A story from the heart

"How do I look?" Indian actress, activist and filmmaker Nandita Das asks me.

We're in Film City, Mumbai, in early January 2008, and it's the last day of the principal shoot of Nandita's directorial debut Firaaq. I'm filming a video interview of her and to me she looks fine, calm and composed. The toll of two months of shooting in Hyderabad and Mumbai doesn't show in the gentle winter sun of a glorious morning. Throughout the shoot Nandita has been steadfast and, actor Paresh Rawal commented, "sure-footed", her unflagging energy the admiration of everyone in the 60-odd film crew.

Firaaq, which Nandita co-wrote with Shuchi Kothari, is close to her heart. After the 2002 massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujurat, Nandita was looking for a way to express what she saw and felt, and the screenplay of Firaaq emerged from her many interactions with people who were directly affected. Nandita wrote Firaaq in the hope that things would fall into place to enable her to make a film. The strong conviction and determination paid off when a host of India's top actors and technicians came on board and Percept Picture Company took up its production.

Firaaq stars Naseeruddin Shah, Deepti Naval, Raghubir Yadav, Paresh Rawal, Tisca Chopra and Sanjay Suri, among others. It was photographed by Ravi K Chandran, with music by Rajat Dholakia and Piyush Kanojia. Most of these people became part of the project before even reading the script. Nandita's sensibilities as an actress, evident in a wide range of films including Bhawandi, Fire, and Earth had already earned her a mountain of respect and she didn't take long to put together an exemplary team.

Firaaq is an ensemble piece with five loosely connected stories depicting the physical and emotional journeys of its characters, one month after the Gujurat massacres, over a period of 24 hours. Some people have criticised the film as pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu, Nandita sees it as "pro-human" film. The film doesn't judge or point fingers, as its fast paced narrative unfolds from the deft editing of Sreekar Prasad.

According to novelist Salman Rushdie, who introduced the film at Telluride International Film Festival: "Firaaq succeeds because it allows the humanity of its characters to shine through the darkness, even the horror, of the events it describes, and because of the skill with which the many narrative strands are interwoven. It's a remarkably assured directorial debut by one of India's finest actresses."

After premiering at Telluride, Firaaq went on to receive accolades at several other film festivals around the world, including a special prize at Thessaloniki, and the best film and screenplay awards at Asian Festival of 1st Films, Singapore.

The eve of its release in India must be an especially nail-biting time for Nandita. The Hindu rightwing BJP nationalist party has already alleged that the film's release was aimed at creating unrest among the communities on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, and to show the party, which rules the state of Gujurat, in a bad light.

At the time of the upload of this post, the film had already been banned from the multiplexes of Gujurat.

Firaaq grew out of an urgent need to tell a story, the conviction and determination of a brave activist, a fantastic actress and a director with a social consciousness.

As Paresh Rawal said: "I think she's here to stay."