall with the tree, for when did a tree ever rest or sit down ?
And when people ask me why I keep coming back to India, I tell them the story of Khare Baba. Anywhere else in the world, the people would have been frightened by this man. They would have complained and worried that he maybe a child molester. The police would have come and taken him away, put him in jail. But in India we never questioned the wandering spirit. Just accepted his arrival with the same ease as we did his leaving.
love and madness
How could you be in love
without being love itself ?
How could you be a devotee
without being devotion itself ?
You, that measure my madness
standing as you are
on an illusory ground of high morality
How can you know my madness
till you become mad with me ?
MF Hussein again
After I criticized Shree Shree Ravi Shankar’s remarks on MF Hussein, I was perhaps not surprised by the how many aggressive responses I got back. What confused me though is many people responded with the painting being both anti Hindu and anti Nationalist. Are are they now the same thing for many people ?
I think Shree Shree Ravi Shankar’s force does amazing work. Which is why I was surprised at his remarks. For I thought Universal Compassion was at the centre of Hinduism and the Art of Living. If this was a remark from an ordinary person I would not have given it a second thought.
So the question does arise, is “what is Hinduism” and does it need protection from what people are terming as ‘obscene’ art ? (Which I will say again, I do not believe it is).
What is the Hinduism that needs protection ? How do we see Hinduism now. It seems it now has become an ‘identity’ which it was never supposed to be. Not in the Hinduism that I have understood. Hinduism is about the concept of experiencing the ultimate unity of all that is space, time and matter. It is about experiencing the illusion of the ‘Self’.
If anything Hinduism is about the loss of Identity. And yet more and more people are calling these ideas ‘liberal and therefore “pseudo- intellectual’. Is there a new Hinduism that is emerging that has tones of Nationalism in them ?
I wonder how many people who wrote to me would have supported the Islamic Fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing Satanic Verses ?