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Mohit Takalkar wears his seemingly different vocations – food, theatre and films – effortlessly. Whether he runs restaurants, directs plays or makes films, the effort is to push boundaries, explore the unfamiliar and offer a fresh take on the familiar. 

The director, known for being a vanguard of experimental theatre in Pune and beyond, has often examined human relationships in the context of the urbanised modern world (in plays such as Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta and the film Medium Spicy), questions of loss and identity (in Love and Information and Colour of Loss) and ordinary lives shaped by politics and society (as in Hunkaro). In his latest outing, Toh, Ti ani Fuji (Him, Her and Fuji), a Marathi film streaming on the OTT platform SonyLiv, he talks about love – a much-visited subject in mainstream cinema – and forces the audience to take off the rose-tinted glasses through which romance is routinely viewed. 

The film, set in Pune and Tokyo, portrays a passionate romance gone wrong but doesn’t stop there. It dares to look back, with rare maturity, at the ugliness, toxicity and heartbreak from a place of calmness and understanding. What it reveals, is a layered understanding of human relationships and bonds that go beyond conventional labels and the tropes of a typical love story.

Under Takalkar’s unflinching gaze, and through Iravati Karnik’s sharp writing and Lalit Prabhakar and Mrinmayee Godbole’s powerful acting, we see, up close, a modern-day relationship existing between a couple’s passionate togetherness and their distinct individualities. After a long struggle for its release, this complexly intimate film has found critical and popular appreciation. The following is a conversation with its delighted and relieved director. 

Toh, Ti ani Fuji is an atypical film. There is no attempt to simplify the complexities inherent to the characters and their relationship, no effort to push for a ‘neat’ ending. Were you ever apprehensive about working against the grain of audience expectations? 

That was never a consideration. But, I will say that in theatre, it works because the play is entirely in my hands. In films, I am aware that there is a producer who has invested in the........

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