What is special about Roshan's inner journey?
He comes to India hoping for a short journey but he faces the longest journey of his life. For, he will be digging deep into himself. He is seeing and feeling things he had never imagined. He runs into emotional problems too. I believe that in difficult times that all of us face from time to time, we ought to look within ourselves and find the resources to face our challenges.
What kind of an inner journey does Bittu [Sonam Kapoor] go through?
She is a free-spirited girl who wants to get out of the rut of a middle-class existence. She wants to do something with her life. So does Roshan. But are they looking at the same goals?
What is the significance of the title?
It refers to the postal address of the walled city of Delhi, which is 11006, but everyone calls it Delhi-6.
You have said this film is very special to you, more special than Rang De Basanti and Aks.
I dig into my childhood memories but the setting for the film is contemporary India. I can even say that I have bared myself na**d, exposing the conflicts and other experiences I underwent when I grew up in Delhi. The walled city is the microcosm of India, and naturally it is also a character in the film. Though for logistical reasons, we recreated quite a bit of the old city in Rajasthan, we also shot in Delhi.
Some people think this film is smaller than Rang De Basanti.
Though Aamir Khan is not in the film, and though it doesn't deal with someone like the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, Delhi-6 is much bigger than Rang De Basanti. Besides, we have film artists from different generations. There is Waheeda Rehman, Om Puri and Rishi Kapoor, and then we have today's generation. We have 20 important characters in the film, and some of our finest artists playing these characters. And we had 1,500 extras. And let us not forget the dove Masakali featured in a song along with Sonam. The song was not really meant to be part of the narrative, but as the script evolved, we found a place for it. We have in this film sets that are much larger than the ones in Rang De Basanti.
Cinematographer Vinod Pradhan has devised many interesting ways, including a camera that floats, to give the film a very distinct and different look. If you liked his work in Rang De Basanti, you will be more amazed with it this time. Rang De Basanti cost about Rs 33 crore [$ 6.8 million] about two years ago. My new film cost nearly double. I found this project to be much more challenging than Rang De. My wife [P S Bharati], who is the editor and costing director for the film, kept on pushing me to make Delhi-6.
