The thread that binds

Director Nagesh Kukunoor is basking in the critics' praise of Dor.

In one of the scenes in director Nagesh Kuku-noor's Dor, Meera, a young, recently widowed girl from Rajasthan, breaks into a dance in one of the lanes of her village.

An old transistor is playing a naughty Indian film song, the same song on which she once showed off her dancing skills innocently to her husband a day before he leaves for Saudi Arabia.

Immediately, however, she feels guilty and confides in her friend Zeenat, who she secretly meets, and who has been forced to land in Rajasthan all the way "up" from Himachal Pradesh due to a crisis.

Zeenat, a self-sufficient, newly married woman, advises Meera to remember her husband the way she would like to remember him, and not the way society would like her to. In that one scene, Kukunoor sums up one important aspect of his directorial skills: to subtly touch an emotional chord in a simple yet endearing manner.

"A lot of people have told me that it was their favourite scene in the film," says Kukunoor, who has already announced his next project starring John Abraham. The reviews for Dor have been largely positive, even though Kukunoor has, in the past, been criticised for amateurish direction.

"Critics can judge a film because they have never made one ever in their lives," says a defensive Kukunoor, adding, "Anyway, critics judge me with a different set of glasses."

Clearly, Kukunoor and film critics haven't had a stable love affair for any length of time. While his first film Hyderabad Blues was well received, others like Rockford, Teen Deewarein, Bollywood Calling and Hyderabad Blues II came under severe criticism.

And though Kukunoor continued with his brand of cinema, somewhere he began slipping dangerously till the critically acclaimed Iqbal rescued him last year.

What is it that Kukunoor is finally getting right in his films? Is it his ability to let audiences connect with his characters, the finesse that he has acquired (the cinematography in Dor is quite spectacular), or the music that became central to his films?

He shared a close relationship with legendary director Hrishikesh Mukherjee towards the last three-four years, spending a lot of time with him "" Dor is, in fact, dedicated to Mukherjee who died recently "" and could it be possible that Hrishi-da passed on some of the tricks of his trade to Kukunoor?

Dor might lack the "wow" factor, but it manages to linger both in your heart and mind. Somewhere something clicks, and clicks so well that one is forced to take note of a modest Rs 3 crore film in a market where Rs 40 crore film budgets are the rule. Maybe the charm of Kukunoor's deliverance (keeping his latest fare in mind) lies in the dialogues and some select scenes.

There's one scene where Meera's grandmother-in-law (a widow herself) confesses to being jealous of the married Meera, but lends a comforting hand almost immediately after the young bride is tragically widowed. There's also a shot where Meera, Zeenat and the behrupiya (played brilliantly by Kukunoor's earlier find Shreyas Talpade, the lead in Iqbal) carry an old transistor to the sand dunes and dance to 'Kajra re' and revel in the camaraderie they've found in each other.

Another setting involves the dead drunk behrupiya confessing his love to Zeenat while also understanding women's perplexities through her eyes, and yet another scene has Meera climbing atop a brick facade only to catch a mobile signal to talk to her husband.

There's a scene where Meera has to take a pathbreaking decision; she poses her dilemma to her grandmother-in-law: "Main fairshta nahin banna chahtee, main kisee kee zindagi aur maut ka faisla nahee lena chahtee. (I don't want to be an angel, I don't want to decide anyone's fate of life and death.)"

The magic of the scene rests in the reply given by the old lady: "Tum jo faisla logee, vo ek insaan ka faisla hoga, farishton ko ye haq kahan milta hai? (Whatever decision you take will be a human being's decision, when do angels ever get this right?)" Perhaps, these nuances woven together lend to the overall delight of the film.

But there are some very jarring scenes too, especially the last one when Zeenat stretches out her hand from the train and Meera runs towards it. What was Kukunoor thinking when he did that?

"The ultimate redemption for a woman in a majority of Hindi films is when she's with a man. It annoys me. In fact, someone even suggested that the behrupiya marry Meera. I wanted to show Meera moving toward her future without a man's support. In fact, even the music selected by Salim-Sulaiman for the background score is not exactly upbeat, but a sad sarangi tune."

A self-confessed control freak ("I do scenes over and over and don't believe in spontaneity"), Kukunoor completed Dor in 37 days and decided on the actors after an audition process.

"Shreyas and I have been good friends post-Iqbal and I was confident of exploring newer facets of his acting skills. He used to mimic actors on the sets of Iqbal and I wanted to explore that possibility," he says.

He admits that he rarely allows "discussions" on the sets, sticking to the script and wrapping shots quickly. "I have readings with my actors, dress them in costumes and do photo shoots and screenings that help iron out the nuances. That's when I get the voices of my characters and then proceed for the shooting," he says.

Music wise, he denies allegations that he doesn't pay much attention. "I don't interfere with music directors' work, but I enjoy being in studios. When I was directing Rockford I couldn't believe I was in the same room as Gulzar and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. I videotape all the music recording sessions."

"There's no end to making movies and learning from them," he says thoughtfully. Not the sorts to question his films once they're complete, he says he quickly moves on to his next project. "I don't stop. I don't think I can, ever."