Jeevan Prakash Sharma/NDTV
New Delhi, Jul 29: Ram Gopal Varma may have been nowhere near Ahmedabad when 17 blasts rocked the city last Friday, but the maverick filmmaker is still trying hard to distance himself from the dastardly act.
Denying reports that his film Contract inspired the terrorist plan, he says such a modus operandi is common across the world.
Contract is third in Varma's trilogy of gangster films. As the maverick director himself writes in his introductory note on the film's website, if Satya in 1998 gave audiences an inside view of the underworld and in 2002 Company provided an overview, Contract moves to the next level where the underworld meets terrorism.
In the film, terrorists are shown planning a series of low intensity bomb blasts, which would be followed by much larger explosions in the vicinity of hospitals once victims were moved there.
This bears an uncanny resemblance to what actually happened in Ahmedabad on Friday and has led people to draw unsavoury parallels between Contract and the terrorist strike.
Varma however is categorical that this is not a case of real life imitating reel life.
"When I was planning Contract, I did a lot of research on terrorist activities around the world. The film's writer Prashant Pandey and I studied in detail the situation in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. I have in fact borrowed a lot from real life incidents. In Afghanistan, for example, it's quite common for a series of blasts to take place, followed by other explosions outside hospitals in the immediate area so that victims, their relatives and the general populace is completely terrorised. Therefore it is I who am inspired by real life, and not the other way around. I don't subscribe to the idea that things would have happened otherwise if I hadn't made Contract," he says.
Actor Zakir Hussain, who plays a notorious terrorist Sultan in Contract, endorses his director's viewpoint. "Sure, like any other Indian I am sad to hear about the tragedy in Ahmedabad. But I don't think Contract gave terrorists the idea of carrying out the serial blasts," he says.
Hussain acknowledges that there is at least one sequence in the film that inspires a sense of deja vu.
According to him: "At one point in Contract, I am telling my people to plant bombs in public places and then target nearby hospitals where victims will be taken for treatment. I believe this is what happened in Ahmedabad too. A bomb was planted outside the hospital and it exploded causing considerable damage."
The actor insists this was a mere coincidence and the media has been guilty of using his footage from Contract to make their point again and again.
"A number of TV channels kept showing my character from the film. If you keep reinforcing an idea, it tends to create a certain perception. What if I go out tomorrow and people think of me as a real life terrorist? This is what I am now afraid of," he admits.
Despite the all negative publicity, Hussain is not apologetic about his role in Contract. "I have no regrets about doing the film. What's regrettable are the blasts and the loss of life that happened in Ahmedabad," he says.
Sakshi Gulati, who plays Sultan's sister Iya in Contract, is willing to stand up for the film as well.
"Had any other film about the underworld or terrorism been released just before the blasts, people would have found some similarity. Therefore it is just a sad coincidence that the Ahmedabad blasts took place within a few days of my film's release. I have always believed that it is reel life that imitates real life and not vice versa," she says.