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Director Ashutosh Gowariker and his leading lady of Mohenjo Daro, Pooja Hegde visit Box Office India to talk about their upcoming period film

Box Office India (BOI): Ashutosh, can you start by introducing her to us?

Ashutosh Gowariker (AG): Please meet Chaani urf Pooja Hegde. While scripting the film, I was thinking that I needed someone with innocence and someone who did not have stardom baggage. I thus began looking for a fresh face when Sunita (Gowariker) spotted Pooja in a commercial and suggested that we call her. She called Pooja and I auditioned her. And that was it.

I needed someone who was very graceful and had a lot of dignity. She suited that perfectly. When I first saw her and when she came on board and did the audition and performed... Usually, when I am auditioning, I have a favourite song that I make all my actresses perform to, which is Hoto pe aisi baat. I made her perform to that and she was outstanding. I loved the fact that she was naturally graceful. After that, I think we did three to four more tests.

Pooja Hegde (PH): I did, like, five scenes and the song.

BOI: What were your feelings when you got a call from AGPPL?

PH: It wasn't like I was told that this is the film we are auditioning for'. It was more like, We are planning some projects and there are a few things in hand, so let's just meet. If, by chance, it works out, then great and then maybe we will work on something else.' I met Sunita, then I met Ashu sir and they told me about the film. After that, I was given five scenes and I was, like, Oh my God!' So it wasn't like they told me that we have this massive film in hand.

BOI: Do you think you got lucky as your debut film is opposite Hrithik Roshan and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker?

PH: Of course! Pretty much blessed, I would say. As a debutante, you have certain boxes you want to tick... If it has a big director, check; a big actor, check; big production house, again check. Also, the script was great. So, it's been a dream come true.

BOI: Was it intimidating in any way, since Ashutosh is the director and Hrithik your co-star? Did it ever get to you that there is so much riding on this film?

PH: Hrithik makes you feel so comfortable that the thought never crossed my mind. The only time I felt intimidated was when Hrithik started dancing. Let's face it, he is the best dancer in our industry. So when he started dancing, I thought to myself, Okay, now do I have to match this?' He can take the simplest step and make it look so complicated and so graceful. At the same time, he can take a really complicated step and make it look easy. You can't help but feel intimidated when he starts dancing. It got me really scared.

BOI: Ashutosh, why were you so secretive about your supporting cast this time? Throughout the making of this film, we only knew that Hrithik and Pooja featured in Mohenjo Daro.

AG: When you are creating a world you want, it embellishes everything with freshness. Although all of us know Kabirji(Bedi), who is a great performer with a great voice and all that, to be able to bring a film like this with a certain newness is the trick. It was enough that Hrithik was doing the movie and I thought people should settle into that first. It's a pre-historical movie and Hrithik is playing the lead actor... that information needed to go out first. And I have a different set of actors in the film. Suhasiniji (Mulay) is there in almost all our films. I believe she is always the first to be cast. I think it blended in very well, the audience will like them more if they get to see them much closer to the film's release.

BOI: Was it more difficult to cast this time?

AG: It's always difficult to cast. Nalini Rathnam is the casting director in my film. She conducted her own research, and she wanted to bring in newer and fresh faces, even from non-Hindi speaking regions. I too watch a lot of regional television, like DD-Oriya, DD-Srinagar, DD-Bangla... because you get to see all kinds of actors including seasoned actors who never get a chance to come to Mumbai or they don't want to as they are happy in their own space. So there is a different kind of freshness there to get them on board. I did this in Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar. In this film too, I wanted to get some fresh actors, so I have Diganta Hazarika, who is a well-known Assamese actor. It is a time-consuming process but the payoff big.

BOI: When and why did you decide to make the film?

AG: It's something you have studied in a paragraph in school but when you visit a museum, you see artifacts from that period and you are filled with wonder. I was feeling that sense of wonder, which coincided with me watching movies on the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. These movies are made with so much pride.

I have always wondered why no one has ever made a movie on this civilisation, our ancestors. The tough part for me was deciding whether I had the time and energy to research the subject. I knew it would take at least two years. There was no reference material; we don't have any books written on it. So my film would have to be based on archaeological findings. Sunita was very gung-ho when she heard the basic thought of what I wanted to make.

BOI: How much of the movie is fact and how much is fiction?

AG: To answer your question in a broad way, anything you see in terms of architecture and property, in terms of excavation, is all accurate. The song Tu hai is done on the Great Bath and we built the Great Bath to scale, just as we did the houses in the film.

BOI: What is the difference between your two period films, Jodhaa Akbar and Mohenjo Daro?

AG: Jodhaa Akbar relates more to the medieval period and there is a lot of material available on it. Akbar had himself commissioned two writers, ki aap dono mere zindagi ke baare me likhiega. One was Abul Fazal, who wrote the Akbar Nama and the other was Abd-ul-Qadir Bada'uni. Both wrote in very different styles. Abul Fazal wrote with great splendour ki aaj Shehanshah aaye unhe zukham tha phir bhi unhone hume deedar diya. Bada'uni wrote about the same incidents almost calling names to Abul ki itna kuch nahi tha it was just a sneeze. This mix of one being a balanced account and the other a flowery account is something I could use in combination in Jodhaa Akbar.

But I had no written material to go by for Mohenjo Daro. So more than historians, we had to rely on archaeologists. It was the most wonderful experience to interact with archaeologists. It's incredible to see them at work. Working in sand and mud and extracting objects, and based on extracting these objects they say ki yeh kya ho sakta tha 5,000 years ago.

My first question to Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, the leading archeologist at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa for more than 35 years, was... I want to do this, are you with me or not? And the best thing was, he said to me, You know what? We should thank you for making this film because, as archaeologists, we are constantly struggling to find funds to support our work.' Usually governments run out of funding ki yeh ho gaya aur kitna dhund rahe ho aap, aur kya milega aapko.

After he agreed to come on board, we invited him over and hosted him here along with five other archaeologists. I realised that some of them specialised in pottery, while some were specialists in jewellery etc. There are so many different aspects. I somehow had to bring all of that together and build a story. Take a look at the classic seals, which are really small... if there was a drummer on one of them, that became Sarman (Hrithik). If you have an image of one guy fighting two people, that became another scene.

When you watch the movie, you will feel as if you have visited this place,lagta hai ki haan yaha aisa hua hoga. I felt responsible towards this part of history. Maan ghadat nahin karna mujhe. I wanted to imbue my imagination with credibility. So we had historians there and archaeologists here.

BOI: What about costumes?

AG: The reference to costumes is the figurines that have been found. All the figurines are wearing jewellery and some had elaborate headgear. The amount of cloth on them is very little. So I had to keep track of what flourish the costumes could have had. Except for Chaani's character, I have not used too much headgear in the costumes or it would have looked like too many people were wearing headgear.

Of course, vanity is the oldest virtue and women of that time used stones from the riverbeds as ornaments and used lapis lazuli. They used anything they could lay their hands on that looked pretty. They also frequently used feathers and that's what we have done with Chaani's character. Pooja will tell us how much she enjoyed wearing them!

PH: It was heavy!

BOI: How did you prepare for this role without any sources of reference?

PH: The sets were so detailed that once we stepped onto them, you were enveloped by the ambience. Ashu sir's detailing is so great that if there's amashal, the wall behind it would be blackened to resemble soot. Whenever I stepped onto the sets, I automatically got into the mood. Of course, the costumes helped. When it came to explaining a scene, Ashu sir made you feel like you were already there. Luckily for me, I had great actors to act alongside, so after a while, it became more about reacting than acting. Everything was created for me and that made it easier for me as an actor.

BOI: What was your first reaction on reading the script?

PH: Wow! It took me three hours to read the entire script but I read it in one go. I simply couldn't stop. My first thought was how would we create this because it's a larger-than-life film? I was really excited to see how it was all going to come together. When I first went on the sets, I actually went a day before I started shooting and it took me a day to tour the entire set.

AG: It was spread across 25 acres.

PH: As Chaani, I couldn't look obviously awestruck on the first day of the shoot ki this is mind-blowing. So a day before, I roamed around and tried to feel like a part of this civilisation. I must say I am really lucky because if you visit Mohenjo Daro, you won't be able to see much because you have to go to Pakistan and it's in ruins. It's not like Mohenjo Daro was in its full form and glory. I could actually see every single thing, you know, they have recreated those ancient instruments like drums and they look very funky and old. They actually made these instruments from scratch.