I love the hate.

 

Someone sent me a printout of a review of Sarkar Raj posted on Passion for Cinema website titled “Sarkar Raj: Get Him While He’s Down Cause He’s Gonna Come Back with a Magnum and then You Gotta Ask Yourself: ‘Do I feel Lucky?’ Well, Do Ya PUNK”. I was thrilled to bits seeing the venom that spewed out of that writer on to me. I just couldn’t believe the amount of hatred he had developed towards me through my films. The interesting thing is that he saw the film with much more intensity and seriousness than with which I made it, and he saw it with one and only express purpose of hating it.

 

Similarly on a visit to Pune Film Institute where I screened my new Shiva, I was amazed to see this violent anger in one youngster because of his hatred towards the film. I was both amused and also felt sad for him.

 

I am fascinated to see how people run down my films, critique them, ridicule them, bitch them out and sometimes also deeply try to analyze my mind through my films. It is so highly entertaining to see other’s views and interpretations of my works.

 

I think it’s as entertaining as this scene from Sholay. When Thakur is seething with rage on Gabbar after the massacre of his family a highly amused Gabbar not able to control his joy chuckles and says, “De jitni gaali de Thakur. Jee bhar gaali de.” Thakur’s family is my films, the hate club of mine is Thakur and I am Gabbar. But the sad part for my hater’s is that unlike how the Sholay Thakur got Veeru and Jai to finish Gabbar, my hate club Thakur is highly unlikely to get their own Veeru and Jai, namely the films which they plan to make, and this is the point I want to make.

 

I can understand people being bored or disinterested… but why hate? I don’t buy the theory that it comes out of expectations from me. I have repeatedly made the so-called bad films much more often than not since the last 20 years. It is not as if I have surprised everybody with a bad film. The reverse is true, that I have surprised people once in a while with a so-called good film.

 

I am not generalizing it but I feel their hatred is towards me more than towards my films. They feel that I am getting away with murder. The fact that I seem to be so callous and dispassionate about my work and yet being able to go on making what they think is crap day after day, and yet there are backers and backers for me while my haters with all their passion and the wonderful stories, they think they have, can’t even get a producer to hear them out let alone fund them. This is why actually, I think, in the majority of the cases the anger spews out. It’s a very similar anger that lots of very honest law abiding citizens feel on the success of people who they think are unscrupulous and corrupt.

 

Love and hate, I think are extremely valuable emotions and should not be wasted. It is more worthwhile to lean back and study what makes those people tick.

 

When I was trying to get a break for my first film I was trying to meet this producer, who in my view was making crap films compared to my script. For hours I used to stand outside when he is sitting with, who I used to think were, worthless directors. But instead of getting frustrated and angry, in that time I used to try and study him, the people around him and his surroundings and kept making plans of how to somehow make him see the wisdom of trusting me.

 

When there is someone up there and he is worth being up there, try to learn from what he has achieved. But if you think he is not worth it, still try to learn from what he has achieved and add your own worth to it as it might result in you climbing far higher than him. But you should not sit on the ground, gaze at him with hateful eyes and wait for him to fall down, because his falling won’t help you in being elevated. And also you might often be missing the point that probably people who you think are far more worthless than you, are actually far more higher than me. That’s the order and course of life, and there is no point in hating that aspect.

 

Anyway to cut a long story short and to sum up, I feel it’s truly wasteful to expend one’s energy in hating someone. Love at least will sometimes give you good sex whereas hate will give you nothing.

 

Ok, ok, before you ask me to, I will shut up now. If I misread, misunderstood or misinterpreted or misrepresented your hatred I apologize and you just please consider this piece of writing as one more flop of mine.

 

I have no doubts that after reading this you will surely hate me more, but then don’t forget that I will love you more.

 

Mmmmuaaaah!