Best Highway Interview-Alia-Randeep-Imtiaz about Highway & Cal foo

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Posted: 10 years ago

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, HIGHWAY





All his travels and tours, whether he's shooting or marketing his films, centre around food. So he knows the exact dhaba to hit when visiting Chandigarh or the particular sweetshop to raid while passing through Jaipur. Imtiaz Ali's "only purpose in life" is to eat the best food a region has to offer. And on that list of pan-Indian food treks, Calcutta ranks No. 1 for the Jab We Met director.

So when he came down on Sunday with his Highway lead pair of Randeep Hooda and Alia Bhatt, Imtiaz wanted to take them through the highs of Calcutta food " Aminia's biryani and pasinda, Balaram Mullick's baked rosogolla and notun gurer shondesh, and pastries and patties from Flurys. But first up, a very Bengali dinner at Sonargaon in Taj Bengal, where the team was staying.

t2 chatted up Imtiaz, Randeep and Alia over luchi, begun bhaja, bhetki maachher paturi, kosha mangsho, chingri maachher malai curry and mishti doi. They spoke about their mad-madder-maddest Highway shoot, where they traversed six states in buses and trucks, and about all the life-changing things they did off camera.


Imtiaz, what is this obsession with feeding your cast? Even during your trip to Calcutta for Rockstar, you floutedairline rules to get mishti doi for Ranbir Kapoor...

Imtiaz: (Laughs out loud) When you do publicity for a film, you have to find worthwhile reasons to occupy yourself through the day. And food, I think, is the best. If there's something special in a city which someone has not eaten, I have this irrepressible desire to provide it to him or her. I was telling Alia on the flight that now I have a purpose for this trip!


Alia: This is my first visit to Calcutta but rosogolla and sandesh have always been my favourite Indian desserts.

Imtiaz: Wow! And this is the season for it. The notun gur.

Alia: Thank god I have you in my life now, Imtiaz!

[Everyone laughs as the glasses of ghol (with gondhoraaj lebu) are emptied.]



Randeep is joining the promotional tour for Highway here in Calcutta. Why have you been hiding him, Imtiaz?

Imtiaz: You don't play all your cards at the same time. And you certainly hold your ace back for later in the game. So, Randeep is my ace.

Randeep: Joker, you mean?

[Everyone laughs again.]


Good memories from the shoot, Randeep?

Randeep: Lot of landscapes! Lot of different kinds of food, which I have never had in my life. I am not that much of a foodie.

Alia: Ya, he's a very boring person when it comes to food.

Randeep: But I did taste a lot of different things from north India, which I didn't even know existed. Despite me being from north India. The shooting unit used to be like a kaafila, which used to move from place to place. And that too was a first for me because I have always been a loner and haven't travelled with people. In that sense it was all very new for me.


Alia does most of the talking in the film and you have very few lines. In that respect was Highway a tough assignment?

Randeep: Better hai na? I didn't have to memorise dialogues. And when I did memorise dialogues, all those scenes are gone!

[Another round of laughter.]

Randeep: But honestly, it is one of the most heartfelt roles that I have done so far. Lot of it comes from the fact that when I came on board, I knew that here's a guy (points at Imtiaz with the luchi in his hand) who has proved himself and is damn good at his job. So there was a trust exercise... like if you fall backwards, the other person will be there to catch you. That was a big thing... to let myself go. And it's very difficult to do those roles where there are few lines and yet you have to be there in the scene all the time. I don't think I would have been able to do it with any other director.



Why were you not talking to Alia during the shoot?

Randeep: That's something I did on purpose. In the film, I kidnap her and so my character doesn't talk to her for a long time. It's only when our characters start talking in the film, post-Punjab, that I actually had my first conversation with her. But incredibly, no co-actor has ever found such a special place in my heart as Alia did through the shooting of Highway. She really represents a certain innocence within me.

[Alia sitting next to Randeep gives him a big hug.]




Imtiaz, why have you named the two of them Veera and Mahaveer?

Imtiaz: I used to live on Veera Desai Road in Mumbai. I think that's where my fascination with the name Veera began. Also, in Punjab, girls, especially sisters, are referred to as "veera". It's a very cinematic name. There's drama to it. And I thought of the name Mahaveer because I found his character similar to Hanuman, where the story is never about him. Hanuman comes and does all these superhuman things and sacrifices his life but still it's never about him. It's unfair. Here too, the story is not about him although he does everything. After I named the two of them separately, I realised that there's this connection " Veera and Mahaveer. I am glad you asked me this because till now it's just been a personal smile to myself.

Let's go state by state now, through the six states of Highway, and let's hear the enduring memories from the shoot... Imtiaz, what do you remember from the Delhi shoot?

Imtiaz: The first thing that comes to mind was shooting with Alia on the streets and there were these uncontrollable crowds coming in cars and screaming, despite all the police protection. It was filling us with the kind of fear that her character would encounter soon in the film.



Alia: We shot the film chronologically and the film is a linear narrative. So, Delhi is where the film starts and our shoot also started there. And there I was trying to get sucked into the journey which was going to last for the next couple of months. I also remember the field where he (points to Randeep) drags me and I come face to face with him for the first time.

Randeep: That was shot in Haryana actually. I didn't feature in the Delhi shoot. My initial memory of the movie was about trying to master the language which I speak in the film. It's not exactly Haryanvi, it's Gujjari, which the Gujjar community speaks. I had a language coach and I was trying to get the dialect right.

After Delhi and Haryana, the film moves to Rajasthan...

Imtiaz: Yes and what I remember is the salt pan. More than the shoot, I remember the test shoot we did there.

Alia: That's when I got the anxiety attack.



Imtiaz: I was very worried about Alia. She had to run on that salt pan all day in the sun and we were just testing. The fact that she hadn't done something like that before and I knew she wouldn't be fine.

Alia: That night was very difficult and Imtiaz made me hear Heera, a song in the album made from traditional couplets by Sant Kabir, for the first time to calm me down.

Imtiaz: The shoot was a lot smoother.

Alia: Also from Rajasthan, I remember how the team brought in my birthday at Sambhar. Randeep got me a book and he wasn't talking to me at that stage and so I wasn't sure whether he was making fun or he actually wanted to gift me the book.

What book was it?

Alia: Randy, what book was it?



Randeep: It was a book on acting, which Naseer (Naseeruddin Shah) had given me and which I go back to every now and then. I wanted to pass it on to Alia.

Alia: And I remember Imtiaz wrote a note inside, addressing me as "Dear actor..."

Then came Punjab...

Randeep: I remember being struck by the desolation of the state. It's a very rich land no doubt, but there was an artery which was severed due to the Partition. And the throbbing trade hub got cut off and there's still so much despair in that place. We shot in the anaj mandi there and it's in ruins. In the script, the context for me in Punjab was my mother. And so I also thought about my Mom a lot.

[Everyone smiles]

Imtiaz: This time in Punjab, while shooting Highway, I felt the spiritual side of Punjab much more than ever before. Because I think it exists more in the white-soiled portions of Punjab, rather than on the Jalandhar-Ludhiana side.

Alia: And I climbed a tree in Punjab for the first time!

Randeep: Haan, that was something.

Alia: I actually did it. No cheating. No CGI.

Randeep: And now you feel you are a monkey who can climb any tree!

Alia: At that point I didn't care about anything and was so happy and excited to do these new, new things in my life.

Randeep: Even I did a new thing in Punjab... I drove a tank there!

Alia: Oh yes! And I wanted to join him but at that point I was driving down to Chandigarh to get myself a McDonald's burger.

[Loudest round of laughter.]


Randeep: I had gone for the change of guard that happens in Firozpur at the border. And it's so funny when you are there. This is India and this is Pakistan. It is the same piece of land and someone's just drawn a line. And I found the tank to be quite a stupid machine actually.

Imtiaz: Too expensive for its manoeuvrability.

Then, Himachal...

Alia: I remember Kaza in Himachal, where finally I didn't have an emotional scene. I told Aki (Narula, costume designer) that I don't have to cry in this location. I was very happy! Also, by that time Randy and I had started talking.

Randeep: That's where we bonded actually.

Alia: And everything was white, covered with snow. I met this group of local women in Himachal, who my Dad (Mahesh Bhatt) had met on an earlier trip, and he wanted me to take a picture with them. Imtiaz was like: Go, go... go take a picture'. And they were so warm. Throughout the journey, all the women I met, whether they were working in the fields or carrying heavy loads across long distances, all of them were so strong and yet so kind.

Randeep: I remember the cold. And I remember this lady who came up and decorated us with malas made of nuts. I was really hungry that day and I ate half the mala! Also, in Himachal, on one of the days, I ran a little too much in the cold and I fell really sick. There 


was Imtiaz holding my hand in the middle of the night.

Imtiaz: My memories are from Kalpa, where inside my room there was a smaller room made of glass walls. I used to very intrigued by that room because I couldn't figure out what the purpose of that glass cabin was. And I used to wake up in the morning and see the Kinner Kailash mountain peak from the window, which is very auspicious.

Randeep: And most tourists in Kalpa were Bengalis!



Imtiaz: Even the hotels had Bengali signages.




Finally, Kashmir...

Imtiaz: In Kashmir we were shooting in these huts called dokas. One particular doka was actually what Alia's character calls home in the film. And the family who owned the doka, there was this two-year-old girl who had the exact same kind of hair as me. Even the face wasn't very dissimilar. And so everybody was saying that: shakal itna milta hai, baal itna milta hai... How many months back did you come here for the recce of Rockstar?'

[Everyone laughs uproariously.]

Alia: In Kashmir I have a beautiful memory of holding a baby goat. And how Randy, Aki and me would horse-ride every day up to the location. That was very exciting!

Randeep: Kashmir I truly found to be the paradise on earth. It still is. It has a sense of beauty which I have not seen anywhere in the world. Truly it felt like jannat.

If you were to take the Highway journey all over again... on the road for a couple of weeks across those six states of India... who would you take with you?

Imtiaz: I'll take Anil Mehta (Highway's cinematographer). We will discover new things together.

Alia: I'll take my sister (Shaheen). She is my most favourite person in the world.

Randeep: I'll probably take my mother along. She's a real traveller in life also.







P.S. Bengaaali food,Imtiaz & RANDEEP. HOW can it get better. ☺️





Just cannot get over the Highway Fever. ❤️

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