Dashing duo: J.P. Dutta with daughter Nidhi.
While receiving an award for his 1997 hit film Border, J.P. Dutta said he hoped he would never make another war film, because he hoped there would not be another war in India. And then came the Kargil War. When he heard that out of the 527 martyrs of Kargil, nearly 100 were shot at point-blank range, he decided that the story of the “bravery and sacrifice of these boys needed to be told”. He met all the families of the Kargil martyrs. The most touching moment for him was when he met the parents of Captain Vijayant Thapar, a Kargil martyr. They told him that Thapar had watched Border at least 20 times and it had fuelled his decision to join the Army. “I realised that day that what I was trying to do for my country was getting through,” says Dutta.
It was no easy task shooting L.O.C. Kargil in Ladakh. Perhaps no war film in India has been made so ambitiously as L.O.C. Kargil. The ensemble cast of more than 50 actors, which included the likes of Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor, Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan, was given military training by Army personnel. Live ammunition was used for the action sequences. Actors were divided into five units and they toiled in temperatures dipping below -15 degrees Celsius. For many of them, it was the most back-breaking shoot of their lives. The two-year project financed by Dutta himself was panned by the critics and did modestly at the box office.
Dutta is unfazed by criticism. “I don’t make these movies for that reason,” he says. “These are stories that need to be told for the [sake of the] boys who are standing out there making sure you and I are safe. When we screened the film for the families of martyrs, Vijayant Thapar’s mother came up onstage and thanked me for bringing her son back to life for three hours… what bigger achievement or award can anyone receive beyond that?”
Dutta’s love affair with bravery on the battlefield continues. He is directing a historical epic and producing a biopic on a soldier from Kashmir. He is also working on a web series based on the lives of 21 heroes from the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. This time, he will be assisted by his daughter Nidhi, the business head and producer of his projects. She says she lived and breathed films while growing up. Her grandfather O.P. Dutta used to write the dialogues for her father’s films and her mother, former actor Bindiya Goswami, used to be part of the production team.
She recalls many Christmases and New Years spent in London with her family. At midnight, they would be watching the fireworks on TV or having dinner, and suddenly her father would be googling something on his phone. Then he would turn the phone around and show them the temperature at that moment in Siachen. He would tell them that there were boys standing there in -25 degrees Celsius, away from their families, so that they could spend that moment with their family. Make sure you don’t forget them, he would tell his daughters. “That’s my father for you,” says Nidhi. “That’s the man who arouses patriotism in every Indian through his war films. And that’s what I have learnt and who I have become… the sacrifices [of our soldiers] live in my heart every day.”