Kabir Khan: Playing Human

Making Salman Khan cry on screen. Getting Ranveer Singh to speak the kind of broken English that makes people snigger. And ensuring Kartik Aaryan give him a year-and-a-half of his life in his latest movie, Chandu Champion; Kabir Khan has done all this and much more in a feature film career that began 18 years ago. Khan spent many years in India and abroad making documentaries after studying mass communications at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University. That is until he decided he’d like to make one film for the big screen. That was Kabul Express, a variation on his own experiences reporting from Afghanistan. “The dream was to make one film. Everything else has been a bonus since,” he says.

That was 2006, the film was critically acclaimed and got him a foothold in Yash Raj Films.

He eventually left Yash Raj Films, but stayed on in Mumbai, after making New York (2009), based on the 9/11 attacks in the city, and the first of what would eventually become their superhero spy franchise, Ek tha Tiger (2012), where daringly the RAW agent and ISI agent end up in blissful partnership declaring they will return to their homelands only when there is peace between India and Pakistan.

Khan’s politics has always infused his work, as has his patriotism, which is as inclusive as it is empathetic. He says, “It is about a love for the country not hatred for someone else to prove how much you love your country.” He has managed to get a superstar like Salman Khan to play a Hanuman bhakt in Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) who thinks nothing of crossing the border to return a Pakistani child to her nation. He has got Ranveer Singh playing Kapil Dev leading a rainbow coalition of an Indian team which unites the country in 83 (2021). And in his latest film, he has got rising star Kartik Aaryan to tell a story that is inspirational, motivational and entertaining, of an unsung hero who embodies the never-say-die spirit of the nation. And that has been Khan’s greatest triumph, to have made use of opportuni­ties to tell stories his way, without having to compromise. As he says: “Cinema still continues to be the most powerful medi­um in the country. The trick is to evolve with the times, change the way you will be allowed to tell stories or subjects. It should not lead to despair. Any creative art has to negotiate landmines and still get their point across. You have to innovate. Iran is a classic example where a man and woman are not allowed to touch physically on screen, yet we see some of the most beautiful portrayals of man- woman relationships,” he says. “I have great hope in the industry and in the years to come we will only grow bigger,” he adds.

He’s excited about Chandu Champion, which tells the story of Murlikant Petkar, India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, who won an individual gold medal in the 1972 Summer Paralympics, in Heidelberg, Germany. He set a world record in the 50 m freestyle swimming event. In the same games he participated in javelin, precision javelin throw and slalom. A jawan in the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) in the Indian Army, he was disabled during the 1965 war against Pakistan, sustaining bullet wounds.

Says Khan: “I first read about Murlikant in an article in a newspaper. I thought it cannot be true and how is it that we don’t know about him? I pride myself on being fairly well read and knowledgeable, and even I didn’t know about him. I started inquiring about it. It didn’t leave my mind and a few months later, I set up a research team. We finally tracked him down, I sat in my car. It took me four hours to reach Pune. I met him and that is how it started. I thought it would be criminal if this story was lost forever.”

He is all praise for Aaryan. “It was great to see an actor let go of the baggage of stardom. He is famous for his hair and the first thing I told him was that I’m going to cut off your hair. He readily agreed and effected an incredible body transformation from 39 per cent body fat to 7 per cent body fat. He gave one-and-a-half years of his life to the film, training, learning boxing, swimming and wrestling. If an actor is excited, then that is half the battle won for a director. It is rare for anyone in this industry to do so at his level for a film so outside his comfort zone.”

The basic theme of his films has remained the same, sustained by the political discussions he still has with his friends and mentors, for instance, Shohini Ghosh, his teacher at Jamia. “Shohini has been a great supporter of my work and has even done some academic analysis of it.” It is this humanity that strikes Vijay K Acharya, filmmaker and his brother-in-law. Acharya says, “For me Kabir’s best work is characterised by people rising up to their humanity, even if it is often hidden from them, as in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. But once that’s in sight, they won’t stop till that goal is achieved, and the goal invariably is the triumph of what makes us hu­man, and the journey is one of accepting challenges, overcom­ing prejudices. There is an engagement with a certain kind of politics but it more a backdrop rather than specific engagement.”

It is a politics shaped by his edu­cation, at Modern School and the Air Force School, both in Delhi, then Kirori Mal College and Jamia. It is a worldview given to him by his mother who would take the children to watch French New Wave films as much as first-day-first shows of Amitabh Bachchan movies. It is an idea of India embodied in his own family (his father is Muslim and his mother Hindu); his marriage to TV anchor Mini Mathur, a Hindu; and his sister’s marriage to Acharya, a Hindu: things that need to be said aloud in an India where interfaith marriages have been much maligned.

For an outsider in the Hindi film industry, he has created a thriving ecosystem around him, with a lot of friends from his school, college and documentary days. “I am a big one for enjoying the journey and for doing it with people with the same ideas and ideology. Julius Packiam has been my sound recordist for years. Rajan Kapoor has been my line producer since my documentary days, I’ve known him since Class 8. Aseem Mishra, my DoP, has been with me since film school.”

Any advice he would give to his younger self? “I would not change anything. I managed to tell stories on my terms. I never had to change inherently what I am or what I believe in. I am not creating commodities but films I truly believe in,” he says.

It is something his contemporaries admire. Says actor Ranvir Shorey, “Although I worked with Kabir on only one film, Ek tha Tiger, he left a lasting impression on me as a director. I found him to be perceptive, knowledgeable and clear headed. He has the heart of a storytell­er and the mind of a researcher. He’s metic­ulous, and certainly knows how to get the best out of all the people that work with him. A bright, bold, and original voice in the world of mainstream Hindi cinema.”

And one who has created enduring icons on screen, whether it is Bajrangi, or Kapil Dev. “Bajrangi is one of my most loved films and on 83 I still get four to five messages every day. It makes it all worthwhile when your films are remembered for years. Box office success alone wouldn’t have done it for me,” he adds.

With Chandu Champion, Khan hopes to add another legendary portrait to his greatest hits.

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