My Deepika Padukone video in another era

So I got a lot of flak for a video I shot with Deepika Padukone in 2011.

The great (and paradoxical) thing about creating something is that while it should feel absolutely definitive when presented, it is the questions - that trouble you, unsettle you, and the ones you can’t answer definitively - that simply need a leap of faith - that make the process so satisfying. So it was with this video, when Deepika Padukone agreed to be a part of the title song to promote our film Dum Maaro Dum. The most tantalising questions in this case were:

1) Do we take on an all-time classic and try to make a worthy tribute?

2) Do we present a woman who is angry, provocative and aggressive, rather than the object of desire (aka Sheila, Munni et al)?

We went ahead answering yes to the above. Musically with a new rap approach, going almost diametrically opposite to the hippie vibe of the original. Lyrically, I loved Jaideep Sahni’s take - that three decades on, we should see a much darker and more violent side to the drug universe. It's not the "turn on, tune in and drop out" sweet oblivion of Timothy Leary’s drugs anymore… But even after deciding this, I remember Pritam [Chakraborty] calling me the night before the shoot, wondering whether we had crossed a line - a producer friend of his had heard the song and found the lyrics too much… It was finally my call, and I stuck with the lyrics as Jaideep had written them, because diluting them would defeat the very intent of the song.

When we released the song, we obviously got the answers to the questions: While you don’t need to be a Vegas bookmaker to know how question one was answered, I was a bit more surprised by how offended people were to Deepika Padukone mouthing those lyrics… Less than a year before this, the "Balaatkar" speech from 3 Idiots was probably the single biggest gag in the most successful film in recent memory.

Film is a medium where big budget films may take more than years to move from inception to release… Thinking about it now, I also wonder how timing makes such a difference, how the zeitgeist can dramatically alter its reception. This is amplified by the crazy rate at which things change in our young, energetic country. In a way, is there an expiration date for your idea? Does a film promoting harmony between India and Pakistan have any currency on November 26, 2008?

Since DMD released, we have seen how much more the media covers issues related to violence against women. The turning point was of course the Nirbhaya case. It told, or rather reminded us, how difficult the lives of so many women are, on a day-to-day basis. So in a parallel universe where these films release after that kind of an incident, are "balaatkar" jokes past their due date? And given the government response, including censorship of content as a cure for the real violence being perpetrated, while slashing the budget for rape crisis centres this year - maybe Deepika singing:

• Unche se uncha banda, potty pe baithe nanga
• Phir kaahe ki society, saali kaahe ka paakhanda

sums up our thoughts the way Jaideep, Pritam, Anushka Manchanda, Deepika, Shridhar and I hoped it would...

One of the fascinating things about film is its permanence. But we live in increasingly temporary times! And compared to the frantic news cycle of the present, 2011 seems positively pastoral! So I wonder how in 2015 will you set out to tell a story to an audience in 2017?

One thing that has also noticeably changed is the position of the audience relative to the star. More than ever before, the stage seems to be level, or close to it. So when celebrities attempt to lecture us, we are quicker to switch off than ever before, whatever the merits of what they are saying.

Perhaps that is also one of the reasons why all of a sudden we are promoting our films with Arnab Goswami spoofs, and other such self deprecation. We can only engage if we are taken into confidence by our stars, perhaps? Maybe that’s why so many people, the young ones for sure, loved the AIB Roast - finally the film industry was, if anything, put a peg below them!

So maybe that has served up the expiration date for anything with a tone that only talk to the audience, rather than being in with them... Until the next rupture in our lives and news cycle pushes us somewhere else!