After wrapping up the production of the much-awaited Sonam Kapoor-and Abhay Deol-starrer Aisha,director Rajshree Ojha is willing to forgo a break to realise one of her dream projects. At present,the 31-year-old is concentrating on making a documentary,which she says is like her own Midnights Children. Untitled as of now,the documentary is an attempt to chronicle the period in India between the Independence and the Emergency. That phase in India was a very interesting. The seeds of the modern India that we live in today were probably sown by people who were born during this period and the documentary is an homage to them. Ojha adds that her chief aim is to explore India during the 60s since that was a phase when the country really flowered in thought. Indians who spent their youth in that phase were much more progressive than we are today. We had Satyajit Ray,Ritwik Ghatak,Hrishikesh Mukherjee and at the same time commercial cinema was thriving too. Indian classical music influenced many musicians across the world,fusion music came into being and Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Allah Rakha Khan became big names. This phase,when huge movements were taking place across the world is well documented internationally,but unfortunately,we dont have any documentation. My work is an attempt to fill this vaccum. The young director is speaking to stalwarts across fields for her film,from Montek Singh Ahluwalia to Adi Godrej and Ratan Tata to Prahlad Kakkar and Alyque Padamsee. She feels that the political milieu that led to the Emergency,sadly,kind of put a stop to this progressive movement in India. Something changed or diedwe had the worst phase in terms of art and cultureand I wish to find out what really led to this.
