An idealist, a RAW agent, a municipal sweeper, a schoolteacher and a horny villager, 20-film old ‘superstar of Indian art house cinema’—that’s what Time magazine called him—Rahul Bose is raring to direct his second film after seven years
A review of Santosh Sivan’s Before The Rains in NYT calls your character TK the movie’s ‘most compelling figure.
The film has also got seven unfavourable and seven good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Once a film releases, anybody is free to criticise it, irrespective of its creator’s misplaced notion that he or she knows best. So an actor cannot have thin skin; he should have thick skin that’s porous.  

How different is Before The Rains from other Indian-American love stories?
It is well past failed attempts to ape Bend It Like Beckham. It epitomizes collaboration –music by an LA-based composer, script based on an Israeli short story, direction by a Malayali, production by four Americans, acting by one British, one American and two Indians – and yet it is an organic and beautifully told tale. The team didn’t start off saying, ‘I want to make an Indo-American or Indo-Brit film.’ It was rather, ‘Let’s make a great story.’  

Any directors you wish to work with?
Shekhar Kapur, because I have heard so much about him being an actor’s director. Mira Nair, because actors speak highly of her. Mani Ratnam, with whom I I went for hikes into the Canyons at the Palm Springs Festival. He is quiet, gently funny and would be nice to work.  

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