British-Indian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday regarding her proposed film on Lord Mountbatten, the last governor general of pre-independence India. Apparently Modi, a keen student of history, wants the biopic to project a fair picture of the events that led to the Partition of India and Mountbatten’s hand in that historical division.
Says Gurinder, “Yes, I met Mr Modi. He was extremely gracious. He blessed our project. He was very interested to hear my take as a British-Indian director on the Partition and Independence.” Language was apparently a problem since the PM prefers Hindi while Gurinder is more at home in British angrezi.
Says the acclaimed director, “We spoke for a while. As he prefers to speak in Hindi, I did my best to hold the conversation about the whole film in my own version of the language, a Hindi/Punjabi mix!” And Modi apparently had a big laugh over Gurinder’s linguistic efforts.
Says Gurinder, “He was quite amused but appreciated my efforts! I told him I was going to make the sequel to Attenborough’s Gandhi but from my perspective as someone raised abroad but whose grandparents were from Jhelum and Rawalpindi. My co-producer Deepak Nayar was also with us and spoke about his experiences.
