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Photo: V. Sreenivasa murthy

War of words Saeed Mirza: ‘I was fighting with words that were being flung around arrogantly by people like George Bush and Tony Blair’

With this book, the maker of the memorable serial “Nukkad” in the early days of television and path-breaking films such as “Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai” and “Saleem Langde Pe Mat Ro” makes a shift in medium. He will not make any more films after finishing the one he is currently working on for Rajat Kapoor. He has abandoned his plans of making a film on Kashmir because “too much blood has been spilt there from all sides and it is impossible to enter that space without feeling like a vulture.”

Even as he has moved from visual images to the written word, Mirza remains as deeply political as ever in his concerns. The book comes as a response to the events after 9/11 when people began to use words like “democracy” and “terrorism” without knowing what they mean. He shows how people like his mother lived by the values of liberal democracy without using catchphrases as crutches.

But interestingly, much like in his later film “Naseem”, the tone of the book is not of fiery anger but of quiet indignation.

Is it a novel, an anti-novel, a memoir, a scrap book? I don’t know. But to be able to construct something like this is incredibly satisfying because it’s free.

You can meander, take off on journeys, play with the form and include history, love story, travelogue, polemic… That’s the way I see life, not as one straight line. It also gives the reader the space to agree or disagree with me. In other words it’s a democratic book!

I was fighting with words that were being flung around arrogantly by people like George Bush and Tony Blair. They were talking about civilized versus uncivilized, democratic versus the undemocratic. They lead to incredible slaughter and devastation. How do you fight them? I had to use words in response.

I think it is important because a lot of people seem to be ducking from identifying themselves. I identify myself with an ideology and yet I question it. The world is no longer as black-and-white as I once perceived it to be.

I believe that through Sufism come poetry and a poetic vision of the world. I think Marxism has lost poetry and we need to get it back. The socialist idea was born in the East. The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed were all in a sense Socialists because they were reaching out. So were the Bhakti movement and the Sufi tradition which were so inclusive. People often tell me: “Saaed get real.” But what is the real? George Bush is real, Bin Laden is real, fascism is real. It takes the life of people. How do I deal with that? That’s why Sufism. It breaks away. It is about you, your relationship with God, the other human beings and the universe. You can’t let demagogues take over. Very few people with very huge agendas are running this world.

There is no space because it is not determined by the people but sponsors. Look at the images of ‘Nukkad’. What kind of product can you sell with them? Images have to be aspirational and not downmarket.

As someone famously put it, on television people never get what they like, but get to like what they get. In films too only a select few are called experimental.

‘Bheja fry’ and ‘Mixed Doubles’ are allowed.

But those by young film-makes made on shoe-string budget like ‘Missed Call’ or ‘Cape Karma’ never get seen. I would say the space has not enlarged too much at all.

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