Manoj Bajpai is a maharajah again

Nanda Anand grew up in Kolkata, reading Russian literature – Alexander Pushkin was her favourite, as were the romance novels of Barbara Cartland. And Hollywood films filled up her imagination. She saw The Sound of Music at least 25 times and remembers watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid during a family trip to the US.

But when she expressed her desire to join the film business as an actress, her middle class parents had the normal reaction. "'No, no, no,' they said," Nanda recalls from her apartment in New York. "'Good girls do not act in films.'" So, Nanda followed the line, as was expected of her – graduate work in psychology from Columbia University, marriage at a young age to an Indian doctor and two children while she was in her early 20s.

Today, with the children out of home, the 40-something Nanda has another proud achievement to boast about. After attending part-time film courses at New York University's School of Continuing education, she has directed her first feature, Return To Rajapur.

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It will have its world premiere on Wednesday in the Discovery section of the New York City's Tribeca Film Festival. It continues its run at different festival venues in Manhattan on April 27, 29 and May 6.

For Anand, the germ of the story idea -- an attraction and the 'non-romance' between a former Indian maharaja and an American woman, who is in a fictional town called Rajapur on her honeymoon – came to her while she was on a vacation with her husband in Jaisalmer. Her other source of inspiration was a line from Pedro Almodovar's much celebrated Talk To Her (2002).

"In the film, Marco (Almodovar's protagonist) says, 'Love hurts when it ends, and sometimes when it doesn't," Anand says.  "It is a great premise and I would like to say that's what my film is about." But making Rajapur, especially raising finances, was a tough task for Anand.  "The life of a woman filmmaker is very hard," she says.  "It is fraught with so many challenges. I had read and heard about it but, until you experience it yourself, it doesn't hit you."

Her husband Dr. Vijay Anand put the initial seed money, but Anand had to look for several other sources to raise finances for the film that was shot entirely in Jaisalmer – with a large crew that travelled from the US. This included funding from another physician -- Dr. Wellington Tichenor. Although she does not reveal the budget of the film, her actors worked for scale, and minimum salaries as required by the Screen Actors' Guild. She got access to palaces and other locations at a nominal cost. "I couldn't have done it without help," she says.

Anand selected Bajpai to play her lead, Jai Singh, after she saw him in Chandra Prakash Dwivedi's Pinjar (2003).  She watched Zubeidaa after she signed him. "There is certain quietness about Manoj," she says.  "He was very gracious. He worked very hard, but it helped that he comes from a theatre background. He was like a puppet in my hands, a director's joy."

"It was a different kind of love story," says Bajpai, from his home in Mumbai. He immediately related to the script that was handed to him by his friend, casting director Kanchan Ghosh. "It's a love story that never takes place.  And I liked the way the story unfolds."

Coincidentally, the day Bajpai sealed the deal with Anand, he was in New Delhi to receive the National Award for his role in Pinjar.

Anand, he recalls, was well prepared on the set, especially since she had spent two months in pre-production in Jaisalmer. "If you are not well prepared then, there can be problems on the set," he says. "Nanda knew what she wanted to shoot and what she wanted from her actors."

Bajpai is aware that some people may compare his roles in Rajapur and Zubeidaa. "Yes, I am playing a maharaja again," he says. "But they are two different roles. Their politics are different, their ambitions, aspirations and deciding moments are different."

This is also the first time he has acted in an English language film (since completing Rajapur, he has also performed in another English film, The Whisperers, with Rahul Bose). During his college days, he acted in a few plays in English, while he was a member of the New Delhi-based Theatre Action Group, run by Barry John (Shah Rukh Khan and Mira Nair are also TAG alumni). But most of his theatre and all of his film work until now has been in Hindi.

"I have been living in Mumbai, where Hindi is not heard so often," says Bajpai. "People who work in the Hindi film industry prefer to speak in English. When you are living in a city like this, you are interacting only in English, so acting in English is not all that difficult. At the same time, I am quite shameless in asking people whenever there is confusion about a word."

Bajpai was conscious of not appearing like a caricatured Indian though – as is often projected on American television and films. "I didn't want to sound like a character from an American film who is working in a grocery story," he says. "They speak in a certain way that is so humiliating and insulting." He has not seen the completed film and he will not travel to New York for the premiere. But he says he is praying for Anand and the film's success. "I hope Tribeca is just the beginning," he says.  "It should go a long way."

Anand has to almost pinch herself to believe she has come this far. She recalls all the times people discouraged her from working on the project. "I had so many people telling it is a pipe dream," she says. "'Why do you want to do it now?' they would ask. 'You are a doctor's wife. You should be travelling, now that the children are out of the house.'"

And then she was told by those already in the industry that she would be competing with people half her age. "If I had listened to all those people, the movie would not have happened."