“Only the person who wrote Laila Majnu should be upset with me” – Dibakar

By Subhash K. Jha -

April 3, 2010 - 11:08 AM IST

Dibakar Banerjee won't be starting another film till next year. He needs to take the rest of the year off to get to know his new adoptive baby Ira.

“Only the person who wrote Laila Majnu should be upset with me” – Dibakar

"Otherwise she'll never be able to accept me as anything but an alien in her life. At the moment she's 7 months old. I want to spend some months with her and become an integral part of her life."

Movies can wait. "I won't be starting another film till next year. I need to be home, to let my daughter get used to my presence around the house."

Reacting to the charge by short-filmmaker Abhay Kumar that the first segment of Dibakar's film Love Sex Aur Dokha is similar to Abhay's short film Udaan Dibakar says, "Of course there are similarities! My film and his have adopted the age-old traditional Laila-Majnu format where boy meets girl, they fall in love, elope and get killed by irate parents. If anyone should be upset with me it's the person who wrote Laila Majnu."

Dibakar points out that so many Hindi films have borrowed the star-crossed love format. "Raj Kapoor's Bobby...Mansoor Khan's Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak...there was even a film featuring Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval Ek Baar Chale Aao...Yeah I saw Abhay's film and it's certainly similar to mine."

A refreshing change from the denials that filmmakers serve up when charged with similarities to another work.

Adds Dibakar, "If you look at my other film Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, some shots were taken from the way Martin Scorsese shoots his scenes. It's the way we all function as filmmaker. There have to be sources of inspiration."