Like to have, say, the courtesan speak only in English when her entire art and her craft of music was about the language of Urdu.
That you know this world is reflecting something that is honest…even within a sentence, you could go in and out of languages and mix, that’s how we speak English now, it’s very much a mix of Hindi and English…
I appealed to the BBC when making A Suitable Boy that we had to go in and out of languages because this was how we are really, and it would be dishonest, I think, even though they did so beautifully evoke the world in the English language in the novel, that it would be dishonest on screen.
I think there’s great power in truth, you know, and when you, as an audience, begin to sense the actual truth and in fact, a lot of humor in the switching back and forth that many of the world does in different languages, there is a trust that I get from you as well as the audience.