Want a list of people with black money? Publish the phone directory, says ‘Moh Maya Money’ director

If you are getting nostalgic for movie scenes that feature piles of ill-begotten notes, take heart: Moh Maya Money has quite a few wads of outlawed Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Theatre director, actor and screenwriter Munish Bhardwaj’s debut feature dives deep into the black money debate. Although it was conceived and completed much before the Centre demonetised high-value notes, the movie has high currency because of its thematic focus on material and moral corruption. Ranvir Shorey plays real estate broker Aman, who fakes his death in order to claim insurance. His television producer wife Divya, played by Neha Dhupia, is a willing partner in his crime, but she too is a keeper of dark secrets.

Bhardwaj, a Film and Television Institute of India graduate in direction, has worked extensively with the Delhi theatre group Chingari, whose members include Rajat Kapoor and Atul Kumar. Bhardwaj executive produced Kapoor’s Ankhon Dekhi in 2014. The 46-year-old debutant has screened Moh Maya Money at the London Indian Film Festival and the New York Indian Film Festival, and it will be released on November 25 in India.

What inspired ‘Moh Maya Money’?
Many years ago, somebody told me about a student who was asked during a classroom discussion, if you see a man misbehaving with a woman on the street, what would you do? Then the class was asked, what if this man were your father or brother? From there came the idea of what you would do if your loved one was corrupt, both materially and morally. It began with a one-liner: a man fakes his death for an insurance claim, and this can be done only because his wife is an accomplice.

The first half of the film is non-linear and has quite a few narrative and visual tricks. What was the story development process like?
I wrote the script in mid-2014 and kept working on it. My co writer, Mansi Nirmal Jain, who also worked with me on Ankhon Dekhi, went to Columbia University to study filmmaking. You can take a completed script and have it dissected by the class there. She presented the script of Moh Maya Money to the other students. Whatever development happened on the script after September was with the students’ feedback. Of course, we didn’t keep everything they told us.

How did these students react to the script?
One of the first things you are taught in American universities is the perfect structure of the script – how an incident should be introduced on page 11, how there should be a dramatic incident in the middle. I didn’t want to dissect the film in terms of Hollywood structure and fall into the acts one, two and three business. We have created a non-linear structure, and the protagonists change from Aman to Divya and back. Also, the students could not understand why the police were not properly investigating the insurance claim. Mansi had to explain that this is India, the police have too many cases to tackle, and if a death looks like an accident, they are fine with it. My own father died in a road accident, and there was no investigation.

The first draft was linear¸ but it became predictable and everybody who read it said that they knew what was going to happen from page 10 onwards. So we tried working with suspense and reveals. The script that we shot was linear in the second half, which is the contribution of my editor, Hitesh Kumar.

If you look closely at the film, there is a big continuity jump. Ranvir keeps wearing the same jacket, but his shirt inside is different. We had to live with it.

The movie explores two important Delhi worlds – real estate and the television media. Why did you pick these two sectors?
I worked in a real estate services company between 2005 and 2009. We were corporate brokers, we wore ties and spoke English, and we were ethical. I knew that world really well, and could think of a scam that Aman could attempt. If you have dealt with real estate, you have to deal with black money.

The wife had to be in a profession that had a night shift. I had worked with TV18 in the late 1990s, I used to write the show Bhanwar, which dramatised landmark court cases. I knew the newsroom very well, and so Divya became a news producer.

I have always wanted to tell a story of the times in which we live. When I was working in real estate, I was shocked at the greed of people. Eighty per cent of the transactions were in cash, and people would invest Rs 10 lakh and make Rs 30 lakh in a month. But the greed wouldn’t stop – they would want to make more.

These were the most normal people whom you meet every day, the types who are probably dining with you at a party. If you want to make a list of people with black money, just publish the telephone directory. People don’t think twice doing something if it is unethical and small – everybody does it, I am not special, is what they say. That is also a line in my film.

And you were never tempted?
I have never had money in my life. I never worked in big films, and have always lived from one cheque to the next. I still live in a rented apartment. Even at the age of 30, I was still taking money from my mother and brother. I had been working as an assistant director on the films of Kumar Shahani and Rajat Kapoor, and I would be paid small sums and a travel allowance. Then I would see these 30-year-olds buying apartments.

Everybody loves money, if not for anything else, to travel the world. I would be wrong if I said I wasn’t tempted.

And yet, the movie doesn’t hammer home its concern over the effects of corruption on a family.
I don’t want to be preachy. When I see films taking the high moral ground, they don’t remain artistic. I would rather take my life experiences from a book.

I never thought of writing a scene in which we talk about corruption in a way that is larger than it already is. I worked on a one-liner and I didn’t let it become a two-liner. I am nobody to teach people and give them lessons. My job is to tell a story.

Could the movie have been set anywhere else but Delhi?
I don’t know any city as well as I know Delhi. I made sure not to shoot Delhi the way outsiders shoot it. Filmmakers find it desirable to shoot Red Fort and India Gate and the other iconic spaces. That’s the way our film industry is, it’s not about challenging audiences. In my film, Delhi is in the behavior of the people. We have shot mainly indoors, and we don’t have any of the landmarks. My next script is also set in Delhi.

Ankhon Dekhi, which is set in old Delhi, was a world that I wasn’t aware of at all. I grew up in West Delhi and I currently live in Central Delhi. If I were to give my characters an address, I would say that they stay in Naraina, Patel Nagar or New Rajinder Nagar.

Where did you actually shoot the movie?
For practical reasons, we shot the couple’s house in Gurgaon. Film festival programmer Raman Chawla, who is an old friend, had a spare room in his house. This is the room in which Mani Kaul lived during his last days [before he died of cancer in 2011]. He died in the very bedroom that Aman and Divya share in the film.

Your film is independently produced. How did you get the funds together?
I drew up a budget of around Rs two crore and divided it by 15. I decided that I would get 15 people to give me Rs 15-16 lakh each. I called up two of my well-to-do businessman friends, and they put in money each. I had already pledged my share. Then we started calling up people. I was pleasantly shocked. We had the seed money within 10 days. The only interference I had during the film was that people wanted to click photographs with Neha and Ranvir.

Neha Dhupia has been presented in a new light in the movie.
She had worked extensively with Rajat Kapoor, whom I know well. The one image of her that kept coming back to me was from the last scene in Rajat’s Mithya, in which she is crying as Ranvir’s character is being taken away. I had actually worked with her before, in a corporate film. She was also in the television serial Rajdhani, directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, which I also worked on.

Neha is very witty and intelligent, and that helps. She also reads scripts very well, and it’s amazing how she catches things and gives you feedback.