Hansal Mehta doesn’t want to talk about ‘The Buckingham Murders’

Hansal Mehta’s new film, The Buckingham Murders, is all set to hit theatres this week. It’s a much anticipated murder mystery, and the lead, Kareena Kapoor Khan, is easily the biggest ‘A-list star’ he has ever directed. Yet he agrees to meet me for an interview only if it’s not about the movie. Huh, I think, what sort of marketing strategy is this?

“See, there’s a template in which films are promoted, in which you talk about them before the release, and it just doesn’t make sense because the interviewer and interviewee aren’t on the same page,” he explains. “I’d rather let the film do the talking. Otherwise, the conversation is very uninformed.”

It’s a surprising approach, especially in a business that places such a premium on self-promotion. But then, Hansal Mehta is full of surprises; in fact, his entire life has been one of surprises. And I realise that this is what I actually want to talk about.

We meet at his brand-new office in Bandra that’s all soothing pastel sofas, butter-yellow walls lined with a few artworks, and shelves of books ranging from BR Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste to Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Unfinished. Despite his disclaimer, it’s impossible to not mention TBM, given his team is neck-deep in promotions. He’s quick to clarify that for him, the movie is more about grief, trauma, and motherhood, rather than a whodunnit. And it’s not inspired by Kate Winslet’s Mare of Easttown. “I don’t know where this idea came from! Kareena has compared the two in interviews because she liked the series, and both works are about cops who are grieving mothers. But the script for TBM came to me in 2018, much before Mare released (2021).”

With this out of the way, we settle down to chat about, well, everything else.

Samira Sood: How did a computer programmer with no particular interest in filmmaking end up here?

Hansal Mehta: When I finished college, there were few career options one pursued. The feeling was that if you didn’t get into computers, your life was doomed. But even within that, I had a bit of an independent spirit. So I’d already created my own software. Then I went to Australia to work for a video rental company. They used to make low-quality ads for the local store. I’d get done with my programming work for the day, and start tinkering with the video equipment for fun. And watch the films that would come to the rental store. That’s how I discovered a lot of Hindi films and got hooked.

Eventually I shifted to Fiji for work, and a few years later, I had an accident. There was a moment, when the car was hurtling and spinning, that I really felt that this was the end. Miraculously, I wasn’t injured. But that felt like a wake-up call—I wanted to come back home and see my parents. Meanwhile, I had kind of given up on my core expertise of computer programming. See, Fiji was a very relaxed place with a very easy lifestyle—finish work at 3 pm, go to the beach and smoke up, drink beer or kava (a local drink made of a narcotic plant—it tastes like shit, but it’s a community thing, you share the drink, keep passing it around). That was my life. I stopped reading. Weekends were completely wasted. At some point post the accident, I thought, I’m 24 years old. What the fuck am I doing? I knew this couldn’t be my whole life. So I moved back to India. Then came the question: What the fuck will I do now?

SS: But when you came back, India would have changed. Liberalisation had just happened, the markets had opened up, TV wasn’t just Doordarshan anymore.

HM: Exactly! Zee TV had just started operations, other channels were coming in and doing exciting things, and I’d had no idea, because Fiji had little to no TV. Actually, it’s funny that my most successful piece of work (Scam 1992 – The Harshad Mehta Story) is about that phase. All I knew of Harshad Mehta was from trunk calls in Fiji with my dad, who would tell me to send him whatever money I’d saved and he would invest it in shares for me, and how people were really investing a lot of money based on this guy.

Anyway, I realised that it was no longer this hegemony of Doordarshan. And I liked food and cooking. So I went to the Zee office with a typed-up proposal for a food show. It was an open office; the boss, Subhash Chandra, was loitering around; people were screaming at each other. They said, “What do you want?” I said, “I want to propose a show.” “What kind of show?” “A food show.” “One minute.” Then this girl came. I gave her my printout and three weeks later, I had a cheque from Zee saying I was commissioned. And that’s how Khana Khazana happened.

SS: From there to movies was not a huge leap, but you had a pretty rocky road—many of your films are what people would call ‘failures’ in the traditional sense. But were they really? What does that word mean to you?

HM: Failure is such a relative term. And the way films have started to be evaluated over the years is something I don’t understand or like. And it’s getting worse. They’re judged on the basis of the money they make. But box-office collections are frankly only the business of those who have and are invested in the film. Audiences should judge a film only based on whether it engaged them, affected them. Cinema is a life-shaping experience, and by reducing it to numbers, we’ve devalued its importance and beauty. This is a constant battle I’ve had. While a lot of my films have been appreciated, when they were released, they were evaluated by the fact that they didn’t make much money. But how many people know that most of my films didn’t lose money either? There were only two films where my greed to get box-office validation actually led to losses—Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! and Simran.

Box-office collections are frankly only the business of those who have and are invested in the film. Audiences should judge a film only based on whether it engaged them, affected them.

This is why, since Scam, I’ve had this policy that right before a film or show releases, I just leave. I disappear on a holiday and switch off my phone. I tell my team, “Whatever it is, don’t tell me. Whatever happens, we’ll find out next week, but right now, I need to work towards moving on.” I don’t like spending time in the city trying to build false expectations based on ‘data’, and on other people’s idea of success.

To me, failure is when I have failed to actually tell the story that I set out to tell, failed to be moved by what I’ve tried to say, failed to shift something through my story. And by shifting something, I don’t just mean conscience-bending or mind-bending. It can also be making you laugh.

Also, by escaping once the work is done, you get a chance to reflect, away from the circle you’re surrounded by, away from social media and the pressure of living up to somebody’s mediocrity.

SS: And away from the pressures of Instagram likes and followers, you mean.

HM: Yes! A lot of decisions today are made on the basis of likes and followers. These days, my assistant is constantly reminding me that I have to put up this or that post for TBM and I’ll do it because it’s part of my job. But I always change the caption, I refuse to just copy-paste. And then the marketing people call me and say “Arre aapne caption badal diya?” And I’m like, “Yaar, caption mera hai, you can’t tell me what to write.”

SS: The early 2000s were a dark phase in your life. Your first marriage didn’t work out, work wasn’t going well. How did you come out of it?

HM: That’s true. After Chhal in 2002, I had slipped into an abyss. I had no original ideas and was creatively bankrupt. I had a bunch of unreleased films, I was sad and confused about my broken marriage, and wallowing in self-loathing and self-pity. I was working for Sanjay Gupta at White Feather Films and directing Woodstock Villa, but when I saw the film, I was taken aback. It was very cool and stylish and all that, but that was never me. So I said, I need to run away from this. I need to find myself.

Meanwhile, I’d met Safeena [Husain, a social worker, whom he married in 2022] in 2005, and we had a daughter. We decided to move near Lonavala. My sons from my first marriage were with my parents in Pune, so this way, we could also be closer to them. Then we had our second daughter in 2009. And it became a new life, a different, simpler rhythm. Also, Safeena had started these socially connected study-abroad programmes. I started running that, especially after Rihanna was born, when Safeena couldn’t. I’d take students around, visit areas I’d have never ordinarily visited. Of course, I hadn’t retired from films—I was not even 40. And every few months I did think, okay, I need to make something. But overall, I was happy, and comfortable to wait until something happened.

SS: And when you weren’t looking for it, Shahid happened.

HM: Well, you know, that’s what happens. In 2010, I saw a news item about Shahid Azmi being killed in his office, and I knew I’d found my next movie. It’s a terrible paradox, but in Shahid Azmi’s death, I found a new life.

SS: But what made you want to tell his story? Because there are so many great human rights stories and activist stories all around.

HM: For me, it’s never about human rights and activism to begin with. Is the character compelling enough? Do I want to explore it further? Stories have to be personal. Something about this young guy’s life and death made me want to find out more about him. Also, I was born and raised in Bombay, but when I came back to India in 1993, I came back to Mumbai. Different cities, at least in my mind. I felt Shahid represented what Mumbai had become, he represented a microcosm that existed all around us, but that we chose to ignore—the marginalised.

I always wanted to tell those stories. Dil Pe… was also about marginalised people. But Shahid was a clearer articulation of that concern. And it was made in 2012, two years before India would go through this major political change. I sensed that change coming. In 2011, when we started work on the film, visited the places where Shahid lived, met people around his life, we realised there are two Indias, to quote Vir Das. This was the story of that other, the people who have been othered because of what we’ve become gradually.

But at the heart of it was a beautiful human story of a boy finding himself. And now I’ve just finished filming Gandhi [a biographical series on the Mahatma based on Ramachandra Guha’s books], again, a journey of self-discovery before becoming a champion of other people’s rights.

SS: Since Shahid, you’ve had one almost film or show every year, sometimes more. Is that partly driven by the fear of returning to creative bankruptcy?

HM: I’ve spent a lot of time not having ideas, and suddenly, I realised they are all there in my subconscious. And now I’m almost desperate to tell stories. I’m very driven by the stories I’m telling, and I’m blessed to be able to tell them. Fear does raise its ugly head. But it’s about how you channelise it into something productive, otherwise it can be debilitating.

One of my coping mechanisms when I feel fear is to gym excessively. I also use fear to work on myself. Like, I recently enrolled in a course at Ashoka University, on the history of the Indian Constitution. I couldn’t attend all the classes, but the reading material that they provided, and the interaction, gave me so much insight into the country that we’re in, that we were born in, and that we don’t enough. All of us who were born way after Independence, have, over the years, begun to devalue what our forefathers have given us—the Constitution. That’s why I wanted to do this course. I wasn’t making a film on it or anything. But it stimulated my thinking. And that’s one way I work on fear.

SS: Last question, since I know you’re a big binge watcher. What are you excited about watching next?

HM: Call Me Bae! I’m really looking forward to it.

And once again, Hansal Mehta surprises me.