There’s no filmi mush or civilised indifference, Samar and Vijay Jodha are bhai-bhai in the original sense of the term.

The age difference between the Jodha brothers is just two years, but they live thousands of miles apart. First-born Samar lives in the US and Vijay has settled in Delhi. But that hasn’t strained the bond anyway; obviously not, if they have worked together for eight years on the magnum opus, Ageless Mind And Spirit: Faces And Voices From The World of India’s Elderly , without going for each other’s jugulars!

Samar’s the renowned photographer, the youngest to get a licentiateship from the Royal Photographic Society, England; while Vijay is film maker, researcher and writer.

Sons of a resource economist, Samar and Vijay had a peripatetic childhood covering Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Delhi, Africa and Nepal. Between the two of them, they have pulled off prestigious assignments — from social communication projects for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the BBC World Service Trust, to setting up India’s first international artist and writers’ retreat — and their works do run parallel.

Vijay and Samar are so alike and yet so different. Has it always been like this?

‘Samar set the benchmark for me, but I’m not intimidated’ - Vijay Jodha Samar was always tall for his age.

We were in junior school in Hyderabad. One day, some six of us bunked school. But the head-mistress, an aristocratic old woman, was driving by in her Beetle and spied us. We were duly piled into the back seat; all along she would shout and swing a mean thwack, which Samar, as the tallest kid, would get!

He was a fiddler, a very techno-savvy person. A new cassette player — he had to open it up and see how it works. We were skinny guys and definitely not good at sports. Maybe that’s why both of us have chosen the creative field.

Our father travelled a lot, and we had a reputation in school for fancy imported things. Once we took this folding umbrella to school and it created such a stir! Then one day, when Samar accidentally covered half his pen with melted wax, everybody admired it thinking it was yet another phoren invention; it kept passing from hand to hand until the wax came off!

No, there has been no rivalry between us. He was working in Boston, in one of the biggest studios in fashion and automobiles. To leave all that and keep coming back here for projects! He set the benchmark for me, a very high one at that. But I’m not intimidated.

What do I find irritating about Samar?
I come from a serious academic background, he’s into art and design... He’s not fond of reading. I find that lacking in him.

Living together isn’t a problem. We’re driven more by choice than by circumstances. We don’t have a strong hierarchy going — it’s like having friends in the family, the best of friends to begin with.

‘Having Vijay as a brother in the next life would be fun’ — Samar Jodha
Vijay’s changed over the years, but he was a very shy kid. In school, he would always talk so softly that nobody could hear him!

We spent most of our school years together, till we hit the std VIII. Yes, I remember the Hyderabad incident. The car was one of those vintage versions of the Volkswagen Beetle meant for no more than two people, and this woman had six kids packed in like sardines into the back. I was on top of the heap and naturally received all the slaps, and some of the guys at the very bottom had a blast chuckling at my expense — there’s not much you can do in such a situation specially when you’re caught bunking school!

Another time, our parents made a surprise visit to the school. We were in the backyard, bullying boys from another class whom we didn’t like. A good hour later, when we met our parents, Mom wanted to know where we had been. Before we could say anything, a friend, in totally Hindi film style, reasoned with our mom: “Aunty, hua yeh ki, humko kissise takkar lenee thi .” We never heard the end of it.

Vijay was always interested in mass media. In the std IX, when the film ‘Gandhi’ was released, and there was news that Pakistan was going to make a movie on Jinnah, he wrote a script for their movie. He made a ‘Mad’ magazine of his own with spoofs on Indian advertising, movies, etc.

The secrets between us were more about things we had broken and had to be hidden away, like an alarm clock or a transistor. Most of our teenage and later years were spent away from each other, so there were no fights over girlfriends, etc.

Working on Ageless Mind and Spirit required loads of patience. We couldn’t get anybody to put in any money; it was our own meter, which was ticking at all times. We didn’t have major creative disagreements, but we had several disagreements while chasing subjects or raising money for the project.

Anyway, this is our only collaboration; we’re doing our own things otherwise. It’s therefore unlikely that we’re moving towards becoming the next ‘Johnson & Johnson’ as somebody told us at our book launch!

However, we do manage to stay together for several months in a year, so issues like who will answer the bell or take the garbage out, are thankfully, sorted out. I enjoy his sense of humour but his excessive focus on things in front of him and missing out all that is going on around, irritates me.

Having Vijay as a brother in the next life would be fun. However, if it’s the very filmy lost-and-found type, I don’t know if we will get together because Vijay, the way he was when he was a kid, may be too shy to come and tell me: “Listen, we’re brothers.” An identical tattoo or locket might help!

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