Gauri Shinde on Dear Zindagi: Shah Rukh Khan is like Jehangir, Alia Bhatt's a prodigy

People are raving about Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan’s latest release, Dear Zindagi. While the actors are getting all the praise for their effortless and charming performances, director Gauri Shinde is also being hailed for connecting with the audience once again. Her debut film English Vinglish that gave insights about the hopes and aspirations of Indian housewives, tugged at the heartstrings of viewers and became a big box office grosser. It turns out that Dear Zindagi is going to be an even bigger hit. Excerpts from an interview with Gauri Shinde: [caption id=“attachment_3132134” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Dear Zindagi is Gauri Shinde’s second film after English Vinglish[/caption] Dear Zindagi is moving from strength to strength at the box office. How does it feel and what is the best compliment that you received for the film?  I am always very grateful and surprised, and I am like – ‘Wow! Oh my god!’ Yes, that is my response usually [laughs]. You never know how deeply can the audience think and connect, and when that happens, you feel touched. Actually, the response has been very touching. I received many messages on social media, emails… People have expressed that this is how they have felt in childhood, and there is somebody who reconnected with her mother. Some said that now they have come out (of the film) feeling like they had been for therapy and that they are feeling so good about their life all of a sudden. They just want to go and live it. Even if six people feel the impact then it is good enough for me. These things make me emotional and happy. You got both your ideas, for English Vinglish as well as Dear Zindagi, while in New York. So what’s it about the city that you are bursting with ideas there? [Laughs out loud] Yes, perhaps I am at my creative best in New York but now I don’t know with Donal Trump becoming the President… Now I will have to change my location, I guess! Both your films have a woman as the protagonist; was it a subconscious decision or it just happened that way? It just happened. But maybe subconsciously…I don’t know if I am more pulled towards women’s emotions and women’s struggles. And why not?  Nobody is voicing them much so I am glad to be able to, because it is also my voice. It was not conscious, it was not planned. These are the stories that come out of me. I feel women-oriented subjects, women as the main protagonist…all this is here to stay and now it should not be treated as something different. We have never questioned why films are made only from men’s point of view. There are two genders, it could be either (that’s represented in a film). What was the trigger for Dear Zindagi? Every story is your imagination and your wishful thinking. I have experienced it myself,  I have had therapy myself which is why I can speak about this. It is not something I have made without knowing anything about it. This is the kind of space I wanted to talk about and I felt quite deeply about. I have been through all kinds of therapies myself and in those times I wished for someone who would be like Jehangir Khan, and that is how the character was created. What did Alia and Shah Rukh have to tell you post-release?  We have to still meet and exchange our experiences. We have been in touch on the phone and over messages.  Shah Rukh went off to the US, Alia and I too have been travelling. We plan to meet this week. Shah Rukh called to ask me whether I was happy with the response to the film. He’s very concerned about how I was feeling. That feels good. He has always been like this: very caring, very supportive, wanting to know whether you’re feeling okay. Nobody asks these things to a director because the director is taking care of everybody, he or she is the captain.  But Shah Rukh is the only person who would be concerned. He is very much like Jehangir, his character from the film. Was it an immediate ‘yes’ from Shah Rukh for the film?  And did you always have him and Alia in mind to play the parts? Yes, Shah Rukh immediately agreed to do the film and I am very grateful for that. It made things easy for me as I didn’t have to wonder if I should shelve this film. Nobody was in my mind when I was writing the script. I don’t think of actors at that point. When I was done with my writing, I began thinking ‘Who do I cast for the roles?’.  Alia is someone I always wanted to work with because she is a terribly interesting actress. She gets into the skin of the character, she is very instinctive and spontaneous. Which is why her performances are always so honest and so real. It’s not that she is trying to achieve perfection. She just gets into the zone of the character,  it is not any intellectualising of anything. She is a director’s actor but I gave her lot of freedom and she’s added few things on her own. Alia comes across as a very mature person. What do you think? [Laughs] She is a 40-year-old in a 23-year-old’s body. Maybe she is a child prodigy, who knows! We don’t know yet. I told her mother (Soni Razdan) too, ‘Thank you for creating this creature…what is this mix of Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan?  It’s amazing whatever the result is!’. Shah Rukh is known as the ultimate king of romance, but he doesn’t play a typical lover in Dear Zindagi… I don’t look at Shah Rukh just as a romantic person. I think we use romance in a very limited way. The film’s a romance of life and he’s great at that. A good actor can create a space of love not just by being a lover in typical sense. He can do that even by spreading love around him and that is just what he has done beautifully. Since the film talks about mental health related matters: depression, breakdown, what do you have to say about the taboo associated with it in our society? This is something so strange that why and when did this taboo develop… I really wonder. It’s so okay to have physical issues, as Shah Rukh’s character,  Jehangir Khan says in the film, ‘We suddenly shy away when there is an emotional problem, why can’t we call our office and say that I want a day off because I am feeling really low, I feel depressed. We don’t have to always come up with: I have fever or I have flu, cough…to take leave from work’. Can we say upfront that I am not feeling good today, I am emotionally down? That itself would be great. Why not? All of us go through it, so why are we hiding from each other. It is not like we are aliens and humans mixed up. We are all humans. Why are we brushing things under the carpet?  What is so wrong about it? We rarely see people approaching shrinks as those people are labelled mad and paagal. That is what happened in cinema too or in society, and that labelling has to go. And then, we ourselves don’t give it importance, thinking ‘This is okay’, though we take care of our fractures and sprains. We ourselves ignore our mind-related issues. It is also important to respect your own mind and emotional issues. Talking about depression, we have celebrities like Deepika Padukone, Karan Johar, and recently Alia’s sister Shaheen who have spoken about it openly. Shah Rukh Khan, too, had said few years ago that he’d gone into depression and later returned full of energy. Your take on this: It is great. The more open we are, the more acceptable this will be. It happens to all of us, we are all in a denial if we say that there has not been one day in our lives when we have not been depressed. How can that be?  It is so unreal. If we experience happiness, how can we not express sadness? Apart from regular issues, there are events that happen in our lives, there could be death, there could be some loss, your pet could be hurt…Depending upon how fragile we are, we react in a certain way. The more open we are, the better it is going to be for all of us. How significant are reviews for you? Everything is important for me, especially if it needs to be good and favourable, it is important. But I am not dying to read reviews because I am scared of them…Also, I feel everybody doesn’t understand what you want them do. It doesn’t happen in real life, so to except it to happen in film criticism! [laughs]. People sometimes can be nasty and completely insensitive, it’s fine. I don’t really go and read the stuff, I get someone to read it, or if they have read something, I tell them if it is good only then tell me about it. I am quite vulnerable,  I feel affected by negative stuff being said or written. I like constructive criticism. I don’t mind if people are saying, ‘I like this film but…’ But if someone is outright negative… I know for a fact that Dear Zindagi is not a bad film. It is definitely not in a bad category. People saying something positive and then saying that the film is a bit long, it’s fine, it’s understandable. I was aware of the pace of the film and it had to be this way. I couldn’t make it fast. The subject dictated this in a certain way. I felt really bad because some critics have not done justice to it and have dismissed it in three lines saying, ‘There is no meat to it…’ which I found very odd. Some critics even found it preachy… I don’t understand why. In fact, the response, when I showed the rough cut to anyone was : ‘My god! this could have got preachy’. Even Javed Akhtar had told me so. He also said that it could have easily been pseudo. But he felt it was so beautifully told.  This shows the film is not preachy. So I disagree with critics calling it preachy. So have you thought of your next project? And after working with some of the gems of the industry, do you have any actor on your wishlist? Maybe with the same actors all over again: Sridevi, Shah Rukh, Alia! [Laughs]. I really don’t know at this point of time. But if there is a subject that is worthy enough, then why not? But as of now, I just want to switch off my phone and go on a holiday! To New York? [Laughs out loud] I don’t know!