It’s also an experience that reiterated what he always knew, but had forgotten: “Bandit Queen is my best work. I didn’t work for anyone, there was no preconceived notion of what works and what doesn’t.” Kapur writes in his blog that for Paani he wishes to be the director he was when he made Bandit Queen.
Director Sudhir Mishra, a close friend, says: “It will be very interesting to see what Shekhar makes in India now. He has evolved in many ways, has developed a very unique point of view—one that is Indian in the spiritual sense, but international in sensibility and practice. But I always knew that a person like him wouldn’t do his best in a rigid, hierarchical system.” Both Mishra and Bobby Bedi of Kaleidoscope Films, which produced Bandit Queen, say rather fondly that the best, and sometimes the worst, thing about Kapur is that he is full of surprises.
In the late 1970s, 25-year-old Kapur, a chartered accountant based in London, arrived at his Delhi home one evening and told his two sisters and parents—a paediatrician father, journalist and stage actor mother—that “Dev uncle had a role” for him in his next film and he was going to be a movie star. “The entire family was shattered,” remembers Sohaila Kapur, his younger sister, based in New Delhi. “Showbiz was looked down upon in our family.”
As an adolescent and collegegoer, he happened to be the rebellious one in the family. He grew his hair long, fell in love very often (“for some reason, most of his girlfriends were either European or American,” says his sister), and was always at a party. “And then he surprised us by wanting to become a chartered accountant,” Kapur’s sister says. “Shekhar never got bogged down by choices, he always knew what he wanted to do, and was always happy about it. It’s only now, after his Hollywood success, that I see him anxious, reflective, often listless and also edgy. It may have something to do with the fact that he has had two divorces. Neither Medha, his first wife, or second wife Suchitra Krishnamurthy could cope with the fact that he would go anywhere that his work would take him. Films are his first love. But now I can sense that he is trying hard to make up to Kaveri for being away from her.”
Kapur tells me he’s not dating anyone, but that he can never be cynical about love and intimacy: “Love and sex, they’re the purest forms of religion.”
The listlessness is apparent to anyone who meets Kapur even for a couple of hours. He doesn’t want to analyse it. It could be the multitasking; or the pressure to surprise people with better things; or the search for complete creative control of his projects. He tells me how difficult it is to go back to the corporate studio environment—“at one level, it is very comfortable and at another, it’s like a laboratory.” Externally, at least, Kapur tackles questions about his work and life philosophically. His blog is full of abstractions about work, love, life and politics. I get some oneliners myself, which come across as guruspeak staples:
“An Oscar nomination is like a good hug. It feels good when you get it, and then it’s gone.”
“Fatherhood is the only thing in my life about which I can’t say that I’ve done well or haven’t done well at. Being a father is very confusing.”