About 45 minutes outside Kolkata at Ghatakpur its business as usual except for a small film crew that’s caught the eye of a few bystanders. There is no much to see though. The crew is filming some patchwork technical shots for Aparna Sen’s latest film The Japanese Wife. Sen, best known as an art house filmmaker, who is there mainly to infuse everyone with her energy is making the most of an easy day.

Aparna Sen: The shoot is basically over. What we are doing today are some technical shots because we have some computer graphics work.

Anuradha SenGupta: This is your latest film. Isn’t?

Aparna Sen: It’s about the friendship between a Bengali school teacher, who is an ordinary man and lives in the Sunderbans, and a Japanese girl, who lives in a little mountain town in Japan. And they start by being pen friends and how they end up getting married.

Anuradha SenGupta: Your films over the years have looked at male-female relationships very closely.

Aparna Sen: But this is not something like that. It is like a modern day fairytale.

Anuradha SenGupta: You’ve been a style icon, actor…

Aparna Sen: How a style icon?

Anuradha SenGupta: The sari, the jewellery – there is a look that you have.

Aparna Sen: I used to be a star so I had to dress up like a star.

Anuradha SenGupta: Why are you sounding defensive about it?

Aparna Sen: Because I don’t really feel like talking about my actress years.

Anuradha SenGupta: Why is that?

Aparna Sen: It’s because of the kind of films I used to act in more than anything else. It wasn’t a kind of cinema I believed in. Now I’m much happier because I’m making the kind of cinema I believe in.

Anuradha SenGupta: But given your background of growing up with our father, the famous film critic (Chidananda Das Gupta), he started the Calcutta Film Society. The milieu that you came from, how can you explain the fact that you did those films if your saying you didn’t want to do them?

Aparna Sen: I wanted to be an actor and I realised pretty quickly that in order to be an actor, you cannot leave out mainstream cinema. You don’t have a career any more because how many films will you make?

Anuradha SenGupta: But as a filmmaker you can afford to do that.

Aparna Sen: Yes. My daughter is also doing the same thing. Konkona has also a whole lot of mainstream films in her basket simply because to survive as an actor, you need mainstream cinema. And you can always have a mix. Today, mainstream cinema is much more interesting. If I were given the films that Konkona is acting in, I would be much happier. But what we made were very formula, box office-oriented cinema.

Anuradha SenGupta: So were you deeply unhappy about them?

Aparna Sen: No, it was alright. I wasn’t unhappy. At that time it was important to make a career. I needed the money. I had to bring up two daughters single-handedly. I don’t want to downplay that at all. It also made me what I am today. When I went to Shashi Kapoor with the script for my first film, I wasn’t completely an unknown person. I could get a hearing. Lot's of young directors don’t even get that.

Anuradha SenGupta: When you see Konkona act today, who do you think is the better actor?

Aparna Sen: Konkona, any day. There is no question about that. She is a far better actor. She is a natural.

Anuradha SenGupta: Was it harder for you to act?

Aparna Sen: Well I was much more shy when I first came in. I was much more stiff. I don’t think acting came that naturally to me as it came to Konkona. It did initially because when I acted in school, I used to keep bagging the dramatic ability prize. And when I acted with Utpal Dutt in his play, where I was a Jewish girl, I believe I was good because everyone told me that. But the moment I came and started acting in films I became very conscious of how I was supposed to look because people kept saying – she is not photogenic, her profile is not good, she’s not good on camera. All those things made me very conscious and then I started concentrating on how I looked more than how I acted. That was a mistake.

Anuradha SenGupta: But you are considered one of Bengal’s beauties. Isn’t?

Aparna Sen: God knows.

Anuradha SenGupta: I’m serious because none of us feel happy about the way we look because of the way other people make us feel about the way we look.

Aparna Sen: I don’t know. But because people said I wasn’t photogenic. And I was very young at that time. I was just out of school. So I didn’t know how to move, dress which made me very conscious. And gradually that went away. I had a lot of grit and that’s when I decided I was going to do mainstream cinema and crack it. And then I became a star in mainstream cinema and then I lost interest.

Anuradha SenGupta: That sounded fantastic. A lot of us would love to say things like that.

Aparna Sen: I became a star in Bengal. I made absolutely no headway in Bombay also primarily because I wasn’t interested. I was married, I had a baby and I wanted to live in Kolkata. I was married at 20. A lot of my friends married much later. But at that time it seemed important to be married by 20. I don’t know why.

Aparna Sen: I am very critical about Konkana. You know I am always pointing out faults or that she is not looking after herself or not looking sufficiently nice or not doing her hair properly. She is one of those actresses who is not very bothered about her looks which is a good thing in a way but I think looks are also important in cinema because you have to keep changing your looks according to your role so you have to be aware of that.

Anuradha SenGupta: But do you need to look glamorous all the time as this film star, as an actor?

Aparna Sen: I think it is important to look glamorous all the time so that people see you as a star. Then you do films like 15 Park Avenue where you completely deglamourise and you know I didn't sort of hesitate an inch when I completely deglamourised Konkana and you know she also didn’t hesitate and just did it unhesitatingly. She just wasn't in the least bothered.

Anuradha SenGupta: I don't know whether you'd like to hear this but I know a lot of people who today know you as Konkana Sen's mother.

Aparna Sen: Oh, I love it. I love to be known as Konkana Sen's mother. I love to be known as Chidananda Das Gupta's daughter. I love to be known as Kalyan Ray’s wife because I am a reasonably confident individual who has no problems with these things.

Anuradha SenGupta: You've had a great time being Aparna Sen, haven't you?

Aparna Sen: Yes, but not a great time always. I have also seen very harrowing times being Aparna Sen – dealing with mobs, dealing with home, dealing with guilt about not being enough with children, dealing with relationships, dealing with so many things, money problems, all those things were there but all in all I don't have regrets. I really don’t have regrets except one. I wish had gone into direction earlier. I think I would have had a very good time.

Anuradha SenGupta: I still can’t relate to the fact that given the kind of background and the milieu you grew up in, I've read so much about, was it tough for you to want to start out as a filmmaker at that time?

Aparna Sen: No, not at all. See, my parents were cinema people. They absolutely loved cinema. When I acted in a film I remember my paternal grandfather wrote to my mother telling her to be careful. He said, “I have seen Reena’s name -- Reena is my pet name – in the newspaper so please be careful.” Everyone at home laughed. My father and my mother laughed a lot but they reassured him saying that she is being looked after so don't worry. She'll complete her studies and I wasn’t allowed to act for four years after I did Shampti because I was in class 8 and I had to finish school so I finished school and the moment I finished school I started acting again.

Anuradha SenGupta: 15 Park Avenue was the last film that we saw and we are now getting ready to see The Japanese Wife. Would I be right in saying that 15 Park Avenue was perhaps the most personal film where your concerned -- in your body of work?

Aparna Sen: Yes, you're right. It is. I know a person closely and because we're close relatives both Konkana and I have had occasions to observe this condition of Schizophrenia very close quarters and so it's been something that fascinated me all through, the two realities -- our reality and that person’s reality and that is what I tried to bring on screen and in that I’ve been fortunate. In that I've been able to do the kind of films that I want to do. I have not had much of a budget. Today I am getting more of a budget because producers are seeing that with international sales and satellite, etc my films at least recover their money and they get a lot of prestige in terms of awards and stuff.

Anuradha SenGupta: What was the turning point you think? Which film was it – Mr and Mrs Iyer?

Aparna Sen: Yes, I think so – Mrs and Mrs Iyer more than anything else, 36 Chowringhee Lane as well. After that I did a whole lot of Bengali films which weren’t seen that much. Paroma was a huge hit in Bengal and so was Paromitar Ek Din, I think.

Anuradha SenGupta: 15 Park Avenue was a personal film. Most of the other films are personal films in the sense that a woman is the protagonist of the film.

Aparna Sen: No, not because of that. They are not autobiographical. They are certainly drawn from my life’s experiences like 36 Chowringhee Lane. We had teachers like that. We all used to think that we should be able to go somewhere we can make out with our boyfriends but not that I did go to a teacher’s apartments although many people may have thought that. The moment you’re a woman they say that this film is autobiographical or that this is her life or this was her husband or ex husband or something or the other because people are very voyeuristic.

Anuradha SenGupta: But that’s the flip side of being a star.

Aparna Sen: Yes, it is. Being a star is enjoyable and not enjoyable. The perks are great but again it is difficult because as a film director you need to be able to see things, see life and observe but this is you who end up being observed so you never get round to really observing. Finally you become so estranged from everyday life that when you make films, I mean directors who become stars or star who become directors, are so estranged that they live in their own little worlds and therefore everything that they do is very incestuous in a way -- they’re making films about people like themselves.

Anuradha SenGupta: Are you worried that you do that?

Aparna Sen: No. I don’t and I work very hard not to. I am just not interested in upper middle class people. I am much more interested in ordinary people. I try to make films about people on the fringe, or marginalised people like people with a mental condition, an Anglo-Indian who is not a part of the main stream. And also I am getting a little tired of making films which are full of mundane reality so I tend to go off into the surreal like the end of 15 Park Avenue. I dislike doing things which are completely straight-laced and laid out for people like this is what I've tried to make and this is what I have done now you better look at it that way. No, there are myriad ways of looking at the same thing.

Anuradha SenGupta: We are meeting in a week in Bengal where there is a lot of controversy over a young man Rizwanur Rehman who’s killed, does it bother you that you are still living in a society where basic human freedom, liberal outlook to life is just not available at all?

Aparna Sen: Of course it bothers me and Rizwanur case is not the only one. There have been other cases, which have been reported. But what is exciting and what is really uplifting is the kind of protest that this injustice has generated and it did succeed in moving mountains. The CBI was brought in, of course what the CBI will be able to unearth we still don’t know.

Anuradha SenGupta: How as an artist do you relate to these things that are happening around you because not all of it can find its way into your work?

Aparna Sen: You see what happens with me is that something I moved by or something really makes an impact on me does not find itself into my work immediately. Like in Mr and Mrs Iyer I had set out to just make a film about a journey where two people fall in love. But obviously the Hindu Muslim situation in my country had affected me in a very deep way. I remember that in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished I had felt for the first time that we don’t live in a secular country and it was terrible because until the day before my father and I kept on saying ‘no it can’t happen. It won’t really happen. India is secular.’ It must have impacted very deeply. The thing I thought at that time is that these people who were killed or damaged, in a way they become numbers in newspaper, faceless personality less numbers. And therefore the Rizwanur case also, if it hadn’t been this wonderful protest, which just rose spontaneously among the citizens of Kolkata, I think we would have thought of it as numbers too.

Anuradha SenGupta: Earlier you said that you got married first when you were 20. Sometimes now do you think its better to wait before you get married or get into a permanent relationship?

Aparna Sen: I don’t think I was the marrying guide. When I married Kalyan that was much later when I was in my 40s that was fine because we were both had a lot of experiences and we were matured, basically we were well-formed individuals by that time. For me that was much better age to get married but one can’t have children at that age. One can but it’s not a very good idea. But I am glad that I got married at that age. I got my two lovely daughters. I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.

Anuradha SenGupta: Do you mind when people want to label you or tag you for their convenience as a woman’s filmmaker.

Aparna Sen: Yes, I do mind because I don’t think I am simply that. I have tackled interesting subjects. In Yuganta I have compared the degeneration of marriage with degeneration of the world around us. In Mr and Mrs Iyer I have talked about communal problem and love in spite of all that. 15 Park Avenue I have dealt with this very severe mental condition such as schizophrenia and the pressure it puts on the family. And the film is also about different kind of reality and I have tried to show that. So I don’t think I am simply a woman’s filmmaker. I think I bring into my films perhaps the female gaze, my own gaze being a woman that I would treat violence very differently from perhaps the way a man would treat it. I don’t know of many men who could have directed Mr and Mrs Iyer and shown violence in the way I showed it.

Anuradha SenGupta: You almost didn’t show it.

Aparna Sen: I almost didn’t show it but yet it created an impact.

Anuradha SenGupta: Today as we speak do you think that at this point of time you are happiest that you ever been in your life.

Aparna Sen: Yes. I am married to a very wonderful man who is very supportive of my work. I enjoy my daughters, my grand children and I love my work. Yes this is about being happiest. I want to make many more films but my films take very long between one film and another for various gamuts of reasons, which I just don’t want to go into now. Either just things don’t fall into place or something or the other happens or its money or actors. But now I will be able to make two films a year if I can.

Anuradha SenGupta: We hope you get to make films more frequently and we are impatient.

Aparna Sen:: Thank you so much.