the backlash against stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra for a jibe against Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, in a social media post, you recalled how you had been publicly humiliated by loyalists from the same, then undivided political party for a single, almost trivial line of dialogue in your 2000 black comedy Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!! After such a traumatic incident, how did you muster up the courage to speak up on issues that silence the majority?
Yes, the incident was traumatic and the trauma numbed me. But then, I realised that when I speak up, it feels like healing from past trauma. But when I was silent, not expressing my thoughts and holding back my personal angst, it affected my interactions with the world at large, both as a filmmaker and a human being. My 2012 biographical drama, Shahid, inspired by lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi who was assassinated in 2010, was, I think, part of the healing process.