Director Homi Adajania is a restless soul. In his prettily decorated room in producer Dinesh Vijan’s new office in Santa Cruz, Mumbai, he is constantly on the move, talking to Sachin of the music composer duo Sachin-Jigar about the lyrics of a song in his upcoming movie, Angrezi Medium. Even when he sits down for the interview, his energy does not ebb. In a few minutes, he is up again, pacing and answering questions at the same time.
Adajania’s latest release is quite a departure from his previous films. Angrezi Medium, starring Irrfan, Radhika Madan and Deepak Dobriyal, is set in Udaipur and is about an aspirational young girl convincing her father, a sweet shop owner, to send her to a London university. It is quite unlike his first film—Being Cyrus (2005)—a critically acclaimed story of a dysfunctional Parsi family. Or, his second—Cocktail (2012)—an urban romance that was contemporary and different in its approach even if it was panned for being regressive and too commercial. And, his last, Finding Fanny (2014), originally in English and dubbed in Hindi, was set in Goa and had five oddball characters. It had its takers, but some found it too intellectual.
“My next movie is going to be Japanese, just to show you all that I know how to make movies,” he says with a laugh, before agreeing that Angrezi Medium is “quite a departure” for him. But that is what lured him to make it. “The unfamiliar territory, no reference point for myself. At least, if I am doing films that I have not written, then that’s the reason that lures me to a project because then I don’t know,” he says about the film that is written by Bhavesh Mandalia, Gaurav Shukla, Vinay Chhawal and Sara Bodinar. And, when you do not know, fear sets in, he says, and then you dig into your creativity and also find yourself in the process.
Being an avid traveller, one would expect him to be somewhat familiar with every territory. The travel bug bit him when he started doing odd jobs after losing his father at a young age. “For 10 years, I was doing bizarrely odd jobs like taking a fakir to Venice, which we made a movie on (The Fakir of Venice), just stuff like that. I also took up diving,” says Adajania. He has several amusing stories from his travels—living in Vietnam on a shoestring budget after spending the $147 he had, being deported from Nepal and arrested in Athens. “I was rich with experiences,” he says. “That created a bank in my head to tell stories. I started understanding the language of human beings, and that gave me a lot of insight into how to tell stories. That’s why I love my movies to be extremely performance-based. It’s about different and unique characters.”
Having said that, he was not prepared to traverse a space as unfamiliar as the one in Angrezi Medium, a sequel to Hindi Medium (2017) that showed the extent to which a Delhi family went to get their child admitted in a private school. “Travelling is one thing, but I have not really stayed with a mithaiwalla and his daughter. Or, gone to court where people shout about the wrong alcohol being brought for the settlement meeting,” he says, laughing.
But he got familiar with that world pretty soon. During a recce in Udaipur, he realised that the world had become a small place, thanks to the internet. “Everyone knows everything,” says Adajania. “The latest western shows are on top of their discussion list.” Radhika’s character in the film gets obsessed with going abroad to study. In reality, says Adajania, people are bereft of such aspirations. He cites the example of his line producer who has huge houses in Udaipur. When Adajania asked him if he had ever travelled abroad, the line producer replied: “No. Why would I go abroad?”
Adajania says it was important to base the film in a small town as it is more of a journey to go abroad from there than from a big city. But one wonders whether the small-town trope has reached its peak in Hindi cinema. Adajania says it is different in Angrezi Medium as the scenarios are bizarre and midway the characters travel abroad as well. He, however, immediately apologises: “My answer should have been that I haven’t watched any of those films. I don’t watch movies. It is my failing.”
His strength, however, lies in knowing his characters inside out. “What tends to happen when you make a film is you start taking home bits and pieces of your character. It starts affecting—sometimes in a good way, sometimes in bad,” says Adajania. “That, for me, is definitely very exhausting, especially when making an ensemble film.”
Maybe that is why he takes his time to make a film—this is his fourth film in almost 15 years. “Can we make this a question that is not allowed to be asked?” he cheekily remarks to the PR person sitting in the room. “Arre, I need to live my life. Living life is a full-time job. I have got (two) kids to raise. I dive, I travel, I read, I write. I do many other things apart from making films.... I genuinely feel I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can do stuff that I want to do.”
Making Angrezi Medium, however, was not a breeze—Irrfan was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumour and underwent treatment while the film was being made. “But I embraced the whole thing,” says Adajania. “With Irrfan, his resilient spirit, his mastery over his craft, it was just very inspiring. It just showed me a lighter way of being. We pay attention to such stupid things sometimes in life and we realise that it is so unnecessary.”
And, that is his takeaway from this film. “In fact now, since you all have been bitching about me not making movies [frequently], I am going to do it more often,” says Adajania. “Suddenly, I realise that in the past I have stressed about so many things.... But I realise it is not necessary. You are just telling a story that is phenomenal. Tell it the best way and in the most truthful way and your job is done.”