Lowe Lintas India’s chairman and chief creative officer, R. Balakrishnan, dwells on his film Paa featuring Amitabh Bachchan as a child suffering from progeria, a condition that causes accelerated ageing. “Balki”, who made his directorial debut in 2006 with the film Cheeni Kum, talks about his experience of working on the film, on admen turning into film-makers and on allegations of the film being similar to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Edited excerpts from an interview:

How did you pick the theme for ‘Paa’?

I didn’t, actually. I was sitting with Amitabh during some post-production for Cheeni Kum and Abhishek walked in; he was quite serious while Amitabh was playing the fool. I thought to myself that one day, if I ever made a movie with them I would find a way to make him the son and Abhishek the father. I didn’t have a clue about progeria at that point, then I thought it would be a fictional or fantasy film, but it had to be more real, more human. There was a friend of mine, whose child I remembered had some hormonal problem, and I spoke to him and asked him if he was aware of such a condition. He put me on to a doctor, who told me about accelerated ageing. That’s when I found out about progeria, but this is just the backdrop. The film is about a father and a son and a mother.