/> In a hugely prolific and productive career spanning 35 years and nearly 25 feature films Shayam Benegal has created a resplendent niche which none of his successors from Madhur Bhandarkar to Vishal Bhardwaj would find easy to reach.

Constantly searching for a language that combines intellect with the grassroots Shyam Babu's latest film Welcome To Sajjanpur has shocked cynical boxoffice pundits with its impressive opening. The director opens up on topics close to his art.

You're almost 74. And you've made your youngest film to date Welcome To Sajjanpur?
(laughs loudly) Thank you. The film required a certain perspective. Today issue-based films are an immediate no-no with urbane audiences. Multiplex audiences don't want to see social issues nor films set in villages.

Even Lagaan was accidently set in a village. It was more historical than contemporary. Villages seem to have fallen off our sightlines, gone off the map. If I wanted an audience to come for a film like this, I needed to change my language.

Please elaborate?
It's like the third-world in the eyes of the United States. They are only interested in the third world when there're calamities. They always associate the third world with unremitting horror.

Urban India reacts in a similar way to rural India. Cities see villages as no-good places. They feel there's nothing of value in the villages. That's not the truth. In cinema we can look at the truth in so many ways.

I decided to look at a village in a light-hearted but compassionate way. Welcome To Sajjanpur is a satire and a romantic comedy. We've this hero who manufactures and manipulates a love story between himself and a married girl from the village.

Shreyas Talpade plays a letter writer who isn't averse to manipulation. In a way this is a film about abuse of power. We also have all kinds of horrific traditions and customs swamping the satire.

Did you feel humour was the right tool for such serious issues?
Oh absolutely. It's what Charlie Chaplin used to do. He made you laugh. But at the end of his films you realized the frailty of human life. I don't think there can be any serious comedy without an underlying reference to Chaplin. I should imagine Sajjanpur is the funniest film I've done.

Some critics have found the dialogues risqué.
Tell me, at the grassroot level, where is the conversation not risqué? Anywhere in rural or urban India you just have to stand on the road and hear people talking to hear risqué words. Literate people speak differently.

They lose the colourfulness of colloquialism in their correct conversations. I didn't flinch from colloquialisms even if they were risqué. Today's audience is used to a more honest dialogue.

English literature did have its quota of colloquialism. Not Indian literature. Here we preclude colloquialisms from literary expressions. That's true of Hindi and Urdu. No one in our country puts dialogues in Awadhi or Maithili in the Hindi-Urdu literary works.

But in English you've regional dialects like Scottish or Irish creeping in. The same is true of Indian cinema. We shied away from colloquialism and regionalism.

Not in your cinema.
I suppose I can take credit for bringing in spoken colloquialism and regionalism in our cinema starting with Ankur where the Hyderabadi dialect was used in a non-caricatural form for the first time.

The UP dialect is similarly used in Sajjanpur. And look at the way someone like Vishal Bhardwaj uses the regional dialogue in Omkara. He goes for the colloquial but sees the global in it.

Is it becoming harder for you to make films on your own terms?
It was never easy. When you're constantly bucking the trend not because you want to be different but because the trend doesn't suit you, then you are always searching for the right producers.

But two healthy things have happened to our cinema—corporatization and the growth of the film business per se. Mutiplexes and quality of projection have brought the urban middleclass back.

Today films like A Wednesday and Aamir are possible. They're extremely well-made films. And you can't call them mainstream or off-beat.

When you made Ankur you were the only one doing this kind of cinema. Today a lot of your followers are doing it.
I wouldn't call them followers. I'd call them like-minded people. Companies like UTV are making films like Mumbai Meri Jaan and Sajjanpur possible. They're very astute. They know how to make and market movies.

But Sajjanpur doesn't have stars or great technological skills?
Audiences connected with the characters. Also the topics that touch our lives through newspapers such as honour killing ....Then there're the wonderful actors. I worked with Karisma Kapoor in Zubeida and now with Shreyas Talpde in Sajjapur. Both surrendered totally to the parts. Karisma trusted the director completely. There was no resistance from her.

Do you now find it easier to get the stars?
If the money is right there's no problem getting them. My film adapting the opera Carmen (called Chamki) will have stars. It's been pending for a while. We couldn't put the project together earlier when it was in other hands.

You mean Sanjay Gupta?
That's right. Now Chamki is with Reliance and we're going ahead with it. But because that requires a longer deeper preparation and also it can only be shot in winter in the Rajashthan deserts and it can't be done in this winter, I'll make a little political satire again with Reliance, before Chamki.

Tell me about the political satire?
I won't tell you the subject at the moment. It'd be the easiest thing for anyone to start copying. I want it to be funnier and sharper than Sajjanpur.

Will it feature Shreyas Talpade?
I want to work with him again. He's given a wonderful performance.

It's been a while since one of your films made the impact of Sajjanpur?
I give all credit to my producer UTV. My earlier film on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose went virtually unpromoted.