Bajrangi Bhaijaan thread #3 Updates - Page 25

Over an hour-long conversation, ahead of his much-awaited Eid entertainer Bajrangi Bhaijaan, he talks to Bombay Times about his best friend and wife Mini Mathur, the affectionate Katrina Kaif and what makes Salman Khan so endearing as a human being. Excerpts:

My grandfather was a well-known person in Hyderabad as he was the judge in the Nizam's court. At that point his son therefore my father Rasheeduddin Khan marrying my Hindu mother was a big deal. However they got married, I was born in Hyderabad and then we moved to Delhi, where my father became one of the founding professors of Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he taught Political Science. Due to his work in academics, he was later nominated to the Rajya Sabha, where he was a member for two terms. I grew up in Delhi and went to Modern School (Barakhamba Road) and later did Economics Honours from KMC. The best part of being a product of a mixed marriage was that we never saw the difference in the two religions. For us, we celebrated every festival with a sense of joy, without the burden of rituals, which is why my belief in religion is more cultural than practising. During college, I did a lit bit of theatre, but would do of lot of mountaineering and trekking that got me in love with photography, that till date remains my biggest passion. My mom was a great film buff. She used to bundle me and my sister up in a car and take us to watch all kinds of films at Vigyan Bhavan, where families of MPs were shown a lot of world cinema. Also, Shyam Benegal was a very close family friend and thus, we would be made to go and see all his films. While we hated seeing all those world films at the age of seven, slowly we started enjoying them. We would see every Amitabh Bachchan film on the first day. So, without really knowing it, it made me love cinema. Everything was priming me to go to the film school. Post graduation, my sister who is otherwise a year senior to me, skipped a year as she had gone mountaineering and she returned to join the film course at Jamia. I tagged along with her to apply for whatever she was applying for and both of us landed up doing the same film course. Within 10 days of joining there, I knew that it was my calling.

One of the visiting documentary filmmakers at Jamia said, 'If you want to travel the world, become a documentary filmmaker.' And that just stuck in my head. I got out and engaged with one of the most senior political journalists Saeed Naqvi, who remains till today one of the greatest influences in my life. He was known as the head hunter of the world, as he would go and get interviews of all the heads of state. International politics, anyways, had been dining room conversation for us while growing up, due to my father and for five years, I worked with Saeedbhai and travelled over 60 countries with him, assisting him on making documentaries. There is no education better than travel and it changed my whole world view. I realised that there was a difference between the stories we had been told and reality and which is why my films, be it Kabul Express, New York, Ek Tha Tiger and now Bajrangi Bhaijaan have a strong political statement that they make. Even in Bajrangi Bhaijaan, while it just seems to be a nice human emotion story about a girl who gets lost and finds a saviour who takes her home, the moment you put the backdrop of the hostility of India and Pakistan, you question yourself as to how that cute little girl could be an enemy. You realise that you need to make the difference between people and the state.

My wife Mini Mathur. She has been such a part and parcel of my entire journey. I was a freelance photographer and she was a freelance presenter when we first met in Delhi, where we had both been called to take up an assignment as a team. This was just a few months after my father had died in 1996. We both did not have dates, but we saw each other and instantly decided to change our minds to be able to work together. We fell in love, got married and then Mini got selected as an MTV anchor. She had to move to Mumbai and I moved with her. I wrote Kabul Express. Maria Goretti and Mini became best friends and through Maria, I met her husband Arshad Warsi, who loved the script and was on. I then met John Abraham. I was nobody and yet John after reading the script said, 'I am doing the film whenever you find a producer.' Somebody sent my script to Adi Chopra and he decided to produce it. And John stuck to his commitment.

She is an extremely balanced person. She can straddle all kinds of things from being an out-and-out person, who has run a very interesting and successful career, to being this complete housewife who loves cooking and is extremely house-proud, to loving to travelling to different parts of the world, to being traditional in the way she approaches many things. We have both actually grown together and are each other's best sounding boards as well as each other's harshest critics. I don't think any sane wife would have let her husband go to Afghanistan in the middle of war and make documentaries post marriage, but she did as she knew my passion. She stood by me. And vice versa after our daughter Saira was six months, New York had just released and Mini got a show wherein she had to be in a Malaysia jungle for two months, I stayed back and looked after the kids and would fly there to be with Mini. The most important element between Mini and me is that we are great friends.

Katrina and Salman are very close friends. Katrina is also very close to my family. While her public persona is very different and she needs to put on a mask, she in reality is a very warm and affectionate person and is a fun girl with a great sense of humour. Salman and me had a very interesting beginning. I was taking my script of Kabul Express all over the place. A friend of mine Appu who worked with Sohail Khan's company said, 'Let's make Salman bhai hear this script.' I was so far away from a superstar in Bollywood that I could not even think of narrating the script to a Salman but he got me to narrate it to him. I showed Salman my documentaries and he got fascinated. He heard Kabul Express and said to me, 'Main woh Taliban play karna chahatahoon.' And we all laughed and I went away. Years later, when I was making New York with Yash Raj and they approached Katrina for it, she said to me, 'What kind of film is this without song and dance?' She was in two minds. She was with Salman at that time and she said to him, 'What kind of strange film has Adi narrated to me?' Salman asked, 'Who is directing it?' She said, 'Some new guy called Kabir.' And he said, 'Kabir Khan?' She said,'Yes' and he tells her, 'I have seen his work. Shut your eyes and sign the film.' She said a yes and that's a strange kind of karmic thing I had with Salman. And then I did Ek Tha Tiger with him and Katrina and he again tells me, 'I was serious that time. I told you I wanted to play the Taliban guy but you didn't get back to me. When we began Ek Tha Tiger Salman and I approached it with different sensibilities but by the end of the film we understood each other and became friends. He feels very strongly about certain issues for instance, for secularism. We both are products of mixed marriages and both have celebrated all religions equally in our lives. So, I knew that if Salman's depth could be channelised through mainstream cinema, it could be huge. And that's why he jumped at the idea of Bajrangi Bhaijaanand liked it so much so that he also decided to produce it.

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There are no sides to Salman. What you see and hear in front of you, that's him. There is no agenda, no complexity and no complex. If he is saying it he means it and that is both unique and heart-warming. One thing that really made him endearing to me is that he could have well taken the position of being the superstar in Ek Tha Tiger when we were having creative differences, but he never took that position. He always had discussions and sometimes sulked before he did what I wanted him to do but never ever came from that position of power, which is a very great quality and that quality comes from his family, which is his biggest strength. The warmth and grounding he has comes from his family. And I really respected him for that.

Immensely. Despite him always having supported me in what I did, he never saw me becoming a filmmaker. He used to be so scared when I would go mountaineering but still he would never ever stop me. He was my go-to guy. He was my encyclopedia when I would be researching anything and I miss him immensely for that. My entire world view today is because of only him.

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