Space permitting, I could have titled this ‘Five Things I Took Away From Busan’. As it stands, I can only list them, beginning with the one that caused a minor jolt to my being. For, the Busan International Film Festival, which is Asia’s biggest, rides on something we in India cannot comprehend—precision. I lost count of the number of times I was told, ‘Your pickup will be waiting here at 4.45, if you’re not here by 4.50 it will leave.’ Arre?! I caught myself thinking often, yeh kya baat hui? Making films in India has taught us to be lackadaisical about Time. The damn thing is supposed to be elastic according to our shastras, isn’t it? Delays are not just par for the course, they are a consummation of some higher purpose! If someone is bang on time, it almost makes us wonder if they don’t have anything better to do with their lives.
Anyway, having to be frighteningly punctual made me operate in a mild state of panic. Fortunately, you do get used to it. The baleful feeling diminished gradually, as the days progressed. And I slowly tuned into South Korea’s respect for other people’s time. This respect translates into the second thing I could not ignore…politeness.
Every greeting, every communication, every gesture is accompanied by varying degrees of a bow of the head. South Korea—Busan in particular, perhaps—is relentlessly polite. From the interviewer who went out of her way to walk me through several confusingly identical corridors to where my film Ajji was being screened, to the chauffeur who muddled his directions and caused me a frightening delay of a few minutes (!!), everyone in Busan was so polite it almost shamed me. We tend to ration politeness, doling it out in measured quantities only when necessary. And here were people worked to the bone organising a dizzy mix of screenings, markets, events, conferences, who did not once miss a chance to flash me a polite smile with a slight bow of their head.
I’ve been a zealous fan of (and ardent spokesperson for) South Korean films. Mother, Memories Of Murder, Chaser, The Yellow Sea have been particular favourites. The cinema of a country is often a visitor’s first introduction to the place. I imagined South Korea to be mostly as neo-noirish, cheeky and aggressive as its best cinema. Busan is anything but. As it must be with Mumbai too when someone visits it for the first time after having seen many versions of it in our movies. I was almost disappointed to not get to witness someone being chased down the street with a butcher’s knife…or an old lady dancing in the middle of a field to some silent inner song. Ajji, which was in the festival’s New Currents competition, is a byproduct of my fascination with Korean cinema. I was keen to see how audiences there would respond to a film their own oeuvre had spawned.
