Filmmaker Devashish Makhija’s chilling drama Ajji completed seven years yesterday. The movie, which delves into the topic of child rape and its revenge, succeeded in impressing audiences not just in India but also worldwide. To mark the occasion, Makhija looked back at the film in an interview with us.
7 years of Ajji: Devashish Makhija recalls, “We were probably the only film that continued shooting after demonetization”
Firstly, the casting of Abhishek Banerjee as the child rapist…
The casting of Ajji was quite an unconventional process because I had a casting director, which was Abhishek Banerjee, and he sort of debuted as a dark character for the first time in my film. If I am not mistaken, I think it was his first feature film. He had done TVF shows before that in which he had done mostly comedy, and it was, he was reluctant to play a dark part, and we sort of discovered that character together.
Yes, he told me how he tried to wriggle out at the last minute
We went through quite an intense and disturbing process to take him over the edge into those dark zones that his character Dhavale goes into. And Sushma Tai (Deshpande), we had considered many actors before this for the lead role of Ajji. But then I was looking for someone who nobody would have seen before on screen and would sort of convince you that she is the Ajji you are seeing on screen and nobody else.
How did you find Sushama Deshpande?
I was almost ready to cast a non-actor because I had spent years before Ajji trying to set up many feature films that got shelved and after almost what, a decade of trying to set up feature films, I finally got a chance to get on a set to shoot a film. So, I was ready to undertake a very extreme, non-Bombay, non-Hindi cinema, non-mainstream kind of approach. I was willing to sort of break convention and I turned down a lot of options of known faces for Ajji.
And then someone told me that there’s this Maharashtrian actor, who has done 35 years of stage and she’s been performing Savitri, Savitri Bai Phule, a one-act performance that she’s written and directs and acts in as Savitri for almost 35 years. So, I saw some videos of that performance because she wasn’t performing it live at that time. And the videos were really bad, bootlegged, audience videos from really far. And she was very distant on the stage, pixelated videos. But something in those videos about her just triggered some emotions inside me. And we called her to come meet us and she just flatly refused.
What?
Yes. She said, “I don’t like film people. I don’t want to meet film people. I don’t want to do films.” But then Abhishek and I sort of told her that we are not the regular film people and just come and meet us for tea. We’ll book you a cab. And if you don’t like us, don’t do the film. I just really needed to talk to her. It was something that was pulling me to her. And then she came and, of course, there was like almost 25-30 year difference between her and me, age difference, but it was love at first sight. We spoke for two, two and a half hours.
And I told her that she’s my Ajji and I would like her to play the lead in this film. And she was shocked out of her wit. She’s like, aren’t you going to put me on tape, audition me? I’m like, no, this is not, like I said, the conventional method of making a film. I’m trying to break some rules here because I’m being given a really paltry budget. I’m trying to pull off a miracle. And I want people by my side who can help me pull off the miracle. I need miracle workers. And I think you’re one. And that’s it. That’s how it was cast. It was quite non-filmy, if I could say so, the way we went about it.
This was a very unusual way of casting
I sort of drew inspiration from the way the Iranian filmmakers of the 70s and 80s have gone about casting and setting up their films. Because it was a really micro-budget and tiny film shot in just eighteen days and also shot against immense odds.
Eighteen days?
I know a lot of filmmakers say this about their films. It’s a bit of a cliche now, but we didn’t have time. I wrote the script while I was prepping and in about two, two and a half months of writing the script and prepping and going crazy trying to find locations and rewriting scenes as I kept finding the locations. We landed on shoot, I think on the 6th of November, 2016. And on the 8th of November was demonetization. And I remember about, I was told that roughly 400 films at that time in the country stopped shoot because nobody could transact in cash. And this was a time when a lot of transactions were happening in cash, then it just became much more streamlined and paper oriented and white following demonetization.
But on that day, it was immense panic. And if I’m not mistaken, I was told, I don’t have exact statistics on this, but I was told that we were probably the only film that continued shooting after demonetization. Because I had eighteen days to finish it. And I had exactly 18 films before this that I’d seen getting shelved. So, I was in absolutely no mood to back down. I was going to make this film even if I died making it.
What happened next?
So 8th November, I tell everybody, I don’t care if we can’t transact in cash. I’m going to speak to everybody from the diesel supplier to the caterer to the police to the chawl where we are shooting, to the goons, to the local politicians, whoever needs to be spoken to. But I’m going to beg them, I’m going to sign my life over to them. I’ll go to jail if I have to, but don’t stop my shoot. Let me finish shoot. And we continued shooting against these really bizarre odds. Even the production team was like stretched to their last thread.
So, I remember that being one of the biggest challenges of the film, although it was anyways a very difficult film to pull off in that micro budget and eighteen days. And the fact that it was really physical and here was a 60-plus woman who hadn’t done something this demanding of her in the real world before. She’s always only taken to stage for 40 years of her life. And she just stood up and was counted like a warrior. She was just always by my side.
In a way Sushma Deshpande was the cheerleader of the project
When the team saw that spirit in a 60-year-old woman, everyone just fell in line and said if she can do it, so can we. So Ajji was not just Ajji in the film. She was also like that keystone of the making of that film, that guiding light, that commander of my army, even outside of the film.
If you had to do the film again?
Honestly, if I’m asked today, if I would make Ajji exactly like that, I would refuse. Because I mean, I’m not averse to brutality on screen. But I’ve a larger problem with Ajji today: 2016 is when I made it, 2018 exactly two years after it, November, October, December was the Me Too movement. And I started questioning my gaze around the time of Me Too. And I’ve been questioning it and recalibrating it and re-navigating my relationship with gender and gender issues and feminism and where I place myself as a man in a world where women are, have constantly been collateral in men fighting men. So, I started re-negotiating these things post Me Too.
Post Me Too what would you like to change in Ajji?
Over the years, I realized with every passing year that I got some things wrong in Ajji. Ultimately, a woman going on that kind of a brutal rape revenge journey is really sort of manifesting the same male archetype that male rape revenge or male revenge or male vigilante films have perpetuated. So, if asked to do that today, I would rewrite this film from scratch and maybe look at it a little differently. What that lens would be, I don’t know, I would have to discover it. But somewhere I’ve started exploring the role of women in stories of systemic violence or gender violence a little differently since. In Joram, I tried to normalize the presence of women in the power structure by showing an MLA who’s actually the so-called, if you want to call her that, villain of the set piece, which would otherwise normally be a male domain, a male bastion in a film like that. I made it a woman.
And I’ve been just trying to normalize the presence of women without bringing attention to the fact that look, a woman is doing this. Because I spoke to a lot of women post Ajji and a lot of very strong minded and feminist women have pointed out certain flaws in Ajji and although they’ve liked certain things as well. So, all those conversations have brought some epiphanies. I’m still on that journey, still trying to find new epiphanies. But no, I would not make Ajji the same way today. And honestly, I have a slightly hard time watching that film today.
Well, it is not an easy film to watch
I don’t think I can watch it in one go, although I’m the one who made it eight years, seven years ago. No, eight years ago. It got released seven years ago. The other thing about Ajji was that, like I said, ten odd years and eighteen shelved films.
Are you joking? Eighteen shelved films?
I kid you not. Later, I landed on a film that actually got made and found a release even though nobody went to the theatres to watch it. But it got a ton of critical acclaim in that year when it was released. I didn’t expect it to be one of five such woman vigilante, rape revenge kind of films with Mom and Maatr and those kinds of films releasing before and after and around Ajji. I didn’t expect it to cut through that clutter and stick in people’s minds.
Ajji was miles ahead
So, it did feel like maybe we found something that nobody else was being able to find in that space, but it’s very angry and unstinting kind of sharp voice is something that I could not control because it was coming from the anger that I was carrying, I think, against the system for not giving me a chance, not recognizing my voice, not letting my films get made. And I was sitting on a ton of material that nobody was seeing merit in. So that rage somehow just channelled itself through the story of a woman trying to avenge her granddaughter’s rape. Maybe if I wasn’t carrying the rage of my films not getting made, the film Ajji would not be as raging.
Where do you place it in your filmography?
I don’t know where I place that in my filmography today because I think I have moved away from that rage since not because too many of my films got made. I still struggle. It takes me two to four years to set up each film. And even after Joram, no one really wants to make any of the films that I’ve written. So, my battles haven’t changed. But my story started coming out in other forms. I had seven, eight children’s books published, I had a book of short stories come out, I had my novel come out. I did a whole lot of other work where my and I kept making my short films, whatever little money I make off my really micro budget features, I keep channelling into my short films and I produce them myself. So, in these eight years, I’ve also made four or five short films and written over a dozen books.
So, because my stories kept going out there, I feel a lot less rage now against the system that is the auspices of under which storytelling operates. I’m not talking about the political system, that rage will never go away. But because I feel less rage now, maybe if I made Ajji now, it would also not be that raging. So, I don’t know what I really achieved by making such a raging film, because I also think I ended up alienating a lot of people who would have otherwise wishfully entered a film like this one. So, I don’t consider it my best work, or I don’t know where it will land once I finish my life and I have a filmography just before my deathbed when I’m looking back, I don’t know where I’ll place it. But right now, I just feel it was a little too raging for its own good.
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