And so there was by no means anybody else for me. It was a each sophisticated and direct course of to knock on her door and to ask her to be on this movie. I actually was each within the business and out of the business. I used to be a what you name an outlier. However I believe Rekha beloved my first movie – Salaam Bombay! (1988) and needed to, I believe, entrust herself to me on this journey, to evoke a time in India when sexuality and the learnings of social guidelines have been regular and commonplace and matter of reality and unaffected by the Victorian mores that the British purchased to our tradition, lengthy after the Kamasutra was written.
Sure, we did have a number of conversations in regards to the position. I believe Rekha’s main curiosity and problem was to carry out in English. I believe it was her first time and I additionally was battling whether or not one might use the English language for our personal historic texts in a recent approach or not. However I had dedicated to the experiment of constructing it in English. And Rekha was very a lot a scholar and a humble one, in getting the intonation proper, getting the dialogue right. She was completely unabashed about imitating me if it needed to be, in the way in which she needed to communicate. However, she actually was a professional and understood that it position went approach past memorization. As soon as she bought the dialogue inside her, it was basically at all times a “instructing” that she was talking about. She wasn’t merely spouting dialogue. She made it seem very colloquial and never arch in any respect.
When it comes to costume, after all I knew the care that she took and the notice that she delivered to how she felt good and the way she needed to seem. I believe she understood the simplicity and the minimalism of the costuming that we have been going for. There was one big distinction in her costumes, which was what we known as the peacock costume (at the moment), I requested Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla to make for Rekha. It was a really elaborate costume with precise peacock feathers. Rekha was at all times concerned with the small print of costuming, whether or not or not it’s the easy white cotton sarees and borders in comparison with the peacock costume. She is somebody who embodies a fantastic love and in addition a respect, I believe, for the accoutrements that we have now to dip ourselves in to essentially carry out the position totally. And costuming, like make-up, was a giant integral a part of how Rekha noticed the position.
In fact there was nice awe on set when Rekha was round. Individuals regarded as much as her in essentially the most lovely approach truly. There was by no means any mobbing, there was an actual sense of quiet respect and since we have been actually capturing not in studios however in paddy fields and temples and actual areas in Khajuraho. There was a way of really, a temple feeling, of quiet devotion one might say even when Rekha carried out.
I bear in mind after I confirmed her the movie in Regal cinema throughout a personal screening. She was absorbed by means of the screening within the movie. She performs the position of a instructor, it’s not the principle position of Maya (Indira Varma) or Tara (Sarita Choudhury), she’s their instructor within the movie. She checked out me after the movie and mentioned, “You understand Mira, it’s extremely lovely. However my followers might be disenchanted as a result of I do not get to do this a lot.” I laughed and mentioned, “Rekha ji you gave us the anchor within the movie. It is vitally tough and difficult to be the anchor of such a movie and thanks for that.”
