Mira Nair: Rekha embodied an historical sensuality excellent for her function in Kamasutra: A Story Of Love –

And so there was by no means anybody else for me. It was a each difficult and direct course of to knock on her door and to ask her to be on this movie. I definitely was each within the business and out of the business. I used to be a what you name an outlier. However I feel Rekha cherished my first movie – Salaam Bombay! (1988) and wished to, I feel, entrust herself to me on this journey, to evoke a time in India when sexuality and the learnings of social guidelines had been regular and commonplace and matter of reality and unaffected by the Victorian mores that the British purchased to our tradition, lengthy after the Kamasutra was written.

Sure, we did have a number of conversations concerning the function. I feel Rekha’s main curiosity and problem was to carry out in English. I feel it was her first time and I additionally was battling whether or not one might use the English language for our personal historical texts in a up to date approach or not. However I had dedicated to the experiment of constructing it in English. And Rekha was very a lot a scholar and a humble one, in getting the intonation proper, getting the dialogue right. She was completely unabashed about imitating me if it needed to be, in the best way she needed to converse. However, she actually was a professional and understood that it function went approach past memorization. As soon as she acquired the dialogue within her, it was primarily all the time a “educating” that she was talking about. She wasn’t merely spouting dialogue. She made it seem very colloquial and never arch in any respect.

By way of costume, in fact I knew the care that she took and the notice that she delivered to how she felt good and the way she wished to look. I feel she understood the simplicity and the minimalism of the costuming that we had been going for. There was one big distinction in her costumes, which was what we known as the peacock gown (at the moment), I requested Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla to make for Rekha. It was a really elaborate costume with precise peacock feathers. Rekha was all the time concerned with the main points of costuming, whether or not or not it’s the straightforward white cotton sarees and borders in comparison with the peacock gown. She is somebody who embodies an incredible love and in addition a respect, I feel, for the accoutrements that we now have to dip ourselves in to essentially carry out the function totally. And costuming, like make-up, was an enormous integral a part of how Rekha noticed the function.

In fact there was nice awe on set when Rekha was round. Individuals regarded as much as her in essentially the most lovely approach really. There was by no means any mobbing, there was an actual sense of quiet respect and since we had been actually taking pictures not in studios however in paddy fields and temples and actual places in Khajuraho. There was a way of really, a temple feeling, of quiet devotion one might say even when Rekha carried out.

I keep in mind once I confirmed her the movie in Regal cinema throughout a non-public screening. She was absorbed by means of the screening within the movie. She performs the function of a instructor, it’s not the primary function of Maya (Indira Varma) or Tara (Sarita Choudhury), she’s their instructor within the movie. She checked out me after the movie and stated, ” Mira, it’s totally lovely. However my followers will likely be disenchanted as a result of I do not get to do this a lot.” I laughed and stated, “Rekha ji you gave us the anchor within the movie. It is rather troublesome and hard to be the anchor of such a movie and thanks for that.”