Not completely satisfied with Priyanka Chopra’s Barfi!, Anurag Basu vows to tell another story on autism

Filmmaker Anurag Basu feels a personal responsibility to tell stories around autism to spread a word about the disorder. In fact, he feels he could not do justice to it through Barfi!, which is why he has pledged to delve deep in the subject in one of his future projects.

“When it comes to the story of Barfi!, the story came out when I started working closely with some NGos. Through my association with the NGOs, I started meeting autistic people, and doing events with kids. It was during that period when I started understanding it,” Basu says.

The director continues, “The way they see the world, I tried to see the world through their eyes. It is difficult to see that world, but it is the most beautiful and pure world. That is what prompted me to write the story. Today, the film, with Priyanka Chopra and Ranbir Kapoor, is known as a love story, and is liked by everybody. But we couldn’t go deep in the subject. There was a huge spectrum which could have been covered, but couldn’t because of reasons such as commercial angle. We tried our best, but other people have done better”.

Here, he reveals that he would surely explore the subject again. “I will do it in the next couple of years. And this time, I will delve deep into it. I will do it. There is a project in mind, and I want to work on it. I will talk about it once closer to time when I am starting to work on it,” the filmmaker tells us.

In fact, he uses the occasion of World Autism Awareness Day (April 2) to urge people to do a bit more around the subject, and spread the word.

“I don’t like when people look at autistic people as bechara. It is not the truth. They are not different. We need to understand it. We can do a lot more. For instance, there are not enough trained teachers for them. They need the same amount of attention from us and the government. We need to understand that every autistic kid is different so that will be the way to learn. They go for visually learning,” he says, adding that he is committed to spreading the word as he has a lot of autistic friends, and he has seen his journey.

“I have formed this personal bond with the issue over the years. There is no single reason or single person for it,” ends the director.