‘As filmmakers, we try and document our times’: Anusha Rizvi on how The Great Shamsuddin Family reflects today’s Delhi and its social anxieties

At a time when scale and spy thrillers are having their big-ticket moment, a film set in an apartment in Delhi is having one of its own. The Great Shamsuddin Family, which was released on JioHotstar recently, lets the world in without stepping out. “This is an intimate story, it had to be told in a more intimate set-up,” says its writer and director Anusha Rizvi at her office in a quiet and leafy colony in south Delhi.

Bani (Kritika Kamra), a writer and a divorced Muslim woman, is on deadline to finish an application that could mean her moving to the US. But it’s a project interrupted as the doorbell rings incessantly announcing a friend, Amitav (Purab Kohli), accompanied by a young student, her cousin and bickering aunts who settle in comfortably in her apartment showing no signs of leaving, and finally her cousin Zoheb, who has come from court with Pallavi, the Hindu girl he was to marry except that the registrar chose that day to fall ill.

The ideas of both The Great Shamsuddin Family and Rizvi’s earlier film Peepli Live (2010), that captured rural farm distress, are inspired by the headlines of the day. “At the end of the day, I am a storyteller, and I wanted to tell a story about Bani, of these people, and then when you set off to tell their story, you also have to tell the story of her surroundings, her times,” says Rizvi, a former television journalist known for her revival of Dastangoi, the Urdu storytelling tradition, which she started with her husband Mahmood Farooqui 20 years ago.

On The Great Shamsuddin Family, Rizvi says: “It started really with Amitav’s character. There is a friend of mine whose friend landed at her place and didn’t leave for three weeks. That idea of Amitav began as to what happens to a woman who is trying to work in her house and there are all these intrusions. I found that fascinating because it came from my life… a whole lot of things are pushed your way which are not necessarily constructive.”

Anusha Rizvi (Photo by Gajendra Yadav)

In the hands of a stellar ensemble cast that includes Farida Jalal, Dolly Ahluwalia and Sheeba Chaddha, the conversations between the family sparkle. “Initially when we were reading, there were 16 actors and 14 of them were women. I thought 14 women on set, plus me as director, plus ADs and the rest of the crew — about 35-40 women together in a small set-up! But it was amazing. Nobody would go to their vanities, they would hang out there, chatting, discussing problems, sharing gharelu nuskhe,” laughs Rizvi.

The daughter of a linguist and professor, who set up the Hindi Department of Jamia Millia Islamia, Rizvi has also written the dialogues of the film. “I was very consciously trying to create a Delhi conversation because the way people speak English in Bombay is different. I don’t know if you have noticed, they don’t say asking, they say ‘aksing’ and they will say ‘all of you all’, says Rizvi, 47.

The film was shot largely in Chattarpur, except one night at a terrace in Nizamuddin at the apartment of advocate Sanjay Hegde. “We wanted to show the Humayun’s Tomb in the backdrop. The idea of Humayun’s Tomb was more like a witness… somebody witnessing the act of the times… and not so much to locate the family or the characters.”

Whether it’s exploring the grave issue of farmer suicide in Peepli Live or the anxieties that Muslim families face even in middle-class Urban India, humour is an abiding tool in Rizvi’s craft. “I don’t try very hard at it though. Zoheb and Pallavi’s wedding, for instance, it’s a very serious matter, they have gone to court. It’s very possible in India, and actually it’s not only possible but I know it happened to a very dear student of ours who was marrying a person from a different community… first of all the magistrate was totally against the idea, it (their application) was finally accepted, but the day they were to land up, the magistrate fell ill. It is very serious for the person going through it but it’s also absurd, and how do you overlook that?” she says.

Bani’s story and the family dynamics play out in the apartment but the world outside and its threats are never far away. The fear of the mob runs like a thread through the film — for a while it looks like Bani’s brother-in-law could be caught in one and the very presence of Zoheb and Pallavi together could well invite one. “This fear, when it is living in the minds of a lot of people in society for prolonged periods of time, will have certain consequences, it will have effects over their mental makeup and anxiety levels. It seeps through so many parts of life,” says Rizvi.

There are other conversations of our times that seep in, like one around triple talaq — Amitav’s young liberal friend breezily asks a divorced Bani if she got a TT (triple talaq). “I do feel there is this saviour complex whereby there is this understanding that Muslim women have to somehow be saved from their faith. The whole debate on triple talaq, for instance, is quite misinformed because there should have been a wider debate. Besides we have blown it up into such a huge issue although the proportion of women who have suffered from triple talaq misuse does not even amount to one per cent as far as we know…there are so many more urgent issues that demand our attention, like access to education, to jobs,” says Rizvi.

Despite the underlying tension, the film ends on a note of hope as the family gathers around singing a wedding song for Zoheb and Pallavi. “I would leave it to the audience to make up their mind,” says Rizvi. “Your intent is always to tell the story you want to. It is the story of our times. Just as, say Neeraj (Ghaywan) is doing in Homebound, we are preserving our times, we are documenting our times. A lot of filmmakers are doing that,” she adds.