The Hindu Business Line : Director's cut

For seventeen years, R. Balakrishnan has had such a good time in advertising that he nearly forgot what he really wanted to do was make movies. "I walked into Mudra for an interview thinking that the logo (of the two hands) belonged to Ramesh Sippy's company," says Balki, National Creative Director, Lowe.

The movie finally got made. Written in 25 days, Cheeni Kum is a "pucca Bollywood film" insists Balki. A love story, written with the leading cast of Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu in mind, is that of a 64-year-old chef and a 34-year-old woman.

"I didn't want an older man-younger woman story. I wanted it to be a regular, plausible relationship, a love story that you could imagine happening to people you knew," says Balki.

The exciting casting also includes the effortlessly funny Paresh Rawal who plays Tabu's father. "Amitabh is playing a 64-year-old dude. He is not the `Sexy Sam' of KANK (Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna) but an understated, sarcastic guy who has preserved some of his machismo, and can't get himself to say sweet, mushy lines," says Balki.

The background score — there is no singing in this movie — has been composed by the director's all-time favourite, Chennai-based maestro Ilayaraaja. The four tracks, including the one playing in the promos currently on air, are, however, old classics. "I wanted the rest of the country that hasn't had the opportunity to listen to the genius to hear the best of Ilayaraaja."

Tabu and Amitabh Bachchan in Cheeni Kum, his first movie as director

"Tabu is superb! Amitabh's brilliant, he's so funny, and does it with such a poker face." But despite the excitement today, Balki is as critical about his movie as he is about his campaigns and says he might just want to run away and hide by the time the movie premieres on May 24 in London and May 25 in Cannes.

From all the campaigns that Lowe has worked on, Balki can only pick Saint Gobain, Bajaj and some work for Unilever that makes the cut. The rest is nothing out of the ordinary. "If you are happy with what you have done, you will find no reason to move forward and do better work," he says. The personal philosophy of taking each day as it comes also applies to Lowe, and Balki says he professes no vision for the agency.

"A lot of us in the advertising industry are slightly out of touch with reality," he says. "We are in the business of ideas, and yet we behave like a service industry, more concerned with maintaining relations, and charging commissions as if we were a bank," he explains. "Our machinery is the minds we have, and we should be focussed on creating new solutions, coming up with new ideas. But despite being in a lateral business, we are even structured in a linear way.

And this is true for everybody in the industry, including Lowe," says Balki.

The preoccupation with awards is, however, something that Lowe shall not suffer from. "We don't believe in awards. Even Cannes is another excuse to have fun. Those who went drinking in Goa will go drinking in Cannes," says Balki. All that is expected from those at Lowe is conscientious work.

For Balki personally, the immediate challenge is to balance advertising and filmmaking. "It is difficult. A lot of that energy goes into just staying true to your story and keeping the freshness of the idea alive," says the first-time director, already working on his next movie project. Pa, a father-son relationship story, features Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan.

Sometime in the future, Balki also hopes to work with his other favourite actor, Kamal Hassan, whose Moondram Pirai (Sadma in Hindi) he has watched 22 times. Among directors admired are Baalu Mahendra, Bharatiraja, Mani Ratnam and Karan Johar, who, according to Balki, is among the most honest and fun filmmakers.

So is Cheeni Kum. "A light and fun movie" since, says the director, "I don't have much depth in me." We shall take that with a pinch of salt.

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