A filmmaker & a foodie
I'm waiting for Rang De Basanti, my bilingual project. After this I want to go to Cambodia and learn to cook, says Mehra.
He regards his life as a quest. He may have made hundreds of ad films and forayed into Bollywood but the creative genius yearns for more. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the man who gave Amitabh Bachchan his break in commercials (remember that BPL ad), but to friends he is a foodie who loves to sink his teeth into new kinds of cuisine.
While films were his motivation to go to Bombay, it’s food that brings the Shri Ram College of Commerce graduate back to the city. Little wonder then that he was in the Capital to launch Baujee’s, an Indian restaurant at Metropolitan Plaza, Gurgaon. “I left Delhi in 1987 with a dream to make movies. But it never happened. So I made advertisement films and got so busy that I forgot all about feature films. From thereon I took things as they came.”
And things sure did come his way, what with him getting the chance to direct Amitabh Bachchan again in the music video Eer Beer Patte and the film Aks. And now Mehra says he will be shooting a bilingual film with Aamir Khan, the subject of which is still under wraps. “I am just waiting for this film, which is
titled Rang De Basanti in Hindi and Paint it Yellow in English. After this I might just go to a small village in Cambodia or Thailand in my quest to learn to cook.”
Incidentally Mehra’s interest in food is older than his interest in films. “My father was from Old Delhi and he was the one who launched Baujee ka Dhaba in Hauz Khas Village. But now we want to take the food beyond the classes to the masses. So my brother Rajan and I have opened this restaurant which will serve authentic Indian food like Kadhai Paneer and Murgh Dhaba at affordable prices.”
His movies may be on the top of his mind, but that doesn’t stop him from claiming that Baujee’s Biryani is as good as any other. And he isn’t too far off the mark.
