Rakeysh Mehra's next: Film with Swachh Bharat as backdrop

Guwahati: Swachh Bharat seems to have caught the imagination of Bollywood with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra making a film titled "Mere Pyare Pradhan Mantri" which has as its backdrop the Modi government's sanitation initiative."The film is about an eight-year-old boy, Kanhaiya, who desires to make a toilet for his mother," Mehra said at the just-concluded Brahmaputra Literary Festival here.

The film was inspired following a visit to Gandhigram and the profits from it will go in the making of more toilets, said the filmmaker, who was here to promote his book "Rang de Basanti: The Shooting Script".

"The film will be made with grass root crowd funding from NGOs or as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)," the director of films like "Rang de Basanti", "Delhi 6", "Mirzya" and "Bhag Milkha Bhag" said.

"I tell the story of the land I come from and which I understand thoroughly like about Milkha Singh, Bhagat Singh, Mirzya etc but now that I have lived in Mumbai for some years and did research for the last three years on this script that I have dared to go ahead and make the film," Mehra said.
He urged youngsters of the northeast to tell their own stories to the world.

"I don't know the stories of the northeast... I can't tell them but I can facilitate or produce them. Today the whole world has come together through the Internet and so now it is time to tell your stories to the world," Mehra added.

The filmmaker said each of his films has followed a different form of narrative -- anger and angst in "Rang de Basanti" or the metaphor of illogical love and supreme sacrifice in "Mirzya".

Musical experimentation is an important aspect of Mehra's films with "Delhi-6" being one such movie.

"I have experimented with all form of music in my films. I have grown up listening to music and not seeing it... Music is very high and spiritual in my life," he said.

He urged the youngsters of the northeast to continue making alternate music as the bands in the region have been doing since long to express their joy, anger, angst, happiness through amazing lyrics and music.