How do you view the evolution of the animation film industry in India?
Quite nostalgically. I have the whole spectrum of change before me, from the time frames were hand-drawn and shot on 35mm. Immense patience was needed.
We had to calculate our drawings so that the outcome would be more or less what we wanted because once they were shot, things could not be changed. Then came the long wait to see how it all turned out. All this taught me how to think about timing for animation. I certainly do not miss the labour behind the process of stop-motion, but the journey was as memorable as the destination.
Now, all you need to do is use a machine to work out the frames you want. I can also animate on any base, even embroidery on cloth. Earlier, only if you were a producer would you get the reels. Then you needed big cameras, editing machines, sound-mixing set-ups, and so on. Now, all you need is a laptop. So, we have come a long way. It is liberating in terms of unleashing one’s imagination.
How did you enter animation at a time when people rarely took it up?
I was forced into it. My teachers, Nasreen Mohamedi and Jeram Patel, at Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in Baroda, where I studied painting, asked me to move towards animation. I was upset, but I took it up. I initially felt it was all cartoonish.
Then, a UK-based professor, who taught us stop-motion animation, explained about India’s rich tradition of visual storytelling, with its wealth of mythology and folklore, and asked us why we still looked to the West for animation.
That appealed to me and led me to my first animation film, ‘Shubh Vivah’. Based on the dowry system, it was told through the medium of Madhubani painting. It was my first attempt at interpreting an artform and animating something that was considered ‘unanimatable’. That boosted my confidence.
You were among the first to start the animation programme at NID, Ahmedabad, which probably was the first such course in India…
After I made my first film, we were asked to organise an animation programme at NID. We were given a UNDP grant and sent to Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK to study their courses. This was in 1985.
After this, the NID animation programme started with one student — Prakash Murthy, the current chairman of Kerala Lalithakala Akademi — and three teachers. Subsequently, our programme inspired other institutes. Now animation is offered at universities across India. There are many takers for the course now. Many who are doing commendable work in the industry today were my students. I am proud about that.
You had a different approach to animation, using it to explore social causes and cultural roots…
In the beginning, we were doing works that reflected on social causes such as girls' education, literacy, health, and so on. As we explored further, we found its potential to showcase the country’s ethnic cultures and storytelling traditions.
What I enjoyed most was exploring memories through the medium, in films like ‘Mukund and Riaz’, which I made in the early 2000s. It was based on my father’s memories of his hometown in Pakistan. The memories he had of his best friend Riaz, and the whole process of going through Partition and becoming rootless. They touched me deeply. I felt I could express it through the medium of cloth.
My father was in the textile business, and my mother worked with clothes and designs. So, I grew up surrounded by designs. For the film, I used appliqué artists who worked on cloth that I then animated.
You also made a film about your mother. Was it about recording memories?
‘Ghar Angan’ in Hindi. She lived in two homes. It recounts how she had to leave her childhood in Sukkur of Sindh, and come to India. I used a mixed-media technique, combining watercolour with fabric and embroidery to reflect my mother’s taste for sewing and design, and then animating it.
I have always felt that for those who went through Partition, the concept of home didn’t exist. That way, now I too don’t have a place I can call home. So, I search for my roots in such memories and connect with them through my work. That is how I find my home.
How were animated works preserved in the 1980s and 1990s, before digital technology took over?
One of my earlier films, ‘All About Nothing’, on the Gupta period, was the first stop-motion animation film made at NID in 35mm. It was later transferred to a CD, and is still being shown at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai. The film is being shown at IDSFFK too. But I am worried about its quality. No one thought about proper preservation earlier.
What do you feel about the way animation is courting AI now?
Good and bad. It is both noise and music, as with any technology. We still have to wait and watch how things shape up.
How do you feel looking back at your career and becoming the first animation filmmaker to win the IDSFFK Lifetime Achievement Award?
I am not looking behind, but looking forward. I now stay in Chennai and occasionally go to institutes such as IIT Bombay and UPES Dehradun to teach.
Being in Kerala, I am reminded about a quirky experience. Let me tell you something amusing that happened around the time I was moving to Chennai. As I mentioned, probably due to my family’s history with Partition and displacement, I have never felt that I belonged anywhere. But in the 1990s, an astrologer told me that South India was where I would feel at home. He even told me that in my past life, I was a Malayali man named Padmanabhan from Thiruvananthapuram (laughs)! I remember the astrologer sometimes nowadays, when I think of how I am beginning to feel settled in Chennai.
What next in terms of work?
My urge to work on films that reflect society and social moorings is now giving way to something within. I want to animate interpretations of poetry. It is kind of an inward trip that I would like to take now.