EXCLUSIVE! Meghna Gulzar on Sam Bahadur: ‘Vicky Kaushal got the mannerisms of Sam Manekshaw right’

Filmmaker Meghna Gulzar believes that the movie, Sam Bahadur is going to be a great inspiration for all. Sam Manekshaw led his life with truth, honesty and with righteousness no matter what the circumstances were. Talking about this great man, she says he was everyone’s man and every soldier’s general. Edited excerpts from the interview: How did the idea of making a movie on Sam Manekshaw come to you? It was Ronnie Screwvala’s idea. He is related to the Manekshaw family through his wife. I think the small part that I played in the making of the film initially was that my name popped into his mind when he thought of this idea of doing a film on him. I consider that to be a blessing.  What was the research that went behind the making of the film? The research was long. I met the family, his military assistants, his associates and our researcher Meghna Talwar did a lot of leg work and collected all the information on Sam Manekshaw. And of course everything about him was in the public domain, that helped us to quite an extent. His life is so cinematic and dramatic so as we were reading the chronology of his life, we could just see cinema unfolding in front of us. Sam Manekshaw’s relevance in today’s world… He is as relevant as he was forty years ago. His epitaph on the grave says ‘life well lived’. And that’s how he chose to be remembered. He led his life with truth, honesty and with righteousness no matter what the circumstances were. How can that way of living ever become irrelevant? I really believe that he was God’s chosen child and he has seen some tremendous ups and downs in his life. One would not imagine the circumstances that he has seen would be able to come out of it, that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel that he would come out and rise like a phoenix. So, there has to be something about his destiny that he was a chosen child. And yet he was so affable and so humble. I mean he touched everybody he interacted with. He was everyone’s man and every soldier’s general. There is no mimicry of Sam Manekshaw and that is the best thing about Sam Bahadur, was that a conscious effort? Mimicking somebody of his personality and stature in any way is not the right approach to do. Because then actually you are setting an imprint for people who don’t know anything about him that this is Sam Bahadur. Everybody who has seen the film including the family says that Vicky Kaushal has just got the mannerisms of Sam Manekshaw right. On Sam Manekshaw’s wife Siloo’s role… I remember the family saying that the mother would never be the type who was always well draped in a sari and her hair in place like a typical military wife. She was not that lady. She was a little bit of a rebel kind of a woman. Like Sam Manekshaw, she was also not the type who would follow rules blindly. But when you are in the army you are impeccably turned out. But the family told us that Siloo was not like that. The fine line between how dishevel her hair needs to be to how well kept that hair needs to be was a detail that we had to deal with.