A New Direction

Filmmaker Mozez Singh's newest avatar involves curating a picture-rich coffee-table book on a city he loves

Mozez Singh is many things: a filmmaker, a columnist, a producer, a writer and a director. So, when he was approached by Assouline, a publisher of luxury lifestyle books, to write a book about Jaipur, he jumped at the chance to add ‘author’ to his bio. Assouline has a series of incredibly aesthetic travel coffeetable books, on everything from St Moritz to Marrakesh, of which Jaipur Splendor is the newest addition; Jaipur is also the first Indian city to be featured.

As someone who has written, produced and directed fiction, non-fiction, reality, fashion, music, current affairs and talk shows for TV channels, as well as produced and directed TV commercials and music videos, Mozez has been a voracious reader since he was a child. With books all over his house, as he puts it,

“the chance to be able to write a book was a big high for me.”

So, why choose Jaipur? “Well, Jaipur has culture, Jaipur has art, Jaipur has crafts, Jaipur has history, Jaipur has architecture, Jaipur has food, Jaipur has textiles, and is just a melting pot of the East and the West,” exclaims Mozez. While most people know and recognise Jaipur as being all of that, the real challenge for the filmmaker was to showcase it differently.

Royal treatment

To fully understand the city,

Mozez had to go off the beaten track. “I’d been to Jaipur many times, but my knowledge about it was quite superficial,” he admits. From going inside people’s homes to exploring temples and looking up interesting artefacts, he spent four months simply doing his research before putting down a single word of the eventual nine pages he wrote.

"I JOINED THE DOTS BETWEEN THE KINGS WHO BROUGHT ART AND CULTURE TO JAIPUR AND STRUNG THEIR STORIES TOGETHER, BECAUSE THIS ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IS THE PART OF JAIPUR THAT EXCITES ME THE MOST "—MOZEZ SINGH, FILMMAKER