My First Time

Eight individuals across diverse disciplines dip into the past and reflect on a moment that came to define them and their work

- Neville Bhandara

1. Mira Nair

FILM-MAKER

My father’s credo was PERT: productivity, exercise, regularity and time efficiency. And though I was loathe to admit it then, I was influenced by him forever to make productive use of my time. This is why, from the age of 11, I took over his unused home-office and made it my workspace. It was here that I first began to work at finding my future profession.

One summer, I bought a book called Typing Made Simple and spent weeks teaching myself to type. I brought in a poster of a painting by MF Husain and tried to copy it to see if I was a painter. I read, recited and wrote pithy poems. For two years, I studied the sitar with Mr Banerjee, a serious dhoti-clad man on a bicycle. I pursued political theatre and dreamt of making art that would change the world. One day, he said something that was, in retrospect, crucial for me: “You decide. You can be a sitar player or you can be something else.” Beyond granting me the novel experience of being treated like a grown-up, with this one

Mira comment, he taught me my first lesson in focus. It was as simple as choosing my path, and then pursuing it fully and completely. Thirty years (and many films) later, I found myself thinking of Mr Banerjee’s lesson. I was at a crossroads—exhausted from a legal battle with the Indian government over the banning of my 1996 film Kama Sutra, and aghast at my own decision to abandon another project I’d already raised money for. As an antidote to my despondence, I decided to make a documentary on the Laughing Club Of India: people who get together every day to laugh. One day, I was trying to charm a retired Nepali musician into talking to me about his life, all the while thinking: what am I doing with mine? Will I ever be inspired again to make a proper film? But I ploughed on, keeping my focus on people who took laughing seriously.