‘I have always looked at people and said, ‘You just have to accept. You just have to love. You just have to let this person be and the trouble would be less’.’
‘But we keep complicating things, and that is the tragedy — our desire not to understand.’
IMAGE: Tillotama Shome in Baksho Bondi.
Tanushree Das (Film Editor, Eeb Alley Ooo) and her husband Saumyananda Sahi (Cinematographer, All That Breathes, Black Warrant)) worked together on a couple of films until they decided to direct their first feature, inspired by the story of Das’ parents.
The Bengali film Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox) premiered at the Berlinale last month and stars Tillotama Shome (in one of her best performances) as Maya, a woman struggling to keep her family afloat, despite a lot of stress, including that her husband Sundar (Chandan Bisht) is suffering from PTSD. Maya’s family does not approve of Sundar since he is not Bengali.
What makes Baksho Bondi stand apart is that the film has 19 producers on board. It started with Composer Naren Chandavarkar (who also produced this year’s Sundance award-winning film Sabar Bonda). Slowly, an eclectic mix of filmmakers and actors joined the team; names like Nikkhil Advani, Vikramditya Motwane, Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann (producer of Sen’s Oscar nominated documentary All That Breathes), Prashant Nair, Dar Gai, Anu Rangachar, Shruti Ganguli, Sidharth Meer, Jim Sarbh (also a producer on Sabar Bonda), Anjali Patil and Shome herself.
Das and Sahi tell Aseem Chhabra, “People like Shaunak and Prashant were there when we were writing the script and doing the edit. So they were also mentors, so we could sound ideas with them and they were very good with feedback.”
Tanushree, how did you bring so much of your own personal, your parents’ story in this film?
Tanushree: I think I treated Somo as my first audience, when I was telling the story, which is also sharing my life. During that process, we understood that it is one thing to share your story with your partner, and another to make a film.
Did you share the story with the intent of making the film itself, or you first told him about your life?
Tanushree: I only had a dream and said that I feel there is a film there. I shared my life truthfully, since we were a couple.
But the story in the film is not of my parents’ life. Okay, the essence, the emotion of it, yes. The character of Maya is like my mother in many ways. Her love for her husband is non-negotiable. It was the same with Maya.
Your parents also had — pardon this odd expression — a love marriage?
Tanushree: Yes, in the 1980s. It was taboo in many families.
They were both Bengali?
Tanushree: Yes. This outsider came from a desire to communicate or to understand something which is not personal.
Saumyananda: We wanted the audience to have a visual cue as well, to understand that the husband is not from the community.
IMAGE: Tillotama Shome in Baksho Bondi.
So this outsider element, you thought of a Pahadi man, because North Bengal has hills and cities like Darjeeling?
Tanushree: It was interesting to put these little pointers which are very culture-specific. As Indians, we actually get these connections which we don’t have to spell out.
I wanted Maya’s story to be many people’s story, not just my mother’s story.
Saumyananda: While we were writing the screenplay, we made the choice of shifting the story eight years after the more dramatic moments of Maya’s life. A lot of the past is left unsaid, but has to be evoked with small things, like the house they live in.
Maya’s coming down the social ladder is visible in the different house than the one her brother lives in with her mother.
There’s no scene to spell it out.
We use the house itself as a way to understand that she had a love marriage and it was outside her community.
We decided for her to marry someone from Uttrakhand who looks different.
Do you think Maya’s brother would have been more accepting of her husband had it not been for the fact that the man had mental health issues, or was it more of the fact that she married an outsider?
Tanushree: I think it wouldn’t matter. What I am trying to pinpoint is that in our middle-class society, we exist because the other exists. But as a kid, I would find it strange to see these frictions between grown-ups.
I have always looked at people and said, ‘You just have to accept. You just have to love. You just have to let this person be and the trouble would be less.’
But we keep complicating things, like a jalebi, and that is the tragedy — our desire not to understand. It’s like an ego play.
So the fact that she married someone of her own choice is the bigger problem.
Saumyananda: The mental health issue just amplifies the problems.
IMAGE: Chandan Bisht and Tillotama Shome in Baksho Bondi.
When I was watching the film, the actor who plays the husband looked familiar. Then I realised Chandan Bist was in Fire in the Mountains. His role here is very different.
Saumyananda: I was the cinematographer on Trial by Fire. Chandan plays a very small role in that.
I had not seen Fire in the Mountains at that point.
I saw him through the camera and found something captivating about his eyes.
There was a mystery to him, which is why I cast him.
How did you think about casting Tillotama, who is wonderful in the film?
Saumyananda: We wrote the script thinking of her.
Tanushree: We didn’t dare to ask her in the beginning. She was not our friend then.
Naren was a primary producer. Naren and Tillotama are friends. So through Naren, we asked her to read the script for feedback. That’s how the conversation started.
How did you work with your actors?
Saumyananda: We are very taken in by the works of Mike Leigh and excited by his process with actors, how he uses improvisation in workshops, and how that fits into the creation of the characters. While we couldn’t imitate Mike Leigh, we tried to take that spirit to our writing room.
For each character of our film, we did improvisations, not with actors first, but between the two of us. We brought multiple references from our lives, literature, acquaintances and so on.
A lot of the writing process was actually bringing together objects, stories, and making a conglomerate of multiple references for the characters.
IMAGE: Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi along with Tillotama Shome. Photograph: Aseem Chhabra
You both worked together on two films as editors and cinematographers, Eeb Allay Ooo! and Aise Hee.
Tanushree: I used to do gaffer work for him before our son was born.
How did you discover each other’s talent? Did you, Somo, see a new side of her as an editor or you, Tanushree, did you see his eye for detail when you were cutting scenes he had shot?
Tanushree: I know I will sound cheesy but I fell in love with him because the first film we worked on together was a Malayalam language documentary called Have You Seen the Arana?
I remember seeing how he would frame, the compassion I would see in his gaze. I remember thinking if this man can look at me like this, it’s worth living with him for rest of my life.
What I am trying to say is that our films and our lives are not separate things. I think we have found work-life balance.
For us, a good evening would be him making an amazing bowl of Maggi noodles.
He makes a good bowl of Maggi?
Tanushree: Yes.
Saumyananda: It is very difficult to make.
Tanushree: Those are our nostalgia times from FTII (Film and Television Institute Of India). With a good bowl of Maggi, we would discuss work. For us, there is romance in that.
Going to the movies or making movies, there is the same amount of love.
We are friends too.
I can see it is a happy partnership. But I am sure there were arguments, especially during the making of this film. Were there disagreements in terms of the narrative structure, the script or did you disagree on other issues?
Saumyananda: During the writing, we didn’t have many disagreements because I would look to Tanushree for the authenticity, and she would always look to me to bring a distance.
In that sense, we complimented each other.
The tougher thing was how to make the film, where to put people up, how to make them work on very practical level.
IMAGE: Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi with Tillotama Shome and Chandan Bisht at the Berlin International Film Festival. Photograph: Kind courtesy Tanushree Das/Instagram
I am always interested in how two people direct one film. Tell us more about the disagreements.
Tanushree: We had interesting disagreements in the edit. I have edited other people’s films. For the first time, I understood what lack of objectivity really means. I understood the pain of a director because here I am. Also, because it’s a personal story.
So I was grabbing every scene, and then he would say, ‘No, if we can take this out and keep that in.’ And I would say, ‘No, this is also important.’
It got easier as time passed.
Taking a long time to make film is not such a bad thing, especially if one can survive as an artist.
He is very patient man in life. I am the impatient one.
We would say, ‘Okay, let’s come back to it, revisit it.’ So then I started seeing the light of what he was trying to say.
At which juncture did you decide to make this story into a film, since you both had never directed a film before?
Saumyananda: Tanushree began as a theatre director. Her passion was always directing.
I came to the Berlinale Talent programme 20 years ago as a director but chose not to direct for some time.
You talked about Naren being the primary producer but what a collection of producers you guys have now! How did they all come together?
Saumyananda: It began with Naren. Then I was working with Shaunak and Aman (on All That Breathes) and discussed with them and they came on board.
The list of producers grew along the way out of necessity because there was only a certain amount that each person could put in.
The risks involved with doing an independent film is that the returns cannot be counted on. Naren devised a model of sharing that risk, creating an equitable model of where people joined. But the point at which each producer came on board was also very important because they were answering a necessity at that point of time. So we didn’t have 19 producers to begin with. We only had one.
Tillotama: Whatever the final number is, all these people knew each other as colleagues. But we never found a common ground to come together, even though we liked each other a lot. We have managed to come together because of them.
There is something about them, they created the space, a bridge that got us to collaborate.
It is a lovely way of indie filmmaking because you are not crowdfunding.
Tillotama: Yes, not crowdfunding, but funding from a very interesting group of people who wanted to work together.
It’s because no one could refuse the charm that both of them have and the power of who they are, the story they wanted to tell.
Saumyananda: People like Shaunak and Prashant were there when we were writing the script and doing the edit. So they were also mentors, so we could sound ideas with them and they were very good with feedback.
We were blessed with the non-producorial aspect of the producers. They really cared for the project.
