Shakun Batra and Ananya Panday decode Gehraiyaan and infidelity in an exclusive interview with mid-day
Picture Courtesy: Official Instagram Account, Ananya Panday
Shakun Batra and Ananya Panday are coming together for the first time for a film called Gehraiyaan that has made a lot of noise due to that one word called intimacy. But this isn’t the first time we get to see no-holds-barred relationships or physical love. It’s all decoded in an exclusive interview with mid-day when the director and the actress try to decipher it all.
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When asked about being overloaded with the questions on intimacy in the film, Batra says, "Yeah of course. Just because you have an intimacy director doesn’t mean you’re going to do much bigger or bolder things. The idea is to take a step in the right direction. We are trying to normalise the conversation around intimacy. I knew it was going to play an important part in the film and I wanted to take the right step. When people see the film for themselves, they’ll realise there’s no shock value. It’s just a part of the story. I hope intimacy directors become a part of your crew as normally as a choreographer or an action director. That would be my hope."
Ananya’s character is that of a person who’s fiancée falls for the other woman, played by Deepika Padukone. What was her reaction when she read the script? The actress states, "I was taken aback about how honest it was and how relatable it was in that sense. I’ve seen such instances in life, maybe not closely but infidelity is something that exists. We are not glorifying it in the film. The best thing about the script was how fearless it was in getting into the darkness or grittiness of love, sometimes that we skip in Hindi films."
How would Ananya gaze at infidelity? A mere attraction to someone else while being in a relationship or peppered with a lot more intensity. "You know honestly, to me it could mean something else, to Shakun it could mean something else, so it completely depends on you, your relationship and the boundaries you set for it," she reflects.
Infidelity is a taboo even today and yet filmmakers veer into that space. Why? Batra says, "Filmmakers, writers, artists are always looking at the world around them. They want to explore things around them that may be spoken or unspoken. The topic may be less popular in terms of how we make our films. But infidelity does exist all across the world, relationships have been complicated from the time of Adam and Eve. Yes, there’s a romantic idea of a relationship. We have done beautiful storytelling even back in the day, you see Devdas, you see Masoom, you see Lamhe, Arth, Silsila, so many great explorations have happened. I’m not doing anything new, it’s just been a while and it’ll be nice to have one more film with that feeling."
Do people who cheat on their partners deserve a second chance? Batra opines, "It’s not like our understanding of love or relationship is any better than the next person. None of us are standing on that pedestal. People who are in relationship, they make their own decisions about what they feel about their partners. Even in the film, it’s not a debate about monogamy, what’s better, pros and cons, none of that. It tries to tell a story and our attempt has always been to try and observe it and not put a lens of judgment. That’s a very primitive way of looking at things. I can see people around having a more evolved understanding of things. But we are nobody to say who’s to be forgiven and not to be forgiven. People should be able to take their decisions on their own."
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