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'Why should I make films for intelligent people?'

A smartly dressed man Friday lets you in a well-designed interior. Settling into a plush sofa, one soaks in the stillness, accentuated by the clock ticking loudly in the background. On time for once.

Nice house, you think and then hear the soft shuffling of feet. You turn around to see a shambling, unshaven man, wearing an ankle length kurta with a long tear running down it.

Observe, all, this is Tinnu Anand, who has directed three films with Amitabh Bachchan, with one more, Major Saab, still in the pipeline, and who ran away to become a character actor after the failure of his Main Azaad Hoon.

Anand gauges you through red, swollen eyes while running his hand over an almost bald pate on which even the few strands that still hold on tenaciously have been trimmed nearly to ground zero. Anand looks like a misfit in his own home.

He sits down, paws absently through his pockets for a cigarette and match, lights up and sends up some confusing smoke signals.

"I just returned from a shoot and dozed off " he slurs. No doubt, no doubt, and his lethargy begins to get to you. Slowly, about halfway through his cigarette, his voice takes on new life.

He begins with his dream start with Satyajit Ray, admitting, "I've already told that story." Never mind, never mind, he'll tell it again, won't he?

"My father, Inder Raj Anand - a famous writer in his own right - was a great friend of Satyajit Ray. When he saw I was adamant to join films, he insisted I join the best. At that time he knew the three best directors, Satyajit Ray, Federico Fellini and Raj Kapoor... Because I wanted to learn the hard way... and because of the Italian girls, I chose Fellini.

"My father wrote to him of my desire to assist him. Fellini wrote back a beautiful letter to my father that had just one hitch: he said he didn't speak much English and the rest of the unit spoke only Italian so... I would have to learn Italian before coming to Rome. I had graduated and spent two years in catering college, I was too lazy to spend two more years learning Italian. So I decided that I was not going to go to Rome any more and joined Ray (right) as his sixth assistant on a salary of Rs 150 a month.

"Mr Ray was a complete director in every manner." A pause. "That probably was also a big disadvantage for me as a student of cinema, because he did everything himself; we were just people who carried out orders.

"His props were drawn in his book, the editing was worked out before the shooting, some musical notes were already registered in the book. So, as an assistant, there was very little to contribute to the film. It is very important to learn how characters develop in the screenplay and no one was allowed to enter that department. So whatever you learned you learned on your own..."

But Ray got complete loyalty from his team. With reason.

When Anand reached Calcutta, he called up Ray and asked for an appointment the next day. Let's have the rest in Anand's own words.

"He asked me what time I get up, I promptly told him that I was at his beck and call, and could be there at any time. He asked me to come the next day at 8 am. When I reached his house, he opened the door himself. He asked me to sit down because he was busy typing something. After 20 minutes he finished typing, picked up a bunch of papers from his desk and handed them to me, saying, 'This is the complete synopsis of the film in which you'll be assisting me. It is in English because you won't understand a word of Bengali. I don't want you to feel left out, so I got up at 4 am and typed this for you.' I was shocked," says Anand, clapping his hands in disbelief even so many years later.

Anand was most eager to please by now. Once when the team was shooting a scene in a market, Ray caught sight of some hippies. He mused aloud that he could have used them in a garden scene he was planning. Anand disappeared and returned an hour later came back, sitting in the hippies jeep.

Difficult to believe of the man with bloodshot eyes crumpled in the sofa before you. But after spending years under Ray, Anand decided he was more cut out for a commercial career, making films that don't bear a smell of Satyajit Ray. Anand made Kaalia and Shehenshah instead.

Wasn't that a compromise? A pandering to gross populist tastes? Anand bridles enough to sit up straight for a moment.

"Just because I assisted him doesn't mean I have to make films like him." He grumbles, "Why is that everyone thinks that since I have worked under him, I should also make films like him?" Then he is all fire again, "Tell me about one son of a famous director who makes films like his father? Why do you expect a student to become a teacher?

"When I joined Ray I intended to make my own kind of films from my experience, so why do you expect me to have undergone the same kind of experiences and education Ray had.

"The kind of films I make cost a lot of money. Come and ask me this question when film making becomes as cheap as pen and paper. Because when you dare to be different and make a film like Main Azaad Hoon, it doesn't get the money invested in it back. Why should I make films for some intelligent people? A decent film costs 40-50 lakhs (Rs 400,000-500,000)... My problem is where do I release those films? There are no small theatres for such small films..."

He complained about the theatre charges, how starving good directors have moved to television because it is cheaper, how even Ray was called a flop director when he made Pather Panchali. Then he drifts from discussing good films to complaining how people flocked to the theatre when Pather Panchali won an award at Cannes. "They acclaimed him as a genius film-maker. Here it needs a foreigner to decide for us which is a good film." Luckily, mercifully, his cellular rang and I tearfully thanked the god of the cellular phones. He finishes the call and then eyes the phone with a jaundiced eye. "Hate those things," he said.

His first attempt at serious cinema was Main Azaad Hoon, inspired by Meet John Doe.

Continued