• HARNEET SINGH: When one talks about Jodhaa Akbar, there are two words one immediately associates with the movie — ‘too much’. Too much grandeur, controversy, rumour-mongering, and now, the ban on the film in certain states. Has it all been too much for you?
If you mean the leaks and rumours from our location shooting in Rajasthan, it was not ours to control. For instance, there were stories that I had fainted on sets. There were so many different stories, we did not have time to clarify. I had enough on my hands: a unit size of 1,000 and many animals. So I had no time for the rumours.As to the scale of the film, the Mughal period is a golden period where too much is actually too little.
• REKHA DESHPANDE: After Lagaan and Swades, what made you pick a historical subject? Does today’s audience possess the sensibilities to appreciate a film like this?
I have always believed that when you make a film, the film must entertain while you are watching it; once you leave the theatre, the film should come back to you, it should have some ‘take home’. That ‘take home’ is usually the message, a social message or a moralistic one. Keeping that in mind, I wanted to tell a love story because this is a genre I had not yet attempted. Whenever I have gone looking for a story, I have never found it. It has always come from unknown quarters. In the case of Jodhaa Akbar, the story came to me from Haider Ali, the actor known from TV’s popular serial, Nukkad. He is the son of actor Kumar, who played Saangtaraash in Mughal-e-Azam. Haider is married to Uma, and he found some resonance between his personal life and Mughal-e-Azam, which is probably why he came up with the story. I was fascinated with one aspect that we have always taken for granted in Mughal-E-Azam: that Jodhaa was married to Akbar. How did this marriage come about? Why was a Hindu Rajput princess married to a Mughal emperor over 450 years ago? Did they fall in love before marriage? If they fell in love after marriage, then what were the circumstances? If you consult the history books about Jodhaa and Akbar, there is no information — that excited me. I was setting out to make an imagined love story between the two. At the same time, cultures and religions came together.
Ashutosh Gowariker at the EXPRESS
