Rakeysh Mehra speaks on the triumphant success of Rang De Basanti with Subhash K Jha

Q: How's the commercial prospect of Rang De Basanti looking to you?
A: I've been told it's gone through the roof . The numbers are filtering in. The opening, I'm told, is the highest ever for a Hindi film.

Q: How did you break the mould and still remain so entertaining in your film?
A: Yesterday the film got a standing ovation in New York and UK. In New Jersey the police had to be called in because the people wanted another show. Someone just called me from Jaipur. In a small locality in a theatre which was on the brink of closing down, people are thronging to see the film. From theatres with audiences in suits and perfumes to this guy in a lungi in Jaipur.

A dear friend from Delhi who plays a small part (the guy who gets hit by the police) ...he's in his mid-40s. He told me you made Aks, you didn't win the race, but you stuck to your convictions and you've won the race. How do we explain it? It's too early. We'll be wiser later. Instinctively I feel people are enjoying watching what I enjoyed making.

Q: There was a cloak secrecy over the project...
A: There were 4-5 Bhagat Singh films that didn't connect with the audience. Then there was Mangal Pandey. That too failed. And my film starred Aamir Khan. So any sign of patriotism in my film was read as a danger sign.

Q: Rang De... is ingeniously original.
A: It's a collection of many circumstances. In school I wanted to join the air force. It didn't work out for me. In college in Delhi I was predominantly a sportsman. It didn't work out because I was from a lower middle-class family. And the first priority was to bring money back into the family....

As kids in Delhi on August 15 when we flew kites, we could hear India Gandhi speaking...On the other side there were the patriotic songs on the loudspeaker.... Ae mere watan, Mere desh ki dharti...We were looking at the idea of our country through a kite....Films like Mother India, Do Bigha Zameen, Naya Daur which came on TV , touched all of us. This was the era when escapism hadn't seeped into cinema or real life.

Q: So how did Range De happen?
A: Seven years ago even before Aks I wanted to do Awaaz. You'll find shades of Awaaz in Rang De Basanti....It was about a bunch of boys working in a garage, the haves and have-nots. I wanted to make it with Abhishek.

Then seven years ago I wanted to make a film on the life of the revolutionaries. What I didn't want to do was to shoot them with halos ....I wanted to shoot them as normal youngsters. I wanted to call it The Young Guns Of India.

Q: Then what happened?
A: The race for Bhagat Singh started. Initially I wanted to enter the race. Then I realized we were all insulting his memory. Attention was diverted by who would get into theatres first. I moved on....I did a focus group in Delhi and Mumbai. I took a new story idea to youngsters between 17 and 23. Our survey showed that for our generation a relationship meant, 'Let's get married and make babies together.' Not to this generation.

The youngsters we spoke to were driven by ambition. And I didn't even know how to get on the internet!. Anyway, we then moved into surveying them about the country and the tri-colour. The borders of patriotism had blurred. Pagdi sambhal jatta was no more relevant. Not too many kids knew who Chandrashekhar Azad was.

Q: Then what?
A: I told my writer Kamlesh Pandey there was no point in making a film about the freedom fighters. He insisted, reminded me of the passion that Manoj Kumar's films used to incite. But that was a different era. I sadly abandoned the original idea and hit on another idea of a British documentary filmmaker coming to India to make a film on the Indian armed revolution.

She finds kids who are more western than her. Two lines... the past and present run together. They intersect. There're sparks. Then the rooftop scene where the line between past and present blurs when Soha asks her friends to kill the raksha mantri....

Someone has to believe in you if you give two years of your life completely. UTV did. My kids forgot my face. I'm a fifty percent producer in Rang De Basanti. But the film wasn't going on the floors until UTV stepped in.

Q: You had another producer earlier?
A: I had another producer. He didn't put in a single penny. We were borrowing money from the sharks until two months before shooting. I freaked out. I was shattered. But the minute Aamir said yes –in five minutes!-- everything fell into place. He then went into Mangal Pandey.

I wasn't threatened because I knew what people didn't—that my film wasn't a historical. I wanted to name it Awaaz. But that was the name of another child. I decided to behave like a star and name my film Rang De Basanti.

I gave the script to UTV's Ronnie Screwala. He backed me all the way. I went over-budget. He didn't say anything. We went beyond recovery. He still didn't back out. I got executive producers from UK. We had to shell out 1.5 crores extra for them.

Q: What was your budget?
A: 25 crores. Everything except the jail scenes was shot on location. We shot between February and June.

Q: The cast and characters are impeccable.
A: Yes Aamir hasn't dominated the film. And yet he has brought in every thing required...The whole Punjabi accent for his Mona-Sardar character was his idea. There was an attraction between Siddharth and Soha. We couldn't bring it into the forefront because of lack of space. In any case love stories don't have to have a happy ending. Today's generation is very mature about love and its end.

Q: The MIG plane-crash was tricky. Were you ready for the controversies?
A: I was ready for a long fight. Surprisingly, the censor gave us a certificate subject to clearance from defence ministry. When defence personnel saw it they were a little apprehensive about the sensitive issue. But the film was cleared in three days. The raksha-mantri loved it.

The release got pushed forward by a week. That was tricky. Theatres all over the world were booked and had to be cancelled. There were 550 screens to explain to. I made a film after four years. This took away the joy of releasing my second film. But I'm not complaining.

Q: Who is the real hero of Rang De Basanti?
A: You mean besides Aamir and the other characters? Binod Pradhan's camerawork is comparable with the best in the world. But the real hero is the screenplay. I got so possessed by it, every day I was on the laptop at 4.30 am either creating or destroying.