Raja Krishna Menon, the man behind the massive hit called Airlift, hails from Thrissur, Kerala’s abode of temples, but the 43-year-old is a communist at heart. In his early days, he actually quit a job selling advertising space in the good old Yellow Pages, because it struck him as unfair to make small entrepreneurs cough up a few thousands for an ad, when they could barely make profits.
As Airlift crosses Rs 100 cr at the box-office, I set up a date with Raja to chat about his journey from ad films to making the Akshay Kumar-starrer, over a sumptuous Malayali meal. We decide on the rather unassuming Taste of Kerala restaurant in Mumbai’s Fort area for lunch.
(Scroll down for a video clip of excerpts from the interview with Raja Krishna Menon)
Mumbai and Movies
Raja’s move to Mumbai in 1993 wasn’t smooth. He got swindled off Rs 10,000 by a real estate broker in the first week he landed in the city, but in course of time, he also met someone like the late filmmaker Mukul Anand who helped Raja set up his first ad company.
Bas Yun Hi, a romcom starring Purab Kohli and Nandita Das among others, was Raja’s first stab at filmmaking. The film, which released in 2003 wasn’t the breakout success he was hoping for. If anything, it left him with a lot of self-doubt, he basically didn’t like the film he had just made.
However, Raja terms his second film, Barah Aana (2009), as one of the most beautiful experiences of his life. The film travelled to several festivals and taught Raja the importance of working with people you can be with and are equally passionate to see your vision through. “Give me Roger Deakins and give me Priya Seth (his Barah Aana and Airlift DoP), I’ll take Priya Seth”, he says.
The Idea of Airlift
Interestingly, the germ of the idea of Airlift came much before Barah Aana. “I’m sure everyone knew about the evacuation, you would have heard about it because Saddam attacking Kuwait is like Saddam attacking Kerala. It was in a conversation with someone that the huge evacuation operation was discussed and I remember saying then – why don’t we celebrate this? It seems like something crazy. I instinctively knew that this was a film, but I felt then that, we can’t make it in this country, this is like a Hollywood film. So I kept it on the backburner and Barah Aana happened. I pitched the idea to a few people but there were no takers, they kept asking me to do remakes, which I wasn’t interested in.”
Somewhere before Airlift and after Barah Aana, Raja took his 11-year-old son out of school, shut down his ad filmmaking company and went backpacking through Latin America along with his wife for 6 months. “I never felt more free in my life”, declares Raja, looking back, “I was hoping for some epiphany but it didn’t happen”, he says.
After returning to ad filmmaking, Raja met filmmaker Nikhil Advani through a common friend and pitched a rather average script, which Advani wasn’t too impressed with. But, the Kal Ho Naa Ho director was smart enough to ask Raja if he had any other script in mind, which he was not pitching because it seemed impossible to make. Raja said – yes, it’s about the largest evacuation ever done by a country in a war situation. Advani wasn’t impressed again, he said – c’mon we need an idea for a film about India, and that’s when Raja threw in his trump card – the largest civilian evacuation ever done in history is by India, he said.
Getting Akshay Kumar Onboard
Believe it or not, Akshay Kumar happened to come on board Airlift simply by chance. Raja tells me that, “Nikhil Advani and Vikram Malhotra (the co-proudcer) were meeting Akshay about some other project they were pitching, but Akshay was not interested in that.
They were taking a break and chatting and Akshay happened to ask Vikram what else are you working on. So they told him about this story of the greatest evacuation ever done in the world and Akshay said, so why aren’t you pitching this to me? Vikram told him that we didn’t think you would be interested in it, to which Akshay said, I am definitely interested, when can I meet the director?”
I ask him if he had any problems in getting Akshay to power off from his Bollywood superstar avatar and reboot himself as Ranjit Katyal and keep it real. The scene where he is seen crying with snot dripping from his nose being a case in point. Most Bollywood stars would not have let that shot leave the edit table. “I only have one take of the scene,” explains Raja.
I shot the scene and then became a little jittery, so I went to Akshay and said – can you take a look at it, and he was like, if you’re happy with it, it’s ok. I said, I am happy with it, but I want you to take a look at it anyway and he saw it and said – you want me to do something else? I said, no but you have snot coming out of your nose, so he said yeah, so you don’t like it? I said, I like it but are you going to let me keep it in the edit, because I just have one take of this shot. He said – keep it if you are happy with it, if a man is crying, snot will come out.
As we near the restaurant, there is a slight confusion about the lane which houses the modest Taste of Kerala. As we look around, Raja admits that it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Airlift team. “Our first schedule was mired with problems, our producers probably didn’t undertand the kind of film we were trying to make. They hadn’t worked with a crew that was as strange as us,” he reveals. “A bunch of people extremely anal about everything, because we were all striving for a certain kind of quality. So it was a battle between all of us trying to get this made. And everytime we would come back after shooting something beautiful, we felt a kind of an outsider’s victory that we were making this film in a commercial set up. I was ready to subvert the system if it needed to be subverted, because I don’t come with the baggage of my next film. I acually don’t care if I don’t make another film, so then you have no hold over me.”
After we settle down in the tiny AC section of the restaurant, Raja places the responsibility of ordering the food on me. I take the safe route and order for naadan kozhi curry (Kerala chicken curry), parotta (soft layered flatbread), prawns pollichathu (marinated prawns cooked in local spices) and fried surmai while Raja reminds me that no Kerala meal is complete without the pappadam. I agree.
Defending the Authenticity of Airlift
As we dig into the food, I quiz him about all the criticism that’s now flying about. From a captain alleging that the depiction of the evacuation was not correct to a former foreign secretary’s remarks that the film falls short in research and depiction of the role of the MEA.
The filmmaker takes on his critics confidently, “Airlift is a film based on a certain set of events that did happen. The characters themselves are figments of my imagination largely. I took liberties with certain characters, which I believe was cinematically required. There is very little documentation of what happened.”
“The story of Airlift is the story of Ranjit Katyal a man who has forgotten his roots, who thinks that it does not matter, and from there because of certain circumstances is forced to reconsider who he is and finally finding the fact that he is Indian. The film is not about whether someone saved somebody through this way or that way. The story is set in the background of war, the culmination of the story happens with the greatest evacuation that has ever happened in the world,” says Raja.
He does seem slightly disconcerted by all the negativity, “I would ask people to focus on the fact that 25 years later, we are bringing a story of tremendous courage, of tremendous dedication by the country, by the bureaucracy and by a set of businessmen and people in a foreign country, to the world. To fault it for its authenticity, is saying that I would rather not have this story come out,” he argues.
On Mallu Food and Being Baahubali
The good food on the table before us is reason enough for us the change the topic, Raja says he never realised how important Mallu food was to him till he didn’t have it. “Like, I didn’t realize what chukkuvellam (boiled water with medicinal herbs) does for me, it takes me home, takes me back in time. It’s the memory of it, it’s an experience far larger than just eating food.”
As we leave the eating joint, word has got around that, “the guy who made Airlift is here...”. Several people come to shake hands with Raja, a few take autographs and the inevitable selfie with him. An Indian Express photographer, drops by to take stills to accompany a piece on the hottest filmmaker in town. A passer-by stops and asks me, “Yeh Baahubali ka hero hai na?” amused I look towards Raja for an answer, “Yes, why not?” he guffaws. In Bollywood, once your film makes over Rs 100 cr at the box-office, with an investment of less than half of that amount, you are no less than Baahubali.
(You can connect with Suresh Mathew on Twitter @Suresh_Mathew_)
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