Osho inspired my movie scenes, says Subhash Ghai

Veteran producer-director Subhash Ghai, who on Tuesday announced here that his banner Mukta Arts will co-produce a biopic about the controversial Indian guru Osho in collaboration with Rome-based Navala Productions, said his involvement with the upcoming project was inevitable.

"I have been reading Osho's writings critically for over 30 years," he told PTI in an exclusive interview in the India Pavilion of the 71st Cannes Film Festival.

"He talks sense, he talks about the truth behind the truth, he talks about human values, traditions and laws and about man's relationship with God.

"He answered all the social, political and personal questions that had bothered me over the years. The ideas that I derived from him helped me write scenes for my movies," he says.

Ghai added that his 1999 film "Taal", starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Akshaye Khanna, emerged directly from his abiding engagement with Osho.

"He said, do not fall in love but rise in love. That was the thematic leitmotif of 'Taal'. I was inspired to create a female protagonist who looked like an Osho disciple, who loved a man without any sense of possession or obsession," Ghai said.

The new film, provisionally titled "Osho: Lord of the Full Moon", will be directed by Italy's Lakshen Sucameli, who has lived in Osho's communities in India and the US since he first met the mystic in 1978.

"'Saudagar' writer Kamlesh Pandey introduced me to Lakshen," Ghai says.

"He had been writing the Osho screenplay for five-six years. I received the script three months ago and things quickly fell into place."