Till yesterday, Gauri Shinde was the debutant director who had lucked out with getting the legendary, hitherto reluctant, Sridevi to power the director’s first film, English Vinglish . Gauri stayed in the background all through the run-up to the release, her informal manner, casual chic and unfettered hair a piquant contrast to Sridevi’s more formal bearing, immaculate make-up, and designer wardrobe.

But now the spotlight is slowly moving towards Gauri the director who has given us that rare and pleasurable offering: A quiet Hindi film that finds its big moments in small gestures and scenes. Like all good movies, English Vinglish makes us look inward, examine our emotions and failings — sometimes uncomfortably, but meaningfully. And it does so in a gentle, deceptively simple manner.

Sure, it has a pile of predictable moments (you can smell that climax at the interval); her lead character, Shashi Godbole, who embodies the ‘great Indian housewife’, is almost too good to be true; and Shashi’s chief tormentor — her daughter — borders on caricature. But Gauri has crafted her story with such endearing honesty and love that she has you feeling deeply for Shashi, wanting, willing her to that final victory. And that’s what matters, really, in the darkness of the cinema hall. In another rare occurrence, the box-office has agreed with the critics, and the film is collecting praise and footfalls in equal measure. So you understand when Gauri says it has all been “overwhelming”. That is a word she uses through our conversation — a pattern that reflects the wave she’s been swept up by. She’s yet to recover from the exhaustion of the non-stop promotion, and there’s a slightly breathless, ‘Can’t believe this is happening to me’ quality to her tone.

“The most wonderful reaction for any film-maker or creative person is to have someone observe your work closely, notice the detailing and tell you exactly what they liked,” she remarks. That kind of reaction has come her way, hearteningly, from old-school directors. “The film industry has been so generous with their praise, it’s embarrassing for me to repeat it all to you,” she says. Press her for specifics, and she reveals, “Yash Chopra came out of the premiere and said ‘What a film you’ve made!’, among other things. That such a great director, who has himself cast Sridevi in some of her most memorable roles, said that to me was incredible.

“Then Raju Hirani spent a lot of time with me discussing the film and told me he thought it was a wonderfully written script.” And there was Ramesh Sippy, “who I’ve never met, who got my number from somewhere and called me up to say some wonderful things about it.”

That’s just reward for both Gauri and Sridevi having the guts to make the actress’ much-hyped comeback vehicle a distinctively non-glamorous one (by Hindi superstar standards, that is), with no razzle-dazzle song sequences or costumes, no melodrama, masala or item number. Sridevi’s celebrated dancing skills have, in fact, been practically buried. All the energy has been reserved for the acting. And it shows. Few will contest that this is one of Sridevi’s strongest performances.

What’s her greatest strength as an actress, I ask Gauri. “It’s difficult to name just one,” she replies, “but what’s amazing is how she is able to so completely become the character and how natural and instinctive that process is. It’s in her eyes, in her heart, the way she moves her hands, how she uses her fingers, her body language.” Though Sridevi is anything but a method actor, Gauri says, “When the camera rolled, she was 100 per cent Shashi Godbole.”

However the director says she really didn’t see that transformation as part of Sridevi’s famed switch-on, switch-off style of acting. “Of course, she lights up when she gets in front of the camera — it’s magical. But I’ve only heard of this switch-on, switch-off business from others. Perhaps this impression has come about because she can be very guarded with people she doesn’t know. But she was pretty much her real self with me and we laughed a lot; she has a terrific sense of humour. She has to have one, doesn’t she, if she does comedy so well?”

Gauri, who has said the movie was inspired by her mother’s life, says Sridevi did not meet her before shooting began. “She did meet her on the first day of shooting, because I had called my mother to the sets to give the clap for the first shot. But she didn’t need to meet her for research, because the character of Shashi is not 100 per cent my mother. And Sridevi made it her own anyway.”

What was her mother’s reaction to the movie that was a public declaration of love and an apology rolled in one? “She has been completely overwhelmed,” says Gauri. “The first time she saw it, she had tears in her eyes and she gave me a big tight hug. She had no words for me that day. But after that, she’s been making discoveries every day and getting emotional about them. She calls me every day to tell me about some moment, some scene that she liked or that moved her.”

Has she been guilty of saying those thoughtless, cruel things to her mother that children often do? “Absolutely,” says Gauri. “I think everyone is, unless you happened to be a totally goody-goody kind of child. I was not a perfect daughter.” As she puts it in her director’s note on the film’s Web site: “ English Vinglish is a film inspired by my mother, whose discomfort with the English language did not stop her from realising her full potential as a human being, a mother, a wife and a professional. It is my way of saying ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ to my mother.”

However, she adds that it was not entirely about the mother for her. “Most people see the film from the mother’s point of view, but I also saw it from the child’s perspective. It’s really difficult for a kid, at 12 and 13, to cope with all those changes and emotions. My heart was as much with the child as with the mother,” says the grateful, but not-so-perfect daughter.

And how did her husband, film-maker R. Balki, ( Cheeni Kum , Paa ) react? “The first time he saw it was when I showed him the first cut of the film. I put him in the edit room and I went off to do some work, so I wasn’t there to see his reactions. But I’m told he had tears in his eyes and he sms-ed some of my friends to say how proud he was of me,” she recalls.

Both Balki and Gauri have been ad film directors; Gauri has done some 100 of them. She’s made two short films as well: Oh Man! (2001), which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival and Y Not? (2004), a public interest film on the girl child. But it is her ad film background that is evident in English Vinglish , a film that has a great visual economy of storytelling. Gauri makes terrific use of the telling glance, a slight smile, and a few key shots to tell her story. “Ad films teach you to say whatever you want to in the shortest possible time. Every second counts; you have to make it work. So you have to learn to eliminate the unnecessary,” she points out. That’s a professional philosophy that has been well executed in English Vinglish , a film that is significant as much for what it doesn’t do as for what it does.

shashibaliga@gmail.com

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