death rattle

“IN THE TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY THING”

Being born in the heart of India, one without any doubt , accustom and adapt himself to the indigenous cultures of our diverse yet unified nation. Bhopal, the city in which, I came to this world, became a viable resource of all art forms that debauched me into the world of writing. It began with, writing short stories and school plays and soon turned into an obsession, that would take over my mind, for the rest of my life. Along with cinema, politics also took over my fascination, and soon found a place in my writings. Soon the focus shifted on the effect of decisions made in the closed offices of North and South block, on the common Indians.

“Call me don” (2001), the first play that I wrote and directed. was a tale of a Principal Secretary of State and his dysfunctional family, who becomes the center of media’s attention, after an alleged gas leak. My infatuation with theatre ended when after graduating high school in 2004, I shifted to Mumbai, for further education. The shift was a time to grow up, it was a time to quit writing. To get a job in the advertising world and forget all about the passion, the dream and the ideals.

But as it seems, you can not escape, who you are. So after surviving a short stint at an advertising firm, I had to retreat to my pencil and paper. It came on the dreadful night of July 2006. Seven bombs, not only blew up the local trains in Mumbai , it devastated the faith of the city. The city, in which I lived for last two years, found a home, was now in shambles. I could perceive a fear of unknown in it’s eyes but it was zilch in comparison of fear it’s inhabitants felt among each other; they were frightened of themselves.

After traveling in the local, the day after, I had to do something. I started writing, and questions kept arising; why some of us think so less of human lives? What would prompt an human being to kill others of his kind? Why have we become so mechanical , why have we become so hollow in recognizing religious and ethnic, other than ours? The questions were disturbing, yet were standing there, staring at me. This encounter resulted in ‘ An Oblate’s redemption’, a play about a suicide bomber, who is denied entry in heaven, even after he had finished his task of bombing a federal building. Now, no where to go, he follows an ambitious broadcast reporter, who is determined to find everything about the suicide bomber at all cost. In the midst of chaos , we are introduced the worst of mankind and we realize that even among all our prejudices, we all are fallible humans.

When I shifted my attention to films from theatre, my focus remained the same. The scripts that I had written till now are all based on socially relevant subjects. Whether ‘Walk alone/walking alone’ ( based on the wretched civic conditions in Mumbai) or ‘To be a Hero’ (based on horrors of outsourcing and development), all are focused on new generation Indians, who feel left out in the new India, still tied in the shambles of traditionalism. But irony of it is, that neither the producers are interested in such stuff, nor they want to entertain a 21 year old writer, who has no so called ‘film gene’ or ‘connection‘. There is no denying the fact that today the opportunities for the new cinema are immense, but one also has to accept the fact that these opportunities are saturated by the people, who have the ‘film connection’

After 21 years on this earth, I had found the path, that I wish to travel, probably for the rest of my life. It is the path less taken, a path much feared, a solitary one. But it is the path I know, would be my contribution for the development of the People.

‘