Sanjay Patel
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A profile
India Today, January 20, 2016
Suhani Singh
Sanjay Patel's animated short is a dazzling, moving tribute to his father and his faith. It also happens to be a favourite for the Oscar.
Chaitanya Tamhane's Court may not have made it to the Oscars but Indians still have something to root for on March 1. Sanjay's Super Team- the triumvirate of Vishnu, Durga and Hanuman-will be vying for the best animated short prize. Produced by Pixar and attached with its feature, The Good Dinosaur, the seven-minute, largely silent short, is a rarity in the rich oeuvre of the beloved animated studio. Made by an animator of Indian descent in Sanjay Patel, the film has a brown boy and his father as its two leads. It is a personal tale based on real-life characters so much so that it actually ends with photographs of Patel with his father, Gopalji M. Patel-first as a child and later as an adult. Unlike most Pixar shorts which emerge from ideas pitched by its employees to a committee, the studio approached him to make one at a period when he was at the crossroads of his life, says Patel, 41, in an email interview. After two decades at the studio where he was part of acclaimed projects such as Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Patel was going to call it quits to focus more on his life as an illustrator of graphic novels based on Hindu mythology. Then Pixar approached him, not once but thrice, with none other than studio's chief creative officer and Oscar-winning filmmaker John Lasseter recommending his name.
It was an opportunity of a lifetime but Patel had his apprehensions given the subject was "so personal and so culturally specific", he said. Indian characters are hard to come by in Hollywood films. For every Irrfan Khan in Jurassic World, there is also a Chiwetel Ejiofor as Venkat Kapoor in The Martian. Animated avatars of Indians are even rarer with caricatures like Apu from The Simpsons being well known. But Hindu deities have barely reached the US audience with Nina Paley's feature Sita Sings the Blues (2008) being one of the few international projects to be based on the Ramayana. Was Pixar ready to make a film addressing a sensitive subject such as identifying with one's religion? Lasseter was convinced that Patel's short had to be about the relationship between Patel and his father and not just "a boy ignoring the stories from his roots". Born to Gujarati immigrants in the UK, Patel grew up in California where his parents ran the Lido Motel. As a child, Patel loved Looney Tunes and Japanese anime series, and was later inspired by the figurative art of the Renaissance in high school. A major part of his time was spent drawing at the reception counter of the motel. "Drawing has always been meditation for me," says Patel who drew inspiration from the work of Michelangelo. "It's the time I can really lose myself and just be." While the short shows Sanjay as a reluctant participant in his father's rituals and his own worship of comics and cartoons, in real life Sanjay, the child, wasn't regular with his prayers. "One day, my brother Amul stood up to my father and told him that we didn't want to pray with him anymore," says Patel. Thereafter, Gopalji also didn't impose himself, supporting Patel in his dream to go and study animation at the California Institute of the Arts, the prestigious art institute built by Walt Disney.
The little Sanjay in the short accepts the Hindu deities his father worships after a striking fantastical action sequence in which the idols come alive and have super powers. Patel though would take two decades "to rediscover my father's faith and culture through reading and studying Indian art". He adds, "It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I first started learning about Indian mythology and discovered South Asian art, and fell in love with it. I am exceedingly curious about existential matters and how they take shape in stories with archetypal characters. Vedic mythology is astonishing. It strikes on so many different levels-be it spiritual, or just plain stimulating storytelling." Most of this journey of identifying with his religion is evident in Patel's four pop-art illustrated books-the well-regarded The Little Book and The Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities, Ganesha's Sweet Tooth and Ramayana: Divine Loophole, published under his label Ghee Happy. Patel's cute sketches and effervescent illustrations have been displayed at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Brooklyn Art Museum as well as the West Side Gallery at Pixar. "The more I read of Vedic/Indian culture, the more I seem to understand and appreciate my parents and the stories that matter to them," he says. "I find loving these stories is a way to love my parents." Oscar or not, Sanjay's Super Team has already won him happiness in life. During the three years Patel spent developing and making the film with over 100 artists, he welcomed a son, who is without a surprise named after a Hindu mythological character, Arjun. And though the competition is tough with critically-acclaimed shorts such as World of Tomorrow, which has won over 40 awards including two at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Patel has already won the biggest award: make his father see his first film in three decades. "My hope is coming true," says Gopalji in a featurette released by Pixar. Tearing up after watching the film, he hugged Patel and added, "I am very glad that you achieved a lot. I am grateful you have given me a lot of joys which I can't describe." Now that's a real happy ending.
