It’s a late Thursday afternoon. The temperature in Mumbai is already soaring, even though it’s just late February. Sauntering through the lanes of Khar, we reach on the third floor of an old building, which has lately been turned into the office of Rahul Bose’s production company, Bose Productions. The sweltering heat hasn’t affected the apartment-cum-office much. It’s soothing – light-brown blinds, mattresses with bright and colourful covers spread across the room, low-floor tables and many bean bags – make for the simplistic decor of the room.
“It’s entirely done by me,” says Bose as we sit down for a chat little later. When he was setting it up almost half a year back, he wanted his office to feel like home. It does, at least when we were there. One of the rooms in the two-room apartment looked nothing less than a family living room – two teenage girls with their fathers (one is Aditi Inamdaar, the 13-year-old protagonist of his directorial venture, and the other is the girl on whose life the film is based on), three team members working either on their laptops or cellphones, sit comfortably in the room. Bose, in the meanwhile, is in the other room (with almost the same setup) giving interviews for Poorna, which he has directed, produced and even acted in. The team was preparing for the trailer launch a few hours later, and that’s why the gathering.
The film, a biopic, captures the journey of Malavath Poorna – a tribal girl from Telangana to have conquered Mt Everest at the age of 13 (youngest girl to do that). By now, most of us know that Bose was approached just to act in it, but eventually took it up as a producer and director both. Producer, because not many were interested in investing money on the film’s subject; and director, because by the time he agreed to do the film as an actor and producer, he had such a strong grip over the script that he didn’t mind directing it.
“Acting-directing is fine, acting-producing is fine, but producing-directing is really really really (the emphasis of every really increasing) taxing,” says Bose whose first film as a director was the 2001 Everybody Says I’m Fine. “But, it is also fantastic in a way because if ever the director wants to splurge, the producer will understand that there’s no money for that, and if the producer pulls the strings unnecessarily, the director will understand that it is in the interest of the film,” he explains when asked about the conundrum he faced during the shoot. “It’s really tough to manage the roles simultaneously, but it’s a blessing too. There’s no fight, no ego clashes, nothing.”
Bose, often involved in the causes of women upliftment was surely moved by the girl’s grit and determination, but we wonder if that was the only reason he chose to take up the film entirely. “No, it wasn’t just that,” he says. “Cinematically, it’s a wonderful story. It goes from 45 degrees of the hot flatland to the Mt Everest. It’s a phenomenal scape to cover. Secondly, it appeals to my sporting side – what does it mean for a 13-year-old frail girl to climb Everest, what’s the physical and mental challenge. After playing 11 years of rugby, I relish a film with a sports angle. And, the third is of the gender angle,” says Bose.
But he is quick to add that the gender angle is not just isolated to that, it has four angles too – “What does it mean to be poor? What does it mean to be a girl? What does it mean to be uneducated? And, what does it mean to be a tribal?” – he explains and continues, “Four crosses against your name, and to squeeze through it all and come out a winner, is nothing but a miracle!”
That, Bose says, may be the reason why the Indian team was so moved when it watched the film, or that is why Shabana Azmi, too, cried. “When I met Poorna two years ago, she said she wanted to prove that girls can do anything. That was our line for the film, but isn’t the film as the film explores a lot more,” he says.
Bose is happy to have made a comeback to direction with a film like Poorna with a strong subject. He also thinks that this is the beginning of his directorial career. “During Everyone Says I’m Fine, I never said I am going to be directing full time because I was still getting good roles. Now, the acting assignments have reduced, and I can take up direction and production full time,” he says as he talks about his next film that would again revolve around a very strong woman protagonist.
