Mozez Singh is many things: a filmmaker, a columnist, a producer, a writer and a director. So, when he was approached by Assouline, a publisher of luxury lifestyle books, to write a book about Jaipur, he jumped at the chance to add ‘author’ to his bio. Assouline has a series of incredibly aesthetic travel coffee-table books, on everything from St Moritz to Marrakesh, of which Jaipur Splendor is the newest addition; Jaipur is also the first Indian city to be featured.
As someone who has written, produced and directed fiction, non-fiction, reality, fashion, music, current affairs and talk shows for TV channels, as well as produced and directed TV commercials and music videos, Mozez has been a voracious reader since he was a child. With books all over his house, as he puts it, “the chance to be able to write a book was a big high for me.”
So, why choose Jaipur? “Well, Jaipur has culture, Jaipur has art, Jaipur has crafts, Jaipur has history, Jaipur has architecture, Jaipur has food, Jaipur has textiles, and is just a melting pot of the East and the West,” exclaims Mozez. While most people know and recognise Jaipur as being all of that, the real challenge for the filmmaker was to showcase it differently.
Royal treatment
{{/usCountry}}Royal treatment
{{/usCountry}}To fully understand the city, Mozez had to go off the beaten track. “I’d been to Jaipur many times, but my knowledge about it was quite superficial,” he admits. From going inside people’s homes to exploring temples and looking up interesting artefacts, he spent four months simply doing his research before putting down a single word of the eventual nine pages he wrote.
“I had to kind of penetrate into the heart of Jaipur, and for that I met lots of historians, people who’ve lived in Jaipur for decades, and met a lot of people from the royal family; the current Maharaja of Jaipur, Pacho, was extremely welcoming and opened a lot of doors for me,” he says.
In fact, the foreword for Jaipur Splendor has been written by Sawai Padmanabh Singh, or Pacho, as he is known.
Eventually, Mozez chose to showcase Jaipur through its kings. “I basically joined the dots between all the kings who brought art and culture to Jaipur and strung their stories together, because this artistic expression is the part of Jaipur that excites me the most,” he reveals.
Labour of love
Since the coffee-table book is picture-heavy, Mozez spent almost a year curating each extraordinary photograph and quote. “I had to do a gazillion drafts till I finally reached a draft that made me happy,” he laughs.
He continues, “It came my way at a really crazy time, because I was shooting my series, and I had planned the book in such a way that I would take it up only after that. Then the second wave of the pandemic interrupted everything, so I was shooting and writing and curating the photography all at the same time. It was really crazy because I’d be shooting 12-13 hours in the heat and dust in Bhopal, then come back to my room and shower, and then spend hours working on the book. I don’t know how I managed!”
Are there more books in the works, now that he’s been bitten by the bug? Maybe not quite yet. “My next project is a feature film on hip-hop,” divulges Mozez candidly, “but that’s all I can tell you because I’m bound by 50,000 things on confidentiality.” All we can say is, that sounds splendid.
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From HT Brunch, March 13, 2022
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