The Bureaucrat is inspired by Anna Hazare's protest, says Anuvab Pal

Wisecracks, tongue-in-cheek humour and in-your-face honesty: that’s Anuvab Pal for you. A well-known playwright, screenwriter, comedian and author, Pal has a slew of successful plays like The President Is Coming and Chaos Theory, two films, two novels and 100 shows under his belt. Pal, with Director Rahul da Cunha, satires Indian politics in his latest play The Bureaucrat. It is about a hapless government official called upon to prevent his son, Dishoom, a young VJ, from starting a massive protest, called Kapre Utaro Middle Classes, against the government. In conversation with Firstpost, Anuvab Pal talks about The Bureaucrat, political satires in India and his idea of comedy. Edited excerpts: What is The Bureaucrat about? The Bureaucrat is essentially a story about a father and a son. The father is an aging bureaucrat, who is called upon by the Home Minister to solve a particular crisis. And the crisis happens to be that a bunch of young people started a protest against the government on Twitter where they are all going to take their clothes off. And the only qualification that this bureaucrat has to save the situation is, the man leading the protest is his son who happens to be a VJ in a music channel. That’s the starting point but it becomes the exploration of a home minister’s office where various other problems sort of mount up—people asking for bribe, people complaining everyday and the sorts. In the backdrop of all these protests going on, the play goes on to focus on a father-son relationship, their past, why this bureaucrat and his son’s relationship is strained. It is like Yes, Prime Minister ‘ish’ in a way—the first half feels it’s just a political satire but then it really goes into the family and shows the effect of corrupt practices used by the bureaucrat in his younger days, its impact on his son. [caption id=“attachment_330513” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A well-known playwright, screenwriter, comedian and author Anuvab Pal.”] [/caption] The essential heart of the comedy lies in the fact that the government is just old and they don’t know how to deal with the young. They don’t quite understand technology, don’t understand what the young people want. In their own way, they sort of grapple with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube! What inspired it? I am quite interested in the idea of the politics and the family. And The Bureaucrat is sort of a story where all the larger political things were happening but coming out of essentially a family, a father, a son and a mother. There are almost two plays in the play. There is the larger political satire of wanting to understand how older people and younger people are dealing with New India. Everybody is frustrated with where politics is going, there is pessimism around us and of course there were these protests that happened last year. I wanted to understand it from the perspective of the protesters, the young supporters of say, Anna Hazare, and how the old people deal with it. People these days are constantly protesting; it’s interesting to see how people fight for it and against it. We have seen enough people protesting on TV, so I wanted to see from the perspective of people controlling the protests. And what do these bureaucrats do if they actually want to do good? What if there’s a personal relationship between the protestor and the one who he is protesting against? It was also inspired by the plays I had seen—plays like November, Michael Frayn’s play Democracy, Yes Prime Minister and more recently a TV show called The Thick of it. I also wanted to explore certain ideas—like the flashback on stage, we don’t often see that. I wanted to go back to the 60s, 70s India and show the relation between these bureaucrats and politicians and how they shaped the present day relationship. In The Bureaucrat, you’ll see the Home Minister was once serving the then Home Minister, it shows how power changes, relationship changes. Why do Indian filmamkers shy away from naming politicians when they make a political satire?  I think it is to do with the sensitivities. It has to do with the Indian mob mentality. When you name someone and say that person is a thief, there’s a possibility that hundreds and thousands of people watching your show will break down the theatre, or set your house on fire! Generally filmmakers shy away from accusing someone unless they are certain about it. Unless you are doing a biopic, it becomes hard to name names. In a fiction, you will just have fictitious characters. But, generally people are wary of doing a biopic because, I don’t think too many in Indian cinema like to see what’s happening in the country straight on. In the West, for example, when the London Riots happened last year, in a week there were three plays on it. But in India, you wouldn’t see that sort of thing because I feel the audience would not want to see it. Gautam Ghosh was supposed to a biopic on the former West Bengal Chief Minister late Jyoti Basu, but he couldn’t raise money. And that’s only because people wouldn’t be interested. Also, I think people here are very sensitive about showing real people on screen. Earlier comedy was drawn from the middle-class family during Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s time, then came David Dhawan’s slapstick comedy, and now it’s the subtle humour, punning on a community, as we see in Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor. Do you think comedy is out of touch with the realities of the Great Indian middle class? Yes, somewhat. But I think it’s a big enough country for both slapstick and subtle humour to co-exist. The David Dhawan sort of comedy will stay in the world forever—farting, running, slapping the monkey, that kind of comedy has always existed and will not cease to exist. In Hrishikesh Mukherjee, or Basu Chaterjee’s movie the protagonist was a coward, he was not really cool, and that made it funny. The protagonist was in a situation out of his control—Amol Palekar trying to marry a woman, the father happens to be a strong-willed Army man, this showed the protagonist as a coward. I think the audience for Shoojit Sircar’s subtle comedy will be slightly smaller, more urban. We have had various kinds of comedies, intelligent ones too, it depends on who’s making the movie. I don’t think everyone can pull off a Woody Allen sort of comedy. I agree we have moved away from comedy arising out of a middle class situation, like in Choti Si Baat. I am interested in such comedies. I hope it comes back. We have a large audience in India who still want to see David Dhawan sort of comedy. I personally wouldn’t make it. Are you drawn to a particular kind of humour? I am drawn to very specific stories. A lot of my influence is British comedy. I like discomfort. Comedy coming out of nothing—just everyday life is what I am drawn to. Who is your audience? Is your audience only the ‘aware’ class? I think the audiences are cleverer than given credit for. I really don’t think the audience is dumber, or cleverer than me. I feel the audience consists of people just like me. The President is Coming has been a successful film, The Bureaucrat has been getting good reactions—it will never compete with the market of Ra.One and it doesn’t intend to either. The Bureaucrat opened on 4 April in Mumbai. It has a show on 3 June, Sophia Auditorium, and on 10 June at Tata Theatre: NCPA.