Word: kapur
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Bakshi credited several other professors, including Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Doris Sommer and Danziger Associate Professor of Government Devesh Kapur, as helping him integrate social and artistic ventures into his academic life...
...After a journey of 30 years that has taken him twice to the West and twice back to Bombay, from accountancy to commercials, Hollywood comedies to Broadway musicals, Kapur thinks he's finally ready for "the film I've wanted to make all my life." At 59, he adds, "I've come to the conclusion that I'm unable to live anywhere but India. I need the chaos, to see that people can live in abject poverty with more dignity than even the richest in Bel Air. I need to draw strength and creativity from the courage of a people...
...With Water, Kapur may be taking the greatest risk of his career, transforming himself from a director famed for opulent spectacle into a low-bud-get crusader for the oppressed. But as he tours the movie's setting in Dharavi, he revels in the prospect of making a film that combines Indian melodrama with economics. "It's 20 years from now," says Kapur, explaining the plot. "There's an upper city like Vegas and a lower city like this. And all the water is sucked up by the upper city." He points at a group of skinny girls slapping foamy...
...Kapur intends the audience to draw global parallels. The "water rats" can be street kids from Bombay, Rio, even London. Paradise-club patrons are sex tourists. The upper-lower divide is the chasm between First and Third Worlds. Kapur the director is making a film written by Kapur the economist. "Bombay puts it all together, the contrast, the contradictions, in a way that you never have to think about in London or New York," he says. "And that's what the film will...
...movie, the divide leads to revolution. In real life, Kapur says, Dharavi will somehow adapt to its unpromising future. In reality, he adds, Bombay's rich are not nasty, but they have too little contact with the poor to understand their plight. "Over there," he says, indicating the high-rises, "they believe toilet paper is soft and beautiful. Here, they know it's to wipe yourself." Money can blind as well as dazzle, he's saying. Sometimes it just gets in the way. And he would know...