Mohit Takalkar wears his seemingly different vocations – food, theatre and films – effortlessly. Whether he runs restaurants, directs plays or makes films, the effort is to push boundaries, explore the unfamiliar and offer a fresh take on the familiar. The director, known for being a vanguard of experimental theatre in Pune and beyond, has often examined human relationships in the context of the urbanised modern world (in plays such as Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta and the film Medium Spicy), questions of loss and identity (in Love and Information and Colour of Loss) and ordinary lives shaped by politics and society (as in Hunkaro). In his latest outing, Toh, Ti ani Fuji (Him, Her and Fuji), a Marathi film streaming on the OTT platform SonyLiv, he talks about love – a much-visited subject in mainstream cinema – and forces the audience to take off the rose-tinted glasses through which romance is routinely viewed. The film, set in Pune and Tokyo, portrays a passionate romance gone wrong but doesn’t stop there. It dares to look back, with rare maturity, at the ugliness, toxicity and heartbreak from a place of calmness and understanding. What it reveals, is a layered understanding of human relationships and bonds that go beyond conventional labels and the tropes of a typical love story.Under Takalkar’s unflinching gaze, and through Iravati Karnik’s sharp writing and Lalit Prabhakar and Mrinmayee Godbole’s powerful acting, we see, up close, a modern-day relationship existing between a couple’s passionate togetherness and their distinct individualities. After a long struggle for its release, this complexly intimate film has found critical and popular appreciation. The following is a conversation with its delighted and relieved director. Toh, Ti ani Fuji is an atypical film. There is no attempt to simplify the complexities inherent to the characters and their relationship, no effort to push for a ‘neat’ ending. Were you ever apprehensive about working against the grain of audience expectations? That was never a consideration. But, I will say that in theatre, it works because the play is entirely in my hands. In films, I am aware that there is a producer who has invested in the film and who may have problems with distributing it further. Luckily for this film, the producer was very kind and there was no pressure to change anything. Though we did start feeling the heat once the film was made, when people started refusing it. For three years, nothing worked out. The film was ready but couldn’t find any takers. It was a very frustrating time. Then, out of the blue, SonyLiv came into the picture and things just started flowing. The things that were earlier cited to us as negatives – the lack of a neat resolution, the violence in the relationship – were held up and appreciated. I came out of the meeting completely stunned. We are still trying to figure out what changed in the past three years. The heartfelt acceptance of our film, from critics and audiences alike, has been a pleasant surprise after the rejections. The couple in Toh, Ti ani Fuji, for example, are trying to make sense of love while their ambitions and expectations drive them apart. New-age relationships navigating the pressures of the contemporary world is a recurring theme in your work. What draws you to this subject? I have always been intrigued by how people behave when they are in love. They don’t behave in the most generous or evolved way. There is an assumption that the other person loves you, so they often end up being unkind. However, I don’t see it as ‘villainy’. It is just the human limitation we all have and which we fail to see when we are in love. That is where our problems begin. I have lived it myself and seen it play out all the time. There is a particular mistake we all make – we tend to change ourselves according to the liking of another person. This is what we think love demands. But does love really require for you, as a person and an individual, to disappear? Love can be a push to be a better version of oneself, but that is very different from changing who you are to fit someone else’s expectations. This is the confusion where most relationships break down. Yet, the film is not a pessimistic take on love.I didn’t want the film to say that two very different people can never stay together. That would have been an easy conclusion – they can. I’m interested in the harder questions: what is it like to love in today’s time? Can two people be together without losing themselves? Can care exist without one person consuming the other? The film lives in these questions. I also wanted to explore why relationships fail and see what happens after this failure. Can two people, with the benefit of distance and time, relook at the failure and learn something? Not to fix it, but to understand it. Your protagonists reunite in Japan after a painful breakup. Any reason why you chose that setting? Japan has always fascinated me. It is such a unique country. I have been to Japan thrice and each time I felt it was like no other place in the world. It feels like an island in more ways than one. It is self-contained, determined not to be influenced by external forces. This is important in the context of the film. It wouldn’t have unfolded in the same way had it been set in, say, London or New York. Japan offers a very different rhythm and perspective. It has a very amusing coexistence of contradictions: restraint and excess, tradition and hyper-modernity, silence and noise. This contrast offered by Japan creates a certain distance while opening up the possibility of reflection. It allowed my characters the space to reassess what happened without being pulled in by the past. How did Mount Fuji make its way into the film? The first time I went to Japan, I was obsessed with seeing Mt. Fuji. I sat in the freezing cold for three hours near a lake, waiting for the mountain to show itself – all in vain. A vendor selling fried squids saw me and said, “The mountain has decided not to show its heart to you.” That blew me away. The next time I came to see Mt. Fuji was during our recce, after the film was written. This time we had cars and toured all the lakes from where Fuji can be seen, but still no luck. Finally, while filming the final scene, where we were supposed to shoot the three main characters looking at Mt. Fuji, the clouds suddenly parted and revealed the peak. Bit by bit, the whole mountain showed itself and we could see its reflection in the lake as well. We later found out that of 365 days in a year, Mt. Fuji is visible for only 60-70 days. It made me think of the mountain not just as a location, but also as a way of looking. Sometimes, when you’re too close to something, too insistent on finding it, it eludes you. Only once you step away, and perhaps surrender, does the whole picture become clear. This is true of relationships too.Can you walk us through your creative partnership with writer Iravati Karnik? This is my third collaboration with Iravati. What I value most is the way she sees human behaviour. She has an amazing ability to hold humor and sadness within the same moment. She writes people as they are, with contradictions, fractures and honesty. Moreover, while understanding the structure of writing very well, she is also a very instinctive writer. It is a rare combination. We have a strong sense of trust. She understands my visual language and the risks I take. So, she doesn’t overexplain when writing for me. My brain is messy and my vision can be scattered, but she weaves it beautifully in a structure without tying me down, leaving space for me in there at the same time. We both work together really well.Your lead actors are getting a lot of appreciation. You’ve said many times that people have come to you to say the same actors who don’t work well in their plays or films shine in yours. What is your secret?Theatre has taught me how to work with actors. I might have been an insecure director initially, but after a few years, I realised that direction is not about hierarchy or having a sense of control. My job as a director is to create a space where the actors feel safe enough to not perform. A lot of it comes from removing their fear of being wrong, of failing in the moment. Once you do that, their truth emerges. All I had to do was make them comfortable enough to bare their souls. All actors can go towards vulnerability and honesty, but unfortunately, directors often don’t allow them to. People overdirect, when all that is needed are a few, sharp instructions. That is how a confident, secure director should be.Renu Deshpande Dhole is an independent journalist and a special educator based out of Pune. When not writing or working with children with dyslexia, she is out birdwatching or volunteering for environmental organisations.