Glad to be sore thumb

Ashutosh Gowariker is positively not a happy man. His sincere efforts of potraying the need of Indians to look at the country in a more positive way has failed to deliver, at least so far. And no, he is definitely not aiming for an Oscar with this one. “What is the point in getting awards worldwide when the people have not seen it in your own country?” he quips and in the same breath, “I am not saying that I don’t love awards.”
Born and brought up in Bandra, Gowarikar wanted to study architecture. He was enrolled himself in the Mithibai College in Mumbai for a degree in architecture. “My architecture classes did not seem to be very inviting so I enrolled myself in all the other extra-curricular activities in college like theatre, folk dance and all. I don’t know what they found in me then but I was given a chance to perform, the rest is all an accident,” he says.
But you will not see him in front of the camera for a long time. “I can’t be directing, setting the camera and then moving in front of the camera, checking my make-up and say action. I don’t know how the greats like Gurudutt did it in their times but that’s not for me, not for at least a good ten years from now,” he says.
Women have, however, never been given a significant part in his films. “Yeah? Do you think so?” he asks. “I think Gauri in Lagaan was the one who stood by Bhuvan when he decided to take on the British.” But every Indian woman does that for her lover and besides there was nothing more from her but a song.
“Come on, in the age of Murder and Julie, my heroine is not showing off her cleavage and yet getting noticed. I am not doing a David Dhawan film here. In that sense, I am unwilling to do any films on women.”
He hopes Swades will get a better reception even two weeks after its release. "I don’t want people to see the film as a boring documentary. I want them to see beyond the facts in the film. It is a very slow paced film in a time of very fast ones. I want it to stand out as a sore thumb.” After three hours and twelve minutes, I guess it is not just about a thumb.

Published in Hindustan Times Next on January 5, 2005