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My guest in the episode today once said something that reveals the power of popular culture.
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In his younger days, in the 1990s, he spoke about how he once watched a film on a Friday
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in which a character played by Renuka Shahane died.
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He was so disturbed by it that he waited until that Monday for a show called Surubhi to air
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on television so that he could see Shahane alive again.
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He said he had tears in his eyes.
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This, to me, is not a random cheesy story about a young person but a reflection of how
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much stories matter to all of us and the emotional resonance of culture.
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Films and music and books are not just entertainment and escape.
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They provide us with the backdrop of our dreams, the soundtrack of our lives and sometimes
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even the backbone of our existence.
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They help us make sense of the world even when little of sense seems to be happening
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They help us make sense of our own selves through the lives of others.
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This is why the importance of art is highest in the darkest of times.
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As my guest said once, the worst time to be an artist may just be the best time to be
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Varun Grover, writer, screenwriter, lyricist, comedian, filmmaker, in fact so
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many things that it feels reductive to try and spell them all out.
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I've been a fan of both Varun's work and his fearlessness for many years now and we've
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been talking about doing this episode for a while.
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I'm so glad we finally made it happen in an eventful recording that faced a few disruptions,
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though thankfully nothing from the state.
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At one point we interrupted the recording because of a large fire we could see from
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the window of my home studio and we lost a little bit of audio near the start because
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of which my early question about the media might feel a bit abrupt, but I loved the conversation
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We had so much fun rambling here and there as the hours went by that we forgot to discuss
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some of the key things I wanted to discuss with Varun, such as a craft of comedy and
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At which point you might ask, ki phir baat kya kya, well you'll have to listen to find
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Before we start, a public service announcement, registration is open for the September cohort
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of my writing course, The Art of Clear Writing.
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The course kicks off on Saturday, September 10 and you can go to indiaankar.com slash
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clear writing to register.
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And now let's go to a unique kind of commercial break, Capital Gyan by Deepak Shanoi.
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This is like a show within a commercial from the kind sponsors of this episode, Capital
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Did you know that Indian equity markets make more money when they're closed than when
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More than 90% of the Nifty and Sensex returns since 2009 have happened overnight, between
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3.30pm and 9am, when the markets are asleep.
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Every crazy event makes you want to respond, to tweak your investments and it never seems
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to be enough, if you want to grow your money, you have to let some of it sleep through the
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madness of everyday life.
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Deciding not to react can often be the best action you can take.
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Talk to us and let us make the right decisions for you so you don't have to.
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I'm Deepak Shanoi, CEO at Capital Mind.
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Take a look at our portfolio management service at cm.social slash seen unseen.
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Worry less about your money and make it work for you.
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It's cm.social slash seen unseen.
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Hey, I want to repeat that URL, cm.social slash seen unseen.
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Deepak has been a guest on my podcast and he handles my money as well.
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My actions are the best endorsement.
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Varun, welcome to the Scene India Unseen.
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I've been listening to it for a long time and I've been a huge fan of India Uncut.
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One of those early Indian success stories in the internet space.
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I was almost a fanboy, I would say almost because I've always been aware about the idea
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of being a fanboy is slightly problematic, but I was constantly always following, waiting
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for new posts on India Uncut or one of the high points of my blogging life was that at
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one point India Uncut had linked a story on my satire blog and it got lots of traffic.
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So it's been whatever I think 16 years since that happened, probably might have happened
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in 2005 or 2006 and this is the first time we are actually talking.
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So it's a bit of a landmark for me.
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That's so kind of you and I should say it's a landmark for me because I've admired your
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work all these years as well, not just your work per se, but also the breadth of your
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So I have a question which I think applies to in a sense, both the media and the arts,
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which is that if you sort of look at the media, you can look at it in two ways.
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One way is that the media is fulfilling supply and demand.
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People want information.
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People want narratives.
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Media fulfills that demand.
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Jab tak profitable hai chalte raho, you know, where do the salaries come from?
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The bottom line is important and so on and so forth.
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That is the imperative and that is the justification a lot of people will give you.
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Other people, like I think you and me would believe that there is something higher there.
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You know, we can get into the cliches of afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted
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or we can talk about speaking truth to power, first draft of history, blah, blah, blah.
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Leaving the cliches aside, there is this sense we have that there is something more that
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we don't follow that demand, but we shape it in a certain way, that there are certain
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things we have to cover, certain things we have to write about.
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And this almost seems like a binary.
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It's hard to sort of find a continuum between them or find a compromise ground.
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And what we see, what I see in the media is that, you know, there is that old saying from
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Rok, if you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
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And it's the same thing that your big media houses will, you know, kowtow before the powers
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the most because they have the most to lose.
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You could be running a daily newspaper, but the group that owns you also has a chemical
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factory, wahan pe IT raid ho jaegi, blah, blah, blah.
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You have so much to lose that those guys basically follow the imperatives of the first sort where
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just to survive, they have to crawl, as it were.
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Whereas the fighters that you see, people like Alt News and Scroll and Wire and News
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Minute and so on, they are much smaller operations, they are independent operations.
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And they are, of course, full of brave people risking a lot personally.
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But at the same time, in terms of what there is to lose, there is not so much old money
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behind that and all of that.
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You look at Alt News, what Pratik and Zubair do, it's basically a labor of love.
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You know, jab tak chalega chalega, after that it is what it is, it's a labor of love and
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people recognize it as such.
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So this makes me sort of wonder about which side of the line do we come down on?
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You know, and the same question would really apply to the arts.
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Because arts mein bhi wahi funda hai, that if I am an OTT platform, the logical thing
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for me would not be to have political content in there, not take pangas in any way.
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I was rewatching Masaan yesterday and I started on Hotstar.
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And Hotstar pe poora scene kaad diya, like you know about that, right?
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Des minute kaad diya usme se shuru mein, the bedroom scene.
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And I managed to, I said then forget it, I'll just watch it on Netflix.
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Now according to Google, your runtime is 1 hour 49 minutes, Hotstar pe 1 hour 36 sa,
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ispe bhi Netflix pe 1 hour 46 tha, toh 3 minute kahin gaye, pata nahi kaha gaye.
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But from what I remember, I couldn't figure out kya kaata hai.
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So the thing is you understand the imperatives of some of these big guys, but at the same
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time you have independent artists saying ki nahi mujhe jo karna hai karenge and those voices
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will always be from the margins, no mainstream house is going to take off.
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And simultaneously to add a different theme to that, we're living in an age where I think
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the mainstream is dissipating.
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More and more creators like us have the tools of production at our hands.
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We can make whatever we want, put it out.
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We don't have to go through gatekeepers.
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We don't have to worry about these other imperatives.
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So what are your thoughts on the trade-offs involved here?
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Because the rational line that many of these big media houses would take, that a Netflix
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or a Hotstar would take, that boss we have to survive panga kyu lehne ka, there is so
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much to lose, you know, for 1% of the art, why should we put 99% at risk?
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That's a rational line.
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But at the same time, you know, that 1% is the most important.
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So mera yeh mana hai ki news media jo hai, khas karke, the two kind of categories you
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mentioned, one is the big media houses who have a lot to lose and that's why we are kind
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of, they are kind of crawling and all that.
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But I think usse zyada kuch hiya ho raha hai, abhi jo ho raha hai, jo we can't compare
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this thing to the emergency where I would say ki media ko pata tha, sahi aur galat
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kya hai aur wo because of the political pressure and because of whatever the gains they had
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to make, they were choosing the wrong.
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This time, I think the distinction is gone, they don't really know what is right or what
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They are not deliberately choosing the wrong, they are actually choosing the right, what
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So it's not like they are being pressurized into doing something.
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I think that's what they always wanted to do, that's the thing and this time there is,
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so it's like win-win, wo karna bhi wahi chaate the, ussi tarah ka zehr phailana or ussi
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Divisiveness is the outcome of what they are doing, but the statements or the line they
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are choosing or the news they are trying or the overall agenda of the news right now completely
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aligns with, I would say, most of the anchors who are delivering that news or most of the
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reporters who are reporting or most of the houses that are, you know, the big money bags
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who are running these channels.
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So it's slightly different from, isliye isbaar wo bhi nahi hai ki we can't say ki they were
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asked to bend and they crawled and all, no one actually had to even ask this time.
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This is a very natural allyship in a way, what is happening and what we are seeing and that's
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why it's not like ki yeh badal jayega agar sarkar badli jo ki, anyway I don't know wo
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kab hone wala hai, hone wala hai ki nahi.
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It's slightly different and exactly, so jo aapne bola jo ki kuchh log jo fight back kar
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hai, alt news and news minute and wire and scroll and many other independent whatever
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journalists and fact checkers, again they are not, you know, they are not doing it because
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they have nothing to lose, of course all of us have something to lose.
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So dono taraf iss samay jo bhi ho raha hai wo bahut core belief ke sath ho raha hai,
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we believe in certain things and that's why we are doing this, whatever we are doing.
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So that I think is a major, whatever, departure from what emergency was or what generally
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how we see the world over when, you know, when certain regimes kind of pressurize the
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media to behave a certain way and they do.
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This time I think it is a, it is a, it is quite a natural allyship, to wo hai, lekin
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ha uske baad apka jo doosra sawal tha which was about the arts and which is also in a
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way related ki film jo censor karke aaj aati hai, ya bahut saari cheezon mein censorship
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ki arts mein, cinema mein ho rahi hai, waha pe yes, in some of the cases it is because
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of the people at the helm in various media organizations which are let's say the art
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based listing, to waha pe shayad ye na ho ki wo naturally wo chahte ho ki haan isko censorship
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kar diya jaye, but yeah, so they are choosing the path of least resistance and maximum profits
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aur wo, wo bhi kaafi, malo wo ek bahut purana system hai jo ki as, have you seen this film
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called The Network, Network 1976 ka film, I saw it as a kid, Peter Finch and all that
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right, I saw it as a kid, I don't remember.
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Yeah, so usmei ek scene hai, usmei there is a news anchor who because of some traumatic
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event he comes, he is fired from his channel but then he comes back and he starts delivering
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a very rousing lecture on TV about if you are angry and you know just open your windows
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and scream that I am done, I am done with it and all that, I don't remember the exact
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line and that guy becomes a cult in its own self aur wo ek tarah ki cult bana leta TV,
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kyunki wo achanak se wo ustare ki ek harkat TV pe karta hai ki wo bahut TRP aajata hai,
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to usko wapas TV pe laana padta hai on logon ko, to I think Simon Beale, his name was in
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the film and then that cult starts growing and channels are kind of, the channel is making
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profits because of that show getting lots of TRPs and it's almost like it's a mix
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of what I would say wo Kiran Bedi ki Adalat meets one of those angry anchors jo bolta
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hai ki chahen se sona hai toh jag jao and all that meets Arnab Goswami in many ways where
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it's just unbridled rage on TV and people just love watching that kind of rage, someone
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going completely unhinged on TV.
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So three, four things and extreme righteousness which flows through this guy, toh chaar paan
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cheeze hoti hai and then at some point in the arc his speeches become about actually
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bringing down capitalism and bringing down this big channel he is part of and then he
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is brought to a meeting with the channel boss and the network boss actually who has many
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many channels under them and other stuff also and then this guy gets him into a huge room
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and there is a huge table which is like probably a hundred seater kind of a table toh uske
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ek edge pe wo boss khada hota hai aur ek edge pe isko bithata hai and then he gives him
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this speech about basically apna mu bandh rakho because there are no countries, there
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are no nations, there are no people, there is only one thing which is business which
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is money so it's so he gives him that basically almost the basics of our existence in this
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century and previous one I think.
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Toh wo sabse bada sach hai jo hamishan se raha hai ki kuchh bhi nahi hai, yeh jo hum
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theek hai hum har cheez choti badi bohot cheezon ko leke hum log ladte hain aur wo caste
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bhi hai aur wo religion bhi hai aur wo nationality bhi hai, kayi baar log Mohammed Rafi aur Kishore
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Kumar ko leke bhi lad jaad ho, utne bhi camps bane hua hai bahut dareke but ultimately what
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this guy says and what I think is the truth of modern societies, everything is ultimately
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money and that's also one of the reasons why I think lots of decisions by the media
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right now are kind of justified with that even if no matter how horrible some of these
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people I'm sure have conscience are not like completely you know aisa nahi hai ki wo subhe
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jab card swipe karte hain andar jaane ke liye toh unki atma wahan chali jaati andar, atma
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leke jaate honge andar but they justify it by that thing so they have they have been
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kind of trained to look at the numbers and not humans in a way or the human cost of it.
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So wo bahut saare yeh saari cheezon ke beech mein art akele kaise survive kare ki ho pata
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nahi but art has survived for like through all these things and I there's one thing
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I say this that the worst time to do comedy is actually the best time to do comedy which
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is true for every art so worst time for any art is the best time for that art because
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jo cheez aapko art ko ya artist ko sorry I'll go thoda piche, ek baar kisi ne mujhse
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sawal pucha tha kyunki usse kisi ne pucha tha ki kavita logon ko kyun chahi hai, poetry
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kyun chahi hai, what is the need of this you know need of poetry in this world, duniya
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mein poetry kisi ne maangi hai, okay people may ask for let's say cinema which is something
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more tangible you can see, poetry kisi ko chahi hai aur kyun chahi hai aur uska jawab
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mujhe bahut time tak nahi mila tha phir mujhe kabita me di, mere paas malhe koi aisa convincing
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jawab nahi tha ki mai kisi ek jisne pucha hai agar wo shayad kisi more chances kisi engineering
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graduate ne pucha tha jo kisi software company mein kaam karta tha.
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Aap bhi engineering graduate the software company mein kaam kaya tha.
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Haan isliye mujhe pata hai ki wahan aise sawal aa sakte hain wahan pe kyunki main aise
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bahut saare logon se mila hoon aur abhi tak milta rehta hoon ki asking ki aur general
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ek jo atmosphere bhi pitle kuch saalon se banaya gaya hai against liberal arts or generally
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any kind of slightly intellectual activity, wo ek anti intellectualism ka jo daur hai
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jo poori duniya mein chal raha hai, humare haan uska ek thoda lag variant hain aajkul
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variant aacha sabde hain aajke liye.
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But haan to poetry kise chahi hai aur kyun chahi hai?
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Iska jawab mujhe bahut tangentially hi mila, wo main abhi bhi samjha shayad nahi sakta
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hoon ussa aadmi ko jisne aise sawal pucha tha.
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But the thing is people have these very strong distinctions ki ye poetry hai, ye art hai,
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ye science hai, ye technology hai, ye business hai, ye linguistics hai, while living in a
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world which is flowing very smoothly from one thing to another, we are constantly moving
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and constantly doing things agar humne ghar mein apne phone charge pe lagaya hua hai, charger
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se nikala aur humne jaake TV on kiya, ya chahi banayi, kuch bhi kiya, we are flowing between
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multiple things, a lot of which are actually result of I would say poetry because someone
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somewhere got the sense of rhythm from learning or listening to music or poetry and that
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rhythm is what our life is or what makes our life easier to live or a joy to live a lot
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Toh design jo hai mujhe ye samajh aaya, ultimately design is the core, samajh malo aisa nahi
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ki mujhe jo samajh hai wo sach hai pura, but mujhe aisa lagta hai ki design is the core
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of everything right from poetry to our daily utilities to cinema to music to and when I
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say design it means three four things, one the aesthetic of it which is very very generally
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a bit of an abstract thing, but aesthetics humara dimag samajh jata hai bhale hi hum zabaan
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se nahi bol paaye ki okay kuch cheezein humko pasand aati hai, kuch cheezein nahi pasand
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aati hai aur koi humare paas uska jawab nahi hota hai toh generally wo ek aesthetic feel
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hota hai uska, dosra hai sense of balance, symmetry or asymmetry which is again a choice,
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sometimes we choose asymmetry, sometimes we choose symmetry, toh symmetry, aesthetic and
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flow generally jo aap film industry mein ek tere ka joke hai and people hate people who
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say this ki koi bhi cheeze aap script padhe hai aur kisi ko padhne ko de hain aur usko
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bole ki maza nahi aaya hai, kyu nahi aaya maza, toh samjhana logon ke liye mushkil hota hai
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lekin log kyaate feel nahi aayi, toh feel nahi aayi jo hai ultimately uske piche I think
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a lot of times it is the symmetry of things, they don't get the exact, it's a very, it's
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almost like making an alchemic portion where every element has to be in a very microgram
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kind of weighed correctly aur wo poetry mein again you can see that balance.
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So is tere ki bahut hi again I know all of it is very very abstract and I generally you
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know mushkil sawalon ke dawaab humisha mere paas abstract mein hota hai, lekin poetry
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isliye chahiye kyunki agar aapko chai bhi peeni hai toh aapko poetry chahiye, agar aapko
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phone charge karna hai poetry chahiye, aapko flight leni hai, aapko poetry chahiye, aapko
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brain leni hai kuch bhi, all of it is put into this almost like a so of course poetry
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ek dam alak cheez hai but poetry is the you can say ho sakta hon sab cheezon se poetry
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nikli ho that is also I think a good enough reason to love poetry that it is a combination
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of all the good things in our lives around us aur poetry se wo cheezon nikli hai toh
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So either ways I think that was something which I kind of figured out slowly that the
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sense of basic designs of things jaise hiye table hai, iski jo rounded edge hai, yeh sharp
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hoti toh abhi aap hai haath rakhne mein dikhat hoti.
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Someone thought of it and whoever thought of it actually started with an abstract thought,
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it was not like ki, kyunki round shape is something which will I don't know which will
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come to you in a very stream of consciousness kind of a thing.
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Toh yeh saari cheezein waha se judhi hui lagti hai mujhe aur uske beech me hum art aur usko
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distinct karne ke liye hum log baithe rehte hain but trying to get back to where we started
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I think you were talking about this friend of yours who asked yourself why do we need
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Yeah lekin uske pehle bhi I think it's so I remember this story like yaha mein aaya
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tha kyunki shayad we were talking about people trying to suppress art in a way and who are
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these people or what kind of people are these and the thing is so basically agar har cheez
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mein poetry aur har cheez mein art hai toh jo log yeh samajh nahi paate hai ki yeh sab
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ek hi hai business bhi they do try to do that thing but ultimately I don't think they will
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succeed because art flourishes in these kind of situations jaha pe aap dabane ki koshish
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karein hai jaha pe aap bole ki ab toh jagay hi nahi hai tum malab tum nahi bol sakte ho
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tum nahi bol sakte ho is exactly the kind of space jaha se yeh table ki rounded edge
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hai hogi jaha se koi bhi naya thought aaya hogi pehli baar kisi ko so that is I think
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that's a good of course with all the privilege I have of saying that okay it's a good challenge
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to have to have people around you who don't want you to say stuff then you have to find
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ways to say that stuff or find stuff which they also don't know exists and can be talked
#
about unke paas ek kitab hai ki yeh list hai us kitab mein ki yeh nahi bolna hai iske
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baare mein nahi bolna hai is tarah che nahi bolna hai so either you invent sometimes you
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invent new phrasing sometimes you invent new thoughts and sometimes you end up inventing
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new languages to talk about the stuff which they don't want to be talked about so that
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I think is a good whatever good challenge for artists.
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So many things to double click on what you just said is it's like a Chinese doll there
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are like different layers within it and I'm just going to one of those dolls and talk
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about so I'll just think aloud from where you left off and that actually makes a lot
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of sense to me what you just said and I'll go into this slightly controversial space
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about art and craft where I know many people will disagree with me but the way I see it
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is that everything we do in everything we do we are responding in ways that we are wired
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to by default right so if I like a particular piece of music it is because you know a particular
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combination of notes will set off reactions in particular neurons of mind which might
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release dopamine which might release something else I'll you know feel that a piano is tuneful
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but an electric drill is noisy and we are wired to find that one is noise and the other
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is music if it's played properly and those are kind of wirings now the point is most
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of the time the different ways in which we are getting manipulated by what is around
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us we are not aware of it and we can't control it so it is an uncontrollable you know an
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omniscient engineer as it were may be able to see where all the pieces fit but otherwise
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you can't for example I read this interesting study recently that if you are making a pitch
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to someone you know if they if they are drinking a warm drink they are more likely to say yes
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and if they are drinking a cold drink now this could be one of those behavioral psychology
#
experiments which you can't really replicate but there are all kinds of fascinating things
#
going on under the surface I get your point that you know there are things which have
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a direct impact on us which we can measure and understand that I am feeling this way
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because of this and there are other things where we don't know why we are feeling in
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a particular way a poem could make me want to cry but I may not be able to tell you exactly
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why as a neurons fire away a chemical reaction or whatever I just know that I feel that way
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if I had enough knowledge I could tell you the science behind it but obviously we don't
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so it seems art and this is why I've kind of also come to believe and this is a sideways
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point that actually craft and art are the same thing but when there is craft where we
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cannot understand the mechanics like why a poem makes me cry we call it art but it's
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actually craft happening subconsciously true true true because I get a lot of pushback
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when I say this that craft and art are same thing yeah really okay I don't know no I
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think I don't understand why the pushback because yeah maybe people think that art is
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slightly more whatever refined form of craft or something or artists are more valuable
#
than craftsperson maybe that's what they think but no but I completely agree on that craft
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or art actually is the same thing there are some things that because we as you said understand
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how they are happening for example like look at some of the some of the sculptures some
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of the folk arts people do and some of the paintings and they'll you know wo koi bhi
#
aap kaibaar aise cheeze honge jo 50 saal ke training ke baad bhi aap nahi kar payenge
#
toh usko craft ka darza dekar jo thoda sa nichla darza de jaya de jaya jata hai I don't
#
know I I believe that's that's just elitism for lack of a better word but ultimately yes
#
both are processes some processes we understand and some processes we deliberately yeah probably
#
don't want people to understand and to call ourselves artists jo writers kaafi karte hain
#
mainne dekha aur wo faida hota hai usse writers ko kyunki aapko generally ek bahutti oppressive
#
producers se deal karna hai so you have to keep that slight mystery of ki main bahut soch
#
ke main ne likha hai kaibaar hota hai ki wo auto mein likha hota hai apne jate huye aur
#
likin if you actually reveal the value of it so sometimes actually there is a just thinking
#
like on the go but there is actually a chance that a lot of art in fact it's not a chance
#
I think a lot of art is fraud but very little of craft can be fraud it is seen it is right
#
there you can't cheat on that agar aapne wo acha kaam kiya hai wo dikh raha hai wo uske
#
liye enough there are so craft is probably a more peer-reviewed way of judging things
#
like okay it is peer-reviewed it is craft something which doesn't require any peer-review
#
is art so yeah so maybe we can say homeopathy is art and allopathy is craft my point is
#
art can sometimes be homeopathy also it can be like an example of fraud art basically
#
so another of the Chinese boxes I wanted to touch down upon actually has something to
#
do with you know one of the ways in which I have kind of one changed my mind through
#
the during the course of this podcast and two also a realization I've had about something
#
I was mistaken about all my life now the thing is growing up in a sort of you know elite
#
English-speaking bubble in big cities all my life my conception of my country was that
#
it's basically you know it's a liberal space we're tolerant to a secular all of that was
#
kind of my conception now you know as you kind of grow older the different layers slip
#
off your eyes you see gender you see caste you see religion you see all of those various
#
areas in which but that's not exactly true and I remember I did an episode with JP Narayan
#
once episode 150 where we were where you know posed the notion to him that India is a deeply
#
liberal society and his point was no but if you look at the opposite is also true you
#
know that old cliche about India and if you actually look at how assimilative we are in
#
terms of food and clothes and all of that you could also make the opposite case now
#
what I kind of my beginning premise still a few years ago always was that we are essentially
#
we are liberal we get along fine we are a big melting pot which is great which is what
#
I love about this country and there are fringes and there are you know there are these movements
#
on the fringe what I have come to realize through talking with various guests like Akshay
#
Mukul and many others on the show is that that is not the case that this was our society
#
was always deeply liberal I have been in a small bubble you know in a sense we are the
#
fringe and we never kind of saw this earlier in fact the larger point about the constitution
#
that comes up here is that our constitution was a liberal constitution not as liberal
#
as I would like but still more liberal than society was a liberal constitution imposed
#
on an illiberal society and as any former engineer would know ki aap top down se you
#
can't engineer society you know in that sense Gandhi was right that our challenge is to
#
change society from within we could not do that we put a constitution there we put random
#
laws there and we assume ki society badal jayega and today politics has caught up with
#
society and I thought of this because that point you made earlier about ki media mein
#
aaj jo log hai na it's not that they have been asked to bend and they are crawling wo
#
waise hi hai they are fundamentally you know bigoted and anti-muslim and all of that so
#
they are going along with the program you don't need to suppress democracy for this
#
you have true believers this is the expression of our democracy now my question to you as
#
someone who is not so much from the same bubble as me who's lived in small town India who's
#
you know spoken a different language and so on is this broadly true that we were always
#
this illiberal and the politics is really supplier responding to demand and all of this
#
was pent up inside people couldn't express it but now they are emboldened to express
#
their bigotry because they see everybody else around them openly expressing it or have we
#
actually become sort of worse and I know you know it becomes a vicious circle at some point
#
in time but what is your sense of that like my deeply pessimistic sense is that hey we
#
were always like this at some point or the other this was inevitable and the liberal
#
project as it were however you define liberal the liberal project as it were failed a long
#
So yeah I think I think we were always illiberal I grew up in UP in the 80s and 80s and 90s
#
I think it was always difficult for minorities, Muslims and Dalits in this country to say
#
that Congress was liberal in comparison but we have not become like this all of a sudden
#
there have been a lot of incentives to come out as illiberal, incentives have increased
#
that has happened that also did not happen all of a sudden it was a bit of a give and
#
take kind of a process where somebody tried to take the incentive he got it so others
#
thought yes he gets it then the one who was giving he thought yes yes he has to give so
#
then he started giving so that kind of a process took place I don't think there was any you
#
know clear plan and that is one of our blessings that the people in power rarely have a clear
#
plan and so we can find our way till they are picking up the gun we can reach the door
#
in that time so things like that but I think our country has always been illiberal and
#
there are a lot of reasons why it has not been seen openly there were a certain incentive
#
just like now there is an incentive there was a certain incentive in showing yourself
#
as a Gandhian, as a Nehruvian and both of these when I say Gandhian and Nehruvian both
#
of these kind of represented in people's heads the idea of secular and you know all
#
encompassing nationalism which kind of doesn't look at caste or creed or you know gender
#
was always I think gender was never even discussed always there is an illiberal aspect that
#
no one is surprised and it has always been believed that it is the same and we will remain
#
the same slowly slowly western influence will come so we will gradually deteriorate or improve
#
from whichever angle you want to see this thing but it has always been and why now it
#
is being more obvious from the front because now the incentive and earlier it was the incentive
#
which was again not your true self but that was something which you were putting up an
#
act that yes we go and accept every human being and the kind of things that used to
#
be there because of which a lot of people who were privileged enough to live in a bubble
#
and not just from the Hindu religion but from you know Muslims also they were kind of spared
#
the discrimination and then they started believing in that to be the only India that exists a
#
very you know accepting and very secular kind of an image but now it has happened that now
#
the most privileged people like us who have always lived and we are still I mean in many
#
ways we are not facing the heat of that oppression but now at least we can see it we can see
#
it happening to people around us people like us and now we are like oh okay this India
#
suddenly got very bad but India was like that first for those people who we did not see
#
or who we did not see or were not seen now you do not need to see there now you can imagine
#
that if this is happening to us then those who have no power and in today's times power
#
equals also social media presence so if they are not there then what are they going through
#
and what kind of India they have been seeing for the past 70-75 years I think we can understand
#
Just to give context to the listeners, just now we were interrupted by this massive fire
#
we can see from my window here which was in Chitrakoot studio so we actually took a little
#
bit of a break and Varun made a couple of calls and figured out that okay it has happened
#
on film set but you know the information we have so far is that everyone is safe but you
#
know and the smoke from that was like dwarfing the entire city but you could look out of
#
some other window and not see that smoke and what you spoke about incentives is interesting
#
there was a Turkish sociologist called Timur Kurhan, he is still alive, who in 1999 wrote
#
a book called Private Truths Public Lies and he came up in that with the term preference
#
falsification and preference falsification is you don't reveal what you are really feeling
#
so the example he gave was that in Soviet Union everybody hated the authorities but
#
nobody had the guts to say it because everyone has the incentive to complain and you don't
#
want to get into trouble so if you have a problem with the regime you believe you are
#
the only one to have a problem with the regime because you don't hear anyone else say it
#
so your silence is preference falsification and the term Kurhan used for what happened
#
when the Soviet Union fell apart was that there was a preference cascade that you hear
#
a few people expressing themselves you realize you are not alone and you go with it and my
#
sense is that social media did the same thing in India that many of us were closet bigots
#
in private you may hate Muslims or you may think a woman's place is in the kitchen or
#
you know the person who works at your house you will give him a different glass but publicly
#
you may not express these things you may project yourself as progressive or what you call Gandhian
#
or whatever but then social media tips the balance over where suddenly you realize I
#
am not the only one other people feel like me and then you realize bloody hell the majority
#
feels like me and that empowers you to kind of you know go for it and what that also I
#
think drives home is that you know one thing that I do believe is that we contain multitudes
#
that a bigot is not only a bigot that nobody is kind of black and white and the great failure
#
therefore especially the great failure of our politics as I see it today is a narrative
#
failure that we are not recognizing you know that somebody may have these unpleasant aspects
#
to her character but she may also want better schools for her children or whatever and we
#
are not building those narratives and appealing to them and you know as a political philosopher
#
Carl Schmitt said that the essential quality you need to be successful in politics is you
#
have to other somebody right it is always anger you know hope will not get you votes
#
and I see that happening and my question to you therefore as an artist is this that at
#
one level as an artist you want to embrace the individuals the complexity of individuals
#
and their particular circumstances and pay respect to that so no character becomes a
#
cliche that no care you don't essentialize a character ki yeh Muslim hai yeh Dalit hai
#
or whatever they are complex characters the characters you see in Masana complex characters
#
you are dealing and engaging with that complexity at the same time there is also that urge
#
to sort of reflect what is happening in the world around you and Kundera Milan Kundera
#
once you know wrote an essay about how art and politics there is this tension between
#
them that they cannot mix if you have too much politics and art then it becomes propaganda
#
I mean my words from what I remember I don't know the exact words he wrote so how does
#
one strike this balance because at one level I imagine that someone like you would be creating
#
different arts say 50 years ago or 200 years ago or whatever because obviously your circumstances
#
the background everything is different so you might be telling the same kind of stories
#
of individuals but in a different backdrop but how much does the backdrop affect it and
#
what is that balance that you then have to work
#
so yeah that's a very I would say good question good is not the right word that's why that's
#
a very provocative question kyunki yeh ispe maine bahut socha hai aur bahut tarah ke sawal
#
aaye hain is tarahe maine bahut logon ne ispe shayad socha hai ki art mein politics kis
#
hat tak aani chahiye aur kis tarahe se aani chahiye to mera maana hai ki aaj ke tarikh
#
mein khas karke iske jawab shayad isa sawal ke jawab har era mein har decade mein alag
#
hote honge is decade mein mujhe lagta hai ki art apne aap mein exist kar jaye apne truth
#
ke saath wo apne aap mein bahut bada revolution hai iss samay. If you manage to say what you
#
want to say and even if it's a story which is very non-political you know in its essence
#
aur first look mein wo lagaye ki ekdum non-political hai wo bhi apne pura truth ke saath aap aaye
#
wo har samay challenge raha hai lekin aaj ki time mein wo challenge aur bada hai kyunki
#
as I believe you know the major fight is not between right wing and liberals or right wing
#
and left wing or you know or orthodoxy versus modernism no the fight right now is simply
#
between scientific temperament and lack of scientific temperament.
#
And when you say scientific temperament in a story or in art what that means that simply
#
means dedication to truth what is science in a very you know even etymologically is
#
just a quest for truth and finding truth. So art mein wo truth kaise aayega art mein
#
wo truth authenticity se aata hai. So for me authenticity is its own aesthetic and the
#
biggest aesthetic. Baaki saari cheezein theek hai hum 50 cheezein sojte hain color palette
#
aur light aur generally kahan shoot karna hai aur kis tarah se. Ya koi bhi art malhub
#
I am saying any visual art I am talking about. Visual art mein authenticity sabse bada aesthetic
#
hota hai aur wo authenticity laane ke liye aapko iss samay har tarhe ke non or anti science
#
temperament se jujna padta hai at every stage right from when you are writing with your
#
own anti scientific temperament part of your brain which keeps telling you to not write
#
this or not or you will be you know no one will like this or no one will really approve
#
of this because this is too whatever this is offensive to someone then when you start
#
pitching so for bringing that art from that idea to the final marketplace there are you
#
have to deal with 10 different at least 10 different bosses who have their own idea of
#
what art should be or what art should not be in today's times. To ye poora struggle
#
jo hai ultimately temperament scientific temperament ka hai. Ab uske beech me jo aapka sawal wo
#
ustare fit hota hai ki art mein politics kitni aani chahiye aaj ke time mein. People have
#
become very over there were two terms during covid I forgot one is specificity and one
#
is jo test hota the nahiye chal rahe hain abhi bhi of course so one is super specific
#
the antigen test and one is super matlab ek test hai jo aapko bahut thoda sa bhi usme
#
molecule hoga toh bataa dega ki covid hai ki nahi hai aur ek test hai jo ki kitna hai
#
wo bataega wo ye nahi bataega ki aapko hai or nahi hai wo theek hai lekin kitna hai wo
#
doosra test wo bataa tha. So right now people have become super specific about political
#
affiliations they even to the extent and it is being whatever it is being it is a project
#
it is not like khud se hua hai logon ke andar but it is a project where people now think
#
ki hum jisse sabzi le rahe hain wo hindu hai musalman hai ya hum jisse grocery le rahe
#
hain ya hum jiski baat sun rahe hain wo kiss side of political spectrum hai. Os time pe
#
agar aapki kahaani mein aapki politics dikh jaati hai kisi ko shuru mein hi you are losing
#
no matter what side of even if you are you know even if you are making an agenda propaganda
#
piece and you know aapko sarkar ne paise diye hain ki aap unka kaam karo toh bhi agar wo
#
dig gaya aapke kaam mein then it is as an artist you lose as a businessman maybe you
#
will win and you will win a lot but as an artist if that is truly your quest in life
#
you are losing. So art ko politics art mein politics aaj ki tarik mein bilkul nahi dikh
#
sakte. There was a time when probably in the 50s and 60s that was supposed to be a you
#
know a value addition to your art if you were vocal about your politics through the art
#
right from you know the poster to the text to the subtext to the choice of actors to
#
the choice of music or whatever everything. Aaj mujhe lagta hai ki agar kyunki yeh hi
#
ek hissa bacha hai ismein art hi iklauti cheez bachi hai which can engage you even if you
#
are on the other side of the spectrum in terms of political ideology. Aap why the op-eds
#
are dead according to me or why the newspaper is dead itself because it is now completely
#
marked by people ki yeh wo hai. Acha scroll hum padhenge hi nahi. Scroll mein meri bhi
#
tarif likhi hai. Main nahi padhun ga kyunki main manta hi nahi wo jo bhi likhte wo sach
#
hai. Main manta hi nahi wo kuch bhi ho. Agar wo simple scroll ne yeh chhaap diya ki paani
#
ka chemical formula H2O hota hai main nahi manunga kyunki yeh scroll ne likhaya hai. Waha
#
chali gayi yeh baat. To uss time mein art iklauti cheez hai and art mein when I say art I mean
#
storytelling, a narrative art form. It could be storytelling, it could be comedy, it could
#
be music of some sort. Jahan pe on the face of it people can't really say ki yeh issa
#
side hai or uss side hai. Theek hai aapne waha tak baat ponch gayi ki aapne logon ko bhi
#
identify karna shuru kar diya ki yeh aadmi hi aisa hai iski bhale hi yeh kuch bhi bol
#
raha ho main nahi sununga. Bhale hi meri tarif kar raha ho. Lekin uss time mein it becomes
#
even more important for an artist to tell stories in a neutral way. Not be neutral.
#
Aur uss pe main second part pe aata hoon ki phir apni politics ka hum kya karein, hum kahan
#
leke jayin apni politics agar hum apne art mein bhi nahi daal sakte hain. But it is not
#
just a virtue of the artist right now to be neutral. It is the necessity for an artist
#
in these times to be neutral, to be treated without doubt by whoever you are creating
#
the art for and I am creating my art for everyone. And I don't really want you know to be bracketed
#
or categorized into. Theek hai art dekhne ke baad aap jo bhi dekhing uske baad aapke
#
andar jo bhi aate hain, sawal wo theek hai, uske saath aapko rehna hai aur phir usme aapko
#
ho sakta hain gussa aaye ki isne yeh kaise dekha diya hai, yeh kyun bola. But engage karna
#
zaruri hai. Aur wo engagement ki power issamein mere kyaal se sirf art mein bachi hai aur yahan
#
tak ki news mein bhi nahi bachi. News bhi ab itni rada news which is supposed to be simply
#
stated facts is is now seen as painted you know right wing or and this is again the world over.
#
America mein there is a very clear distinction between what is Fox News and what is CNN,
#
wo sabke ek bracket hai aur sabko pata hai aur ussi tarah se wo yahan bhi har cheez ussi
#
tarah se bat gayi aur yahan pe batwara jo rahe ho bahut thi skewed sa hai. America jitna
#
balanced bhi nahi hai ki theke aadhe log idhar hai, aadhe udhar hai. Yahan to 80-90% log ek
#
tarahe ka media dekh rahe ho aur ek tarahe ki cheeze consume kar rahe hain aur 10% hain jo
#
apna koshish kar rahe hain ki unki baat koi suniye. To us time mein I feel aapko aapki story
#
bhale hi kitni political ho, it has to first appeal to the viewer or listener as a story,
#
as simply a human story of our times or of our people or something.
#
Then dusra sawal aata hai ki phir hum politics ka kya karein apni. To politics aap rakhein
#
lekin usko agar aap top layer or second layer or third layer bhi apni kahani mein banayenge
#
to I think that is a failure of imagination. You have to actually knead it into your whatever
#
into your existence, into your personality, into your soul, into your craft that it
#
is there but it is not there. It is there in every character you create, it is there in every
#
gesture you see on paper or on screen but it is not ever distinguishable or kind of stands out
#
as its own. To ab jaise art malab kisi roti khao to wo imagine karna mushkil hai na ki
#
kahan jo mujhe maisha bahut surprising lagta jabbi main chapati roti khaata ho ki jo khetam
#
dekh rahe hain, train se aate jaate uspe jo gehun lagi hai, usse yeh cheez ban sakti hain.
#
Kitni lambi journey rahi hai and we take it kind of for granted ki theek hai humare samne roti hai
#
but it's such a huge journey and something has taken so many forms and shapes and then it has
#
been transported from some village in Madhya Pradesh to Bombay then usko humne piswaya hai,
#
phir humne usme paani milaya hai aur phir usko bahut ache se guntha hai, phir usko pula diya hai.
#
There's so much science and there's so much economy and there's so much I would say society
#
in just that ek chapati. Ab aap chapati mein dhun de ki uski uska mitti kahan hai ya wo paani
#
kahan hai ya wo pesticide kahan hai. It's all there. It's all there. That's why you are able to eat
#
that thing and feel nourished but it's not really visible there. It is there. So utna zyada you have
#
to basically first get if you want, if you think you have a politics and everyone has their politics
#
even if they don't know it and in fact my friend Sanjay Rajora says in our show Aisi Taisi Democracy
#
ki if you don't choose your politics, your politics will choose you at some point. So ultimately
#
politics toh hai aapki. Toh agar hai toh then be aware of what it is and then be so aware that you
#
put it in your work but not put it in your work, put it just in your whole personality that it
#
automatically is there. If you try to write a story and then say achha iski politics kuch kar dete hain,
#
ispe nah aap ye kar dete hain ki iski politics aise kar dete hain ki liberal ho jaya hai ya
#
right wing ho jaya hai, kuch bhi ho jaya hai then that's basically the like the worst thing you can
#
do to your art. Usse achha hai ki aap chhod do, log khud samajh lenge ki aap politics and
#
maybe it is flawed, maybe it is you know you're not aware of and
#
and better that is still a slightly better approach than like actually doing it in a very
#
whole whatever holistic manner. That you know what you mentioned about Sanjay saying reminds
#
me of that old quote that where you stand depends on where you sit so often we are just so much
#
shaped by our circumstances without even realizing it and I make a similar point about writing to my
#
writing students where I say that every piece is essentially a collection of choices and those
#
choices are affecting the reader in some way. Now you can either make all those choices yourself
#
and be intentional about it or they are just random things that have tumbled out of your head
#
and you're not in control so you want to be in control but it is not that you know by ignoring
#
it that it the effects they have goes away and by the way that the roti thing reminds me of an essay
#
called eye pencil by Leonard Reed have you read it? So eye pencil is this great sort of essay which
#
talks about spontaneous order or how markets make things happen without one central planner so the
#
point is it's from the first person account of a pencil and all the different parts of a pencil
#
coming from some 40-50 countries and it's not like there is one master central planner who is
#
deciding it just everyone acts on their own individual incentives and magically without
#
realizing it you have a pencil and I think that was updated a few years ago where someone spoke
#
of the iphone like that how many different countries it comes from and I thought if maybe if
#
Manikol ji was alive today instead of uski roti he would make meri roti and kind of do something
#
no your point about politics and art is also I thought illustrated beautifully by something
#
like masaan for example where the politics is invisible but at the same time you have a dalit
#
character you're rooting rooting for and a woman fighting oppression who you're rooting for and
#
you're rooting for these people and nothing is overt there there's no bhasin bazi but the very
#
fact that readers who are not these people are rooting for them I think makes a difference and
#
my other thread which I want to go to which I keep coming back to during the show is
#
sort of the difference between the concrete and the abstract like I think many of the things that
#
tear our society apart are abstract notions like nationalism or purity or race or caste or whatever
#
and in the concrete we don't always act upon them you know so there's a common joke that a bigot
#
will say oh I have a few muslim friends but the irony is he probably does and he's probably nice
#
to them because in the concrete he has no objection it is those abstract conceptions
#
that are the poison right that is where the toxicity comes from and most of the time the
#
worlds that we live in especially people who are alive today is we are living more and more in an
#
abstract world because even if you're sitting with friends we are both looking into our smartphone
#
if you're in a cafe together right we are not talking to each other we are in this abstract
#
world that is coming to us from the smartphone instead of you know the flesh and blood person
#
in front of us and this is dangerous and I think one way in which we the only way to really fight
#
this is to embrace the concrete a bit more and that is also what art does you know that is what
#
a good film or a good book will do by putting you in somebody's head and making them feel the way
#
they do so that the other is no longer the other at least for that sort of point in time so I'm
#
just sinking allowed taking off from what you said because I completely agree with that it kind of
#
irritates me when the politics is overt because I think it is most powerful when it does not need
#
to be overt. Yeah though at the same time I understand in some cases representation is
#
needed for people to feel empowered so for example let's say Paranjeet or Nagraj Manjule when they
#
make film about you know Dalit characters and characters who are oppressed and who are in the
#
course of the film also face you know extreme violence because of their identity so in yes in
#
certain films and in certain cases yes that is required for people just to feel okay seen and
#
feel that relatability and that anger is also needed so yeah there are those kind of films but
#
my point is mostly from from that yeah position of privilege also but your position of an artist who
#
is trying to yeah trying to make bridges in a way trying to reach across so there are of course
#
there are films that are just that just want you to feel seen and feel empowered about that okay
#
this is my story this is my people who are kind of representing my anger against the system or
#
against the system or against the oppressors and okay that is one kind of film but for me
#
probably because I don't have that you know that natural anger I don't have that
#
haven't have many reasons for that natural anger so so for me the job of an artist from yeah from
#
a privileged community in this case Savarna Hindu male the job is to make bridges the job is to
#
bring narratives which otherwise you won't see to see and to not feel like okay I'm
#
I'm watching a political statement I'm watching a story and that story then starts
#
that's living inside me which is exactly what happens with comedy also so what comedy does I feel is
#
it brings a very almost what evolution has given us this response to
#
shocking things it's either laughter or you know or some kind of it is a sensory response and it
#
is something you can't control so for example in some of our shows though most of the people
#
know what kind of show it is when they come to see me or see democracy on stage
#
but still there are sometimes these 20 30 percent people who show up either because their friends
#
have dragged them sometimes a lot of times it happens that people who live in America or UK
#
and they send their parents to our shows like so these probably 30 year old 40 year olds they
#
send their parents to our shows ticket le deteh hain abhi parents ke isaab se haan
#
500 rupee ka ticket liya hai toh waste toh nahi jaana chahiye toh jao and they end up in our shows
#
and then they discover that okay we are being very very political on stage but the thing then
#
the advantage with comedy in comedy you can be directly political but you have a punch line and
#
the thing is it's always a surprising punch line that is the point of the punch line it has to
#
surprise you and the moment you are surprised you let down your guard because there is that emotion
#
has kind of overtaken you it is either shock or surprise or sometimes the awe at the cleverness
#
of the joke or something and you let your guard down and in that moment and then everyone around
#
because as i said 70 percent people are already you know we are speaking to the choir kind of a
#
thing and wo toh haste hain toh ek aur jo doosra natural response hai human behavior ka which is
#
you want to belong you always want to belong that's the core of religion and core of nationalism and
#
everything and they want to belong in that room they start laughing and once you start laughing
#
you kind of reduce the stature of these you know sacred figures you have ideas sometimes and
#
sometimes it's people sometimes it's ideas sometimes it's certain incidents you can't really
#
talk about that's what they have grown up with and they allow that so again so as artists i think our
#
job is to create that bridge okay they may go back home and still never you know buy a ticket for our
#
show again if they have a choice but thoda sa unke dimaag mein apne jo bhi sacred figures hai unki
#
value thodi si kam ho gayi hai ki okay has sakte hain aur aisi koi buri baat nahi hai so that is what
#
i think similarly the same thing we can do through cinema where you talk about certain things and you
#
bring the kind of stories or the kind of dilemmas these people are facing the characters in the
#
story to them and kabhi unno nahi yeh socha nahi tha ki yeh possible hai ki achha aisi bhi ek zindagi
#
hoti hai aur wo zindagi jab apne dekhli hai toh bhale hi aap us zindagi a us tarah ke insan se
#
aap nafrat karte honge apke dimaag mein bachman se bataya gaya hai ki theek hai there is a certain
#
you know caste or there are certain castes you can't interact with but you have interacted on
#
screen you have interacted with that and with that person from that caste which you think is
#
is really below your social standards and in for those 90 minutes you were actually as you said you
#
were you are rooting for for for the characters without really thinking about you know how you
#
will behave with that character in real life and you meet them because then you will start identifying
#
them for various tags you have given them to ultimately so in both the cases it is about
#
asking people or kind of inviting people to lower their guards and and in some cases like in comedy
#
almost forcing people to let down their guards and they do a lot of them and of course there are
#
there have been cases where they didn't and they kind of let it out because that shock or surprise
#
or or whatever has to go somewhere so sometimes people kind of heckle that's why they heckle
#
because they can't control this emotion they are dealing with it in that moment where people around
#
them are laughing and they also want to laugh but their upbringing has told them it's not okay to
#
laugh at this kind of a joke and so they don't know what to do with that that unresolved emotion
#
at that time so they heckle and not just heckle they abuse and they sometimes we have met people
#
at random places who kind of are really angry and want to just show that they are angry through
#
whatever you know violent means they have chosen in that moment so my sense of social media and
#
tell me if I'm if you don't agree is that for all the toxicity on twitter and everywhere
#
all the noise really comes from vocal minorities right there are a few people who have chosen their
#
tribe they'll make a lot of noise to signal you know their virtue to their tribe and raise their
#
status within the tribe and these are tribes on all sides obviously but I believe that most people
#
are like the silent majority which is not saying anything because why get mobbed why get shouted
#
down why get into this shit but who are open to different points of view like when I do my writing
#
class when I tell people about writing opinion pieces what I always say is you always have to
#
state your opinion clearly but also take the strongest argument from the other side and state
#
why you disagree and one reason is of course that is an intellectually honest way to think
#
about anything but the other reason is that then the reader knows that if you're in the silent
#
majority the reader knows that this guy is not partisan she's not preaching to the choir you
#
know that I can trust her and that's important but but from what you're saying it almost seems
#
as if that it's it's not so much a silent majority but like you said ki media main to sabko mark
#
kar diya hai that scroll hai toh ek banda nahi parega aur you know swaraj hai toh aur ek banda
#
nahi parega jo swaraj hai waise bhi par nahi nahi chahi hai but but I would say that most people are actually
#
kind of open to both they'll just go in whatever this thing it's only these vocal minorities which
#
have said that oh scroll is all left-wing commies and so and so is whatever so what's would you
#
agree or yeah but they are the leaders so the vocal people and they are always they are the natural
#
reader leaders that's why they are you know so vocal and so fearlessly and all right now what
#
is happening and probably what was always happening is the state always acts as as the father of this
#
joint family and they choose ki aaj kya banega aaj kya khaenge aaj kaun chhat pe soega kaun
#
zameen pe soega kaun bed pe soega kaun school jayega kaun nahi jayega kis ko parne ka aakh hai
#
kis ko kitna parna hai all these things basically this patriarch of the family is deciding and now
#
and which has always been the case is there are these local enforcers of of this patriarch and
#
at some point the enforcers try to put stuff which they believe in and they don't even need
#
to take approval from the patriarch and what which is what is happening right now in on on
#
most of the social media where there are people who are of course who know that they won't be
#
reprimanded or stopped by by the bosses to do whatever they want to do so they can you know
#
announce on on social media okay this person has said this particular thing which is really offensive
#
and that's it and now just go and you know whatever abuse them or file cases against them or
#
whatever the multiple ways of destroying their lives toh ye jo hain ye inko dono taraf se power
#
mil rahi hai, upar se mil rahi hai, jahaan se koi unko rokh nahi raha hai, jin ko bol rahi hain waha se bhi
#
mil rahi hai because they are getting the response so that silent majority thing i don't really
#
think that's a thing anymore there's no silent majority they are all vocal in whatever sometimes
#
vocal in their silence also or their you know vocal in their in their choices that they still
#
they may not abuse but they are supporting the people who are or they are having completely
#
normal relations with people who are were calling for you know all all kinds of violent crimes
#
against people who are who don't believe or who don't agree with them so i don't think that silent
#
majority of koi concept raha hai ye hai ki i don't know is it a saving grace or not but yeah this
#
yeah still it is probably a saving grace that a lot of these people who are
#
uh listening to this vocal angry group
#
would probably be doing their normal life stuff if they were not you know they won't really take
#
the lead so that's the only probably saving grace they won't take the lead they will
#
uh someday they are very happy to be part of the mob and if there is a leader telling them what to
#
do they will happily do it but without a leader they'll probably be lost or they'll probably go
#
back to okay finding uh finding whatever better jobs better life whatever and for now they have
#
been told this is the better life where you have to be angry and they are doing that so vo
#
there's a theory behind mob violence or lynchings which kind of also speaks to this which is the
#
theory is that everyone has a threshold at which they start hitting someone yeah so i might have
#
the threshold that i don't mind being the first person to hit someone somebody else will only hit
#
if he sees 10 people hit somebody else will only jump in if he sees 100 people hit so everybody
#
has a threshold and what you're kind of saying is that the people who seem to be the silent majority
#
are just people whose threshold hasn't been reached but it can happen anytime
#
yeah and yeah so that is absolutely true and i i read that uh that piece that theory about
#
the mob violence and how it kind of takes place the signs of it or or or the how um i think they
#
used the term chaos theory also in it and it kind of yeah it makes sense it makes you lose
#
faith in the human race because then there is a hope let's take a quick commercial break and
#
then we'll come back and we'll get to biography which is normally what i start with but we'll
#
finally get to it have you always wanted to be a writer but never quite gotten down to it well i'd
#
love to help you since april 2020 i've taught 20 cohorts of my online course the art of clear
#
writing an online community has now sprung up of all my past students we have workshops a newsletter
#
to showcase a work of students and vibrant community interaction in the course itself
#
through four webinars spread over four weekends i share all i know about the craft and practice
#
of clear writing there are many exercises much interaction a lovely and lively community at the
#
end of it the course cost rupees 10 000 plus gst or about 150 dollars and is a monthly thing so
#
if you're interested head on over to register at india uncut dot com slash clear writing that's
#
india uncut dot com slash clear writing being a good writer doesn't require god-given talent
#
just the willingness to work hard and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills
#
i can help you welcome back to the scene in the unseen i'm chatting with varun grover about
#
his life his work and so on and now finally after the break we've uh sort of reached the
#
start of his life tell me sort of about your childhood you were like born in sundar nagar
#
in hp what was that like what were you growing up years like and what language did you speak
#
at home what kind of books did you read what kind of entertainment did you consume
#
uh shine board painting interestingly is the first uh kind of uh
#
ad agency job in a way post-independence india
#
they moved from pakistan to this place in haryana called jagatri
#
and they moved from uh in pakistan post partition Punjabi family
#
my father was always a big fan of cinema right from probably he was 12 or something
#
And because he was the youngest in the family, he decided to let him study, as his family business was going on.
#
So he was sent to college. He studied well and went to college.
#
He did his Diploma in Engineering from Chandigarh, Punjab University, which later became Punjab Engineering College.
#
From where he did his Diploma, which was later, because at that time Diploma was only available in the 50s and 60s, B.Tech was not so popular.
#
So later it was considered equivalent to B.Tech. So he is kind of, he is an engineer in mechanical, I think production was, it was called production engineering at that time.
#
So from there, he worked in a few places in the press and in many places where machinery was available.
#
After that he got a job in Himachal. It was a place called Sundarnagar, where we used to live.
#
But that job was in Salapad. Salapad Mandi, which is the district of Himachal, there was this hydel electric plant being made.
#
Which I think was the first dam project of Himachal. This was late 70s.
#
And there he got a job as a junior engineer. So he was there, then he got married to my mom and I was born there in 1980.
#
So from childhood, at home, because dad was very fond of films, he still is, he knows more gossip than I do. He shows me a lot of things.
#
His trailer has come, or he has come, I didn't know that his trailer has come.
#
Generally I am very clued in, I am still a very pop culture enthusiast.
#
So, childhood, we lived in Sundarnagar for the first 6 years.
#
Then the dam project was completed from there, then he got posting into military engineering services, so we came to Dehradun.
#
So for the first 6 years, I remember very vaguely, I just remember that there was only one theater in Sundarnagar, we used to go there to watch films.
#
And I remember the first film, we watched Nikah, which I remember in my memory, maybe I have seen it before.
#
But I remember Nikah and Masoom, there were two films which we watched in the theater at that time.
#
My father is a big reader, he is very fond of reading.
#
Since childhood, I have seen that he used to come home in the evening and pick up a book.
#
He used to read a lot of newspapers, he has always been used to reading newspapers.
#
He used to bring 3-4 newspapers on Sundays, and then he used to read it for the next 3-4 days.
#
So, because of that, since childhood, I have got a lot of books at home.
#
And the specific books for children used to come at that time, there was Paraag, Nandan, Baalhands, which was probably the most literary of all the magazines for children at that time.
#
Because Champak, Nandan, Chandamama, Suman Saurabh and Nanne Samrat.
#
These were all typical Disney ideas of children, that children are cute and they want cute stories, or they want interesting stories, or they want mythological stories.
#
I don't know who had put this idea at that time, which is still there in India.
#
I think Chhota Bheem is one of the most popular animation series.
#
But there were a lot of books, and in those books, Baalhands was a little more mature, he used to talk about scientific temperament, and the stories were not so cute and simplistic.
#
So, all these books, since childhood, I think I remember, from the time I started reading, I mean from the age of 4-5 years, when you combine with ABCD, you combine words and words, you make sentences and you read them.
#
Since then, I have been interested in reading, and maybe because I have got those things to read.
#
So, from Himachal, we came to Dehradun.
#
Dehradun came where, actually I started reading probably more seriously, because from the age of 7 to 12 years, I stayed in Dehradun from 1986 to 1992.
#
And during that time, I got interested in not only reading, but also writing.
#
Because I think everyone learns like that, I don't know, I think so.
#
But if you read a lot, then you want to show off that I have read this.
#
And there are 2-3 ways to show off, either you tell someone that I have read this.
#
Or you write and confirm that I have learned a new word and I will write it.
#
So, in your usage, you kind of make it your own, with your own usage.
#
So, I started doing such things at the same time, at the age of 8-9 years.
#
I kept writing small things.
#
Because there were so many books, so many magazines, and if you saw stories in them, then you would understand that someone writes.
#
And writing is a cool thing.
#
This had been in my mind since then, that the people who write, they are such great people that we wait every month for a new edition.
#
It used to be a very exciting time.
#
On the 4th or 5th of the month, when all the magazines used to come, their monthly editions used to come to a nearby shop, a book shop.
#
And we used to go there and pick everything.
#
It was a very exciting time and it was something which developed in me an idea that this is a very valuable thing.
#
This thrill, this adventure of turning a page and reading and discovering a new story every time.
#
It is a very good association, a memory association, because of which our whole life is full of bad things.
#
Because of which you are not able to learn swimming all your life, or you are not able to go to any particular place.
#
So, for me, that association has been made very beautiful from books, since then.
#
And then at the age of 10, I had written a story, because there was a story in Balhans.
#
Chuchu Chala Gaya, or Chala Gaya Chuchu, it was something like that.
#
It was about a child who meets a bird's child, who is injured on the road.
#
And he takes care of them for a few days, a good relation is formed between them.
#
And finally, when the bird's child recovers, he flies away.
#
So, this story ends here.
#
Now, for a 10-year-old child, it was a very tragic tale.
#
And generally, why I was saying that Balhans was different from other books,
#
that there was this kind of sad ending in it.
#
Which, I think, Champak or any other magazine never dares to say,
#
that in a small child's book, there is a story with a sad kind of an ending.
#
You develop a beautiful relationship and then the bird flies away.
#
So, I was worried for many days after reading that story.
#
And I felt very bad that why this relationship didn't continue.
#
Such a good relationship between a child and a bird.
#
And then, one day I had fever, so I didn't go to school.
#
And my mother used to teach in a school.
#
So, she went to school.
#
My father also went to school.
#
My younger brother also went to school.
#
It was a cold day in the sun.
#
In the sun, there was a folding nylon bed.
#
They sat on it and left.
#
Then I felt that I should do something about this story.
#
I am not going to take it lying down.
#
So, I wrote a sequel of that story.
#
In which, after a few years, the bird got back to her.
#
And then a relationship was formed between them.
#
And this time, it was more in my ideal world.
#
It was like, okay, we won't cage the bird.
#
But the bird will come back on its own every day just to say hello.
#
It keeps coming and going to that boy every day.
#
So, I wrote something like this.
#
And then my parents read that thing.
#
And they said that it is good. We can send it.
#
Let's see what happens.
#
And we sent it to Balhant.
#
And Balhant published it.
#
And that was kind of a major confidence booster.
#
At the age of 10, you write something for a magazine you are completely in love with.
#
And they also sent 50 rupees for Parishram.
#
Which I got at that time, 50 rupees.
#
Which was a very big amount.
#
We are talking about pre-Narsimha Rao, pre-Manmohan Singh time.
#
Indian economy was really going through a bad time.
#
You had given 50 rupees to a child.
#
So, that was my first income in life.
#
I believe it kind of opened a door.
#
That was the first time I thought, okay, I will be a writer someday.
#
And you get praise for it.
#
So, from there, I seriously...
#
Seriously, I mean, with that aim that you have to publish it.
#
You have to write it that way.
#
So, in the next few years, I wrote a few more poetry.
#
In my print, in Balhans.
#
Then for school, for magazines.
#
And in school, in class too, generally.
#
Just to show off that I have learned this.
#
And from there, it started going.
#
So, there were books on one side.
#
Music was on the other side.
#
Again, my father's influence.
#
So, along with films, he was very fond of music.
#
There were no shortage of audio cassettes in our house at that time.
#
Anything from classics to the recent TV shows like Meza Ghalib.
#
When the audio cassette came.
#
So, as soon as it came to the market, it came to our house.
#
My father was very fond of poetry and theatre.
#
So, we used to go to see that too.
#
Wherever it used to be in Dehradun.
#
And again, all of these activities kind of...
#
Created a world for me which was within reach.
#
That you can do all this.
#
And all of this is a professional...
#
Whatever path you can take.
#
There used to be an annual theatre festival in Dehradun.
#
There was no venue like Bombay or Delhi.
#
That you can see every week.
#
But there used to be an annual theatre festival.
#
Which was quite well funded, it seems.
#
Because big theatre groups used to come from Delhi, Bombay.
#
There were some TV actors we had seen from that time.
#
Their show used to come in Doordarshan.
#
They were performing in front of us.
#
So, that whole week used to be very thrilling for us.
#
Because we used to go to the theatre every day.
#
Every day we used to watch a new story.
#
A lot of these stories were completely not suitable for kids of that age.
#
It might be suitable or I don't know.
#
But it was beyond our understanding.
#
Like, plays like Mahabhoj and plays like...
#
Which is a very political and very...
#
I would say complicated for a 10-year-old to understand or comprehend what is happening.
#
But there were a lot of such plays called 18 Tappar.
#
Which was again about...
#
I think, vaguely I remember which was about the fight of a slum.
#
People living in a slum with some builder trying to evacuate them and all.
#
And that's again, that's the thing with art and that's the thing with good art or powerful art.
#
It finds a way to justify itself to people.
#
Even if you don't understand it.
#
Like, what would I have understood at the age of 8...
#
The political poetry meetings going on there.
#
The laughter poetry meetings going on there.
#
What would I have understood in that?
#
I would have understood that the satire on Rajiv Gandhi or...
#
The satire on L.K. Advani or...
#
The satire on Ramjeet Malani.
#
But there was a poem where...
#
Rajiv Gandhi is complaining...
#
To Indira Gandhi about Ramjeet Malani teasing him, something like that.
#
Or Vinchadda. I heard all these names there, which I didn't know anything about.
#
And there was a very big poetry meeting.
#
In which all the star poets of that time were there.
#
Ashok Chakridhar and Sharad Joshi and Surendra Sharma, Hullad Muradabadi, Kaka Hathrasi.
#
A lot of these big and very political poets of those times.
#
It was the time of V.P. Singh...
#
I think V.P. Singh was the PM at that time when this happened.
#
And they were talking about really strong political ideas through their satire.
#
And I was dazzled by it.
#
I couldn't understand half of the things.
#
I could only understand Tukbandi or some punchline.
#
But it was such a big thing in Dehradun.
#
That after that, when audio cassettes came to the market...
#
They were so much sold and so expensive.
#
And still my father spent money to buy those three or four cassette packs.
#
Because it was a six hour program.
#
And we used to listen to those cassettes a lot later.
#
That's why I remember a lot of his poems.
#
What Sharad Joshi had sung and what Hullad Muradabadi had sung.
#
So from there, this second influence came.
#
The third influence of the poetry meeting.
#
Which again, mostly because of what Doordarshan was doing at that time.
#
With Mirza Ghalib and with Kaikasha kind of shows.
#
Which was, every episode was about one great Urdu poet.
#
So in that there was an episode which was on Mir.
#
There was an episode which was on Dag Dahalvi.
#
In every episode, there was a story of a poet.
#
Almost a biopic type of one or two episodes.
#
So audio cassettes used to come after that.
#
Now my father used to listen to Mirza Ghalib or Kaikasha.
#
Or a lot of other Jagjit Singh albums used to come.
#
Now when I used to listen to that, for me...
#
Again, how art works, music works.
#
No matter you understand it or not.
#
You don't understand a single word.
#
Okay, you don't need to understand music.
#
When you flow into it, you want to understand what the words are.
#
So then I started to understand after listening a little bit.
#
What is Mirza Ghalib or Jagjit Singh singing?
#
You have come to listen to Adam from Nikal Na Khuld.
#
But what is Khuld? What is Adam?
#
The easiest thing to understand in this poem is Adam.
#
But I didn't know that at that time.
#
So then I saw that in my father's book rack,
#
there is a translation of Mirza Ghalib's Diwan-e-Ghalib.
#
Translation means Hindi explanation.
#
It was not translation. It was Ali Sardar Jafri's book.
#
Where he kind of writes about each share and gives a bit of context also and all that.
#
So there were word meanings in it.
#
So I picked up that book at the age of 10.
#
So from there I understood what is Khuld?
#
What era was Ghalib in?
#
And then what were the complications of that era?
#
What was the language there?
#
And there is Turkish in it.
#
And there is Persian in it.
#
And there is Hindi-Urdu in it.
#
So all of a sudden it was like,
#
I would say in spite of it being a very,
#
generally probably many middle class families were like that.
#
But for me it was a very rich world.
#
And it was a world full of possibilities in terms of the literary and artistic scope of it.
#
So when all those things got stuck at the age of 10, then they didn't get released.
#
Then after that we moved to Lucknow when I was 12.
#
And Lucknow is even richer in terms of its history and accessibility to various arts and crafts and books.
#
So when we reached Lucknow, theater used to be more regular there.
#
We used to get more books there.
#
There was a language that I didn't speak until then.
#
Because until we were in Sundarnagar, I used to speak Punjabi.
#
Then when we came to Dehradun, Punjabi-Hindi mix continued.
#
I used to speak Punjabi at home.
#
And my Punjabi accent was quite heavy.
#
Then when we came to Lucknow, the people there were very snobbish about their language.
#
So there people started insulting me that why do you speak Punjabi like football?
#
Even the word English in Lucknow meant that yes, it is English but football is wrong.
#
So my English teacher started teasing me in class that your English is very Punjabi.
#
He didn't challenge me. He made a joke in class. So I stood up and said, no sir, I can recite this poem.
#
It was a short poem. He said, what will you remember?
#
I forgot which one it was.
#
There was one, again, because I never understood English poetry.
#
It is very difficult to understand.
#
But at that time, something happened, so I said, no, I will remember it tomorrow.
#
He said, this is a small art line, if he remembers it, it won't be a big deal.
#
So then I went back and I memorized the Sailor and the Albatross.
#
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's very big poem.
#
I think it also had an abridged version in our textbook.
#
But it was still like probably 10-12 pages of poetry which I memorized and I kind of recited it in class.
#
And during that time, it almost became an exercise for me to neutralize my Punjabi accent.
#
Because it was a big thing in school.
#
My Hindi and English teachers used to teach me a lot.
#
And the rest of my friends also used to teach me.
#
Friends is probably a bit of a euphemism, but they were like classmates.
#
Which used to be very bullying in the beginning.
#
Because I was an obese kid at that time.
#
Obese and slightly fair skinned in terms of skin tone.
#
And having a completely different dialect or tone quality to the voice.
#
I was very otherized in the school and there was a lot of bullying.
#
And I had to find a way to prove myself.
#
And I thought, okay, language is something which I like.
#
I like text, I like language.
#
Again, I picked up this as a challenge that I would impress the class.
#
So I started writing poetry again.
#
And I started writing poetry in English.
#
It was very bad. I still have a diary from a few days back.
#
And it was very bad, but it was still poetry in terms of rhyme.
#
There was some thought in it.
#
Which no one else was writing in the class.
#
So that again, that atmosphere of being kind of alienated in the class.
#
Again pushed me towards books and writing.
#
And while doing that, we completed our school in Lucknow by 98.
#
So in 98, I graduated from my school, Intermediate.
#
And after that, I went to Benaras to do engineering.
#
So yeah, that's basically the early life.
#
Now, many things I want to double click on. And the first of them is language.
#
So I recorded this episode recently, which isn't yet out.
#
I don't know if it will come before this or after this. I'll decide that.
#
But with this young entrepreneur called Vinay Singhal, who started this platform called Stage.
#
And it's an OTT, but it's an OTT for languages.
#
And it's not an OTT for languages like Hindi and Punjabi also.
#
It's an OTT for dialects. So the two channels so far, I think, are Haryanvi and Bhojpuri.
#
And he's getting original content made for them.
#
And Vinay said something which I thought about for a long time and which has stuck with me.
#
Where he said that, look, cities have languages, towns and villages have dialects, sort of Basha and Boli in that sense.
#
And he spoke about how coming from a small village, from Haryana, he always had this inferiority complex.
#
So early in his episode, he spoke about how in standard 8, he had to learn English.
#
And he couldn't understand what was being spoken in class, but he took it as a challenge and next year he topped English.
#
And later in the episode, he revealed to me something which surprised me.
#
He said learning Hindi was as difficult for him because he spoke that particular Haryanvi dialect which was in his village.
#
And talking to him sort of brought home starkly how language in India is a caste system of its own.
#
You know, English toh hai hi, top of the ladder.
#
You're always showing where you are on the social ladder by showing off your sophistication and all that.
#
You know, one reason why people use these British pomposities, which the British have left behind, but we continue.
#
That's a bad habit I try to get out of my writing students.
#
But it's true of the other languages also.
#
And that is related to a worry that one can have across different domains, which is a homogenization of culture.
#
I did an episode on Indian food with Vikram doctor where he spoke about the Cavendish banana, which to me is a wonderful metaphor for this.
#
Where he pointed out that the Cavendish banana is a type of banana which first India exported to the world.
#
Then it really took off in the US and Mexico and all that because it was just the perfect banana for them.
#
It kept for a long time, easy to mass manufacture, jo bhi hai.
#
Then it came back to India. They brought it back to India, our own thing.
#
And now it is replacing all other kinds of bananas.
#
So where we had dozens of different types of bananas local jaga mein, now the Cavendish is kind of replacing everything till a future generation may not know that there is some other kind of banana.
#
For them banana is Cavendish, which is a pretty bland and tasteless variety.
#
Yeah, I've seen that. It's the most boring.
#
Yeah, it's the most boring. And for me that's a good metaphor for what could be happening culturally in terms of different dialects going into one language.
#
Because as we urbanize, which is on the whole a great thing, big fan of urbanization.
#
But what it also does is that there is this incentive to then homogenize.
#
That aap bare shayar mein jaate ho, you're not going to speak in your dialect because you feel inferior and you're going to talk in the language of whatever that city is and so on.
#
And what Vinay told me about the popularity of stage and the numbers it is getting, in fact he said there's a reverse migration from Bollywood.
#
That people who went to Bollywood to make a living are coming back and they are making Haryanvi content, Bhojpuri content, which I didn't expect, counterintuitive to me and which I think is amazing.
#
What kind of role did language sort of play in your development in a couple of ways?
#
One you've already pointed to the kind of complex it would give you and you would try hard to go to another level with the new languages you were encountered with.
#
But otherwise also in your art, because I think one of the great privileges of being Indian is that you can be multilingual, you can speak many languages.
#
Now unfortunately the only language I have really engaged in deeply is English and I feel that that is a mistake I've made.
#
And a certain richness of experience is therefore lost to me and so on.
#
Now in your work you're bringing all these influences together whereas not just, like English toh hai hi, but the other language is not just Hindi.
#
There's a particular kind of dialect which clearly in Masaan where you picked up and the characters are speaking in that and it's so natural and all that.
#
You've immersed yourself in different sort of dialects and languages.
#
So what do you feel about them? Do you think there is a danger that we might lose them or do you feel that the fact that the mainstream is crumbling,
#
alternate sources of entertainment are coming up will keep them alive as people start having the self-confidence to produce work in their own languages?
#
And how has it affected your work? Because I guess language and what you experience through every language gives an added layer to your experience of life in Indian society.
#
Yeah, so language versus dialect is something that I've been through a lot.
#
First hand, I'll share one incident which happened with us a few years ago.
#
But yes, there are multiple aspects to your question.
#
The first one is that I wish I was not that complexed about Punjabi at that time.
#
Thankfully, my parents still speak Punjabi in my home.
#
They still speak Punjabi with each other.
#
So I understand Punjabi. I like to listen to Punjabi.
#
I can't read the text of Gurmukhi.
#
That's again one laziness. I think I'll learn it very easily because I know all the words and grammar.
#
It's not like learning a new language. It's simply learning a new script and that's all.
#
And I hope I get time in the next few months and I ace that.
#
But that complex was too much at that time.
#
And it's given because every language is ultimately a political project, whatever language.
#
And there is this famous saying, I don't know who said it, but language is a dialect with an army of its own.
#
So, the one who has the power becomes a language.
#
And the one who doesn't have the power is called a dialect.
#
And in Hindi, there are many languages.
#
There is Braj, there is Avdhi, there is Bhojpuri, there is Haryanvi, there is Rajasthani.
#
We took words from many languages and then said that they are dialects.
#
Bhojpuri must have done the same thing with some other dialects, which are now called dialects.
#
So, that has always been going on, that struggle.
#
And because of that, many people have had to struggle with many complexes.
#
And that complex will never end. It can't be.
#
When I used to speak Punjabi, I used to wish that Hindi would come.
#
When Hindi came, I used to wish that English would come.
#
But when English came, you feel that it's not right.
#
When you talk to a foreigner, you feel that his pronunciation of many words is still...
#
I used to talk to someone in the morning.
#
I had to say message, and I said message, which is a bit of a Punjabi tone.
#
And then I felt ashamed and whatever, in a very split second kind of a reaction where I corrected myself.
#
But that has been ingrained in us so much that I still have a lot of problems with speaking English.
#
It's much more than Hindi, but a lot of things have come into our expression now that it's been studied more in English.
#
So then we keep searching for that word in English.
#
Like I used the word scope a little while ago.
#
I didn't understand what to call scope in Hindi, so I called it scope.
#
So many layers are formed in us.
#
They are complex, and after a certain age, you feel ashamed that why you didn't learn your language.
#
You keep trying to run away from it for a certain age.
#
And then a certain age comes where you try to go back to it.
#
It's too late sometimes, or you don't have enough time, or you have lost that moment where you could have done something with that knowledge.
#
Or that could have enriched your work.
#
As you were talking about this platform, I want to write something in Punjabi. I want to write a story in Punjabi.
#
Whether it's a film, a text, or a song.
#
I have written one song in Punjabi, and I have written the rest of the songs in Punjabi.
#
But I feel handicapped there, because I know Punjabi, but I have never read or learned Punjabi like a literary language.
#
I know conversational, which is spoken at home.
#
I have read Hindi literary, I have read English literary.
#
So it's a kind of embarrassing thing that I can write something in English, which can be called literary quality, but I can't write in Punjabi, which is my mother tongue.
#
So that's a failure, which, as I have always said, language is a political project.
#
And sometimes you don't have a choice in which language you will leave, and who you will catch.
#
The system is like that, and the system wants to make you all the same, because I think that's the biggest idea of the 20th century, political idea, which is nationalism.
#
Its core is language, and its core is that everyone speaks one language, understands one language, and that one language of official communication is not just the language of official communication,
#
it is the language of your innermost thoughts, so that they can easily catch you when you have thought something wrong.
#
Because the language is the same, you can't really escape.
#
So the whole system is made like that.
#
Now the second question that comes after that is, what should be done now?
#
Right now I am trying to go back.
#
I have recently learned Urdu, reading and writing the script.
#
Because that was another thing that everyone in our house knew, my grandfather, my grandfather, my father knew.
#
And that was one of the scripts in which you used to say the same things that you used to say in Hindi and Punjabi.
#
And in Delhi, in India, there is still only one place where you can say Hindi, English, Urdu and Punjabi, where there are still many street signs.
#
Because in the olden days, these four languages used to come there. People of these four languages were in equal power, in a way.
#
Some would read Gurmukhi, some would read Nastalik, some would read Hindi, some would read English.
#
And these four were very close to me.
#
Like they were within reach, so to say.
#
And I could have learned all four of them.
#
But because the world kind of chose that you learn this first, then this, and then there is time left, so learn the other two.
#
We don't have any work.
#
But today, as the next part of your question, will these non-political backing languages disappear?
#
No, they will never disappear.
#
This is a natural process that keeps on being balanced. When you go to finish something, the very simple process of demand and supply,
#
at one time, the value of black pepper was the same as gold, or at one time, the value of simple silk was the same as gold, or something more expensive than that, like platinum.
#
So, the thing that decreases automatically becomes attractive. This is a simple law.
#
And what is less, I know it is like looking at languages as commodities, but because of that, many languages remain alive.
#
Because what is less, you get more value in championing it, and then they automatically go towards it.
#
So, Urdu, for example, what Rekhta has managed to do with Urdu, and to celebrate Urdu,
#
I don't think this was possible 40 years ago, because Urdu was not in danger at that time.
#
Now it is, and now people want to save it, and people want to show that they are part of a world where Urdu is very valuable.
#
So, Rekhta, have you been to Rekhta in Delhi?
#
I have seen events on YouTube and all that, but I never…
#
Yes, so I went to NH10, Pune, which is a festival of music and festival of modern music and all kinds,
#
but mostly it is, you know, what we can call very contemporary music.
#
A few years ago, like three, four years ago, NH10 was a symbol of what youth want in a way, everything,
#
the kind of music, the kind of food, the kind of hanging out spaces, the kind of drinks, everything cool was kind of NH10.
#
So, I went to NH10, I had a performance of stand-up comedy there,
#
and I saw that so many, I mean, because I have crossed 40 in terms of age,
#
so now the 20-22 years, so mentally it is, ageing is always a very complicated process,
#
you never really kind of accept the age you are in terms of, not able to quantify that in terms of,
#
okay, this is 40 and this is so different from 20.
#
But when you see people of 20, 22, 25 years at a gathering where they are in majority,
#
and they are the only people around and you suddenly you feel that disconnected,
#
okay, maybe that's why I don't understand this music, it's a way to quantify our age,
#
okay, because I am too far from this age group and you know, this kind of,
#
whatever their landmark pop culture symbols are, and general landmarks in life are.
#
So, I felt that this is a very cool place and here, I didn't know this world exists.
#
At the same time, you see that world on TV, but when you reach a big festival of that world,
#
you start to understand a lot of things about that world.
#
So, I was super impressed and I was super, not super, but slightly feeling out of place also,
#
that this is not my world.
#
And just by chance, I had to watch a performance straight from there,
#
there was a stand-up comedy performance in a language,
#
I was just taking a small session on Hindi and Urdu.
#
So, I took a flight from Pune to Delhi, I reached Rekhta in Delhi,
#
and there was the same age group in Rekhta, same age group, most of them,
#
and they were celebrating Urdu, and they were again not, it was not in a small town,
#
it was in Delhi, in the heart of Delhi, and it was huge,
#
and it was people who were just there for that language and for their love,
#
for people who kind of write in that language or create in that language.
#
So, there was music, there was poetry, and there were a lot of book stalls,
#
and there were calligraphy stalls, and there was no place to stand when the main performance was happening in the evening.
#
So, I could see two different things, one which has, which is just coming up,
#
which is what NH10 kind of represents, the kind of new music which is EDM and you know,
#
which is coming now, people have just seen it now,
#
and another thing which has been around for almost 1000 years, if we go by whatever the documentation,
#
around 1200, the first Ghazal was written in Dakkan,
#
and Wali Dakni was not the first whatever Ghazal writer,
#
but in the first few, so around, I think, Wali Dakni was around 1300,
#
so it has been 1000 years, and that is one thing which has gone down many times in 1000 years,
#
maybe it has come up many times, and we all believe that it is disappearing now,
#
and it is also true, like factually, like if you look at the number of book sales,
#
and how many people can read the language,
#
but then the language is not just written text, it is a culture, it is the spoken word,
#
it is the existence of that language in a very, in all the, again, from where we started,
#
in the political discourse, how much is that language, it is too much,
#
this time in the Modi government, the word Modi is also Urdu, the word Hindu in Hindustan is Urdu,
#
so it is everywhere, you do not know about it, and it is okay,
#
but now there are people to tell, and Rekhta is one of the examples,
#
but generally if you look at just the trajectory of Hindi film music also,
#
in 80s, 90s, Urdu had disappeared,
#
means these 30 years of bad music, which started from mid 80s to mid 2005,
#
which was a strange phase, and now again it is coming back, it is coming back in new ways,
#
it is coming back in something like, which was debated on love stories,
#
okay, there is Urdu in it, and then there is English in it, and Hindi in it,
#
it is finding its space, and that's what dialects do,
#
that's what languages do when they are about to be kind of pushed off a cliff,
#
they develop new limbs, and they develop new ways to see back in,
#
and now for one small story,
#
in the beginning I said that this story happened with us,
#
so Rajkumari, who is an artist, who is a Madhubani artist, and who is my wife also,
#
and she and I decided to do a graphic novel in Chhota Nagpuria dialect,
#
so Chhota Nagpuria is a dialect, it has its own language,
#
it has its own grammar, it has many books, which can, you know,
#
all the material evidence is there that it has its own language,
#
but now it is called a dialect, and in making it a dialect,
#
as far as I know, one part of Bhojpuri is that Bhojpuri pushed it,
#
that we are a language and you are a dialect,
#
what Hindi did with Bhojpuri, which in a way is doing with Hindi,
#
in a way it is doing with English or English only,
#
and what Hindi did with Urdu at one time,
#
that what is the need for a different script,
#
which was post-independence time, where Hindi said that
#
our Nagri script is the same script, write in that only,
#
and that is the real language, and you are in between,
#
whatever a convenient affair we had, and now we don't need you,
#
you are kind of, you can go,
#
so from there, but Urdu found its way,
#
now with Chhota Nagpuria, it happened that Chhota Nagpuria,
#
which is that area at the border of Jharkhand,
#
and Odisha, and Chhattisgarh, and you know,
#
that small belt over there,
#
so there is a dialect of Chhota Nagpur,
#
and from there Raj belongs to that area,
#
and her family speaks that language,
#
and it was a story set in Gumla, which is in Jharkhand,
#
and there the same language is spoken,
#
so we thought okay, that is the truth, that is authentic,
#
we will write in the same language,
#
and it was a graphic novel,
#
even in Hindi graphic novels come very rarely,
#
till now I don't know of many, probably two or three,
#
which are made originally in Hindi,
#
and set in a Hindi world and all,
#
so we thought we will do it in that,
#
and it was kind of it made sense,
#
that Madhubani is an art,
#
and Chhota Nagpuria is a dialect,
#
it will be very authentic and true to the place,
#
so we made a kind of a manuscript,
#
or whatever you can call it,
#
it was like, the whole book was ready,
#
it came in a serialized fashion,
#
in a children magazine called Chakmak,
#
so Chakmak, because it is an independent kind of a magazine,
#
and every episode, every two years,
#
an episode came, and it became quite popular with kids,
#
and children from far away,
#
where there was no question at all,
#
that they have heard Bhojpuri,
#
Chhota Nagpuria, so leave it,
#
I mean, this magazine, Chakmak,
#
it goes to Meghalaya, it goes to Kerala,
#
it goes to North, I mean, it goes to Kashmir,
#
in places where Hindi is not the first language,
#
the response came of the kids,
#
that they liked it a lot,
#
that in the morning it is called Bihaan,
#
or in the evening it is called Sanjha,
#
or in the evening it is called Mendak,
#
they discovered and they enjoyed it,
#
now we wanted to make a graphic novel in its book form,
#
it came in serialized form,
#
so we made a book out of it,
#
and added some more pages,
#
so I was writing that thing,
#
and Raj was illustrating and doing the Chhota Nagpuria dialogues,
#
I was writing in Hindi, I don't know that language,
#
someone suggested us that,
#
because it is a very interesting language based work,
#
and the biggest reach is of National Book Trust,
#
it is a government organization,
#
and they can do it, they can print it,
#
and then you don't have to worry about marketing,
#
and we wanted to print it cheaply,
#
because the graphic novel will be very expensive,
#
then it will not reach,
#
then wherever we want to read, people will not read there,
#
it will only reach some of the,
#
elites who can afford like a 1000 rupees book,
#
but we wanted it to be printed in 2500 rupees,
#
I mean it should be finalized in 2500 rupees,
#
so we went to National Book Trust,
#
so National Book Trust said that,
#
why don't you print it in Hindi,
#
you print it in Hindi, we will print it,
#
we said that this is Chhota Nagpuria,
#
it is very far from Hindi,
#
and if we print it in Hindi,
#
our authenticity will go away,
#
so they said that no, no one will read it,
#
we are a department of our language,
#
we are of different languages,
#
so Hindi has the most funding,
#
so if you print it in Hindi,
#
if you print it in Hindi, we will print it,
#
Hindi has a lot of funding,
#
and only English has funding,
#
after that Regional, Bangla and all,
#
its funding will be there,
#
but you will have to go there and ask,
#
so then one of them suggested that,
#
they also have a little funding,
#
we went to Bhojpuri again,
#
they said that do Bhojpuri,
#
you are spoiling the children,
#
because this is not how it is spoken,
#
the grammar you have written is wrong,
#
you will spoil the children's speaking,
#
and they will learn to speak wrong,
#
this is what they say about Bhojpuri,
#
so what do you have to say to that,
#
that Bhojpuri is also wrong,
#
according to them Hindi is correct,
#
that is our fight going on,
#
then you are also fighting,
#
you are basically oppressed,
#
but oppressing someone else,
#
which is what I say about,
#
in America there is the oppressor,
#
and there is the oppressed,
#
in India there are so many layers of oppression,
#
everyone is, A is doing B,
#
B is doing C, C is doing D,
#
and B is doing C and D,
#
and it becomes a balance,
#
and they kind of maintain that thing,
#
but allow me to oppress this guy,
#
and I will be okay with my oppression,
#
so which is what they were doing,
#
had to make so many rounds,
#
to convince them to do this book,
#
didn't work out with any of them,
#
editors, Sushil Shukla,
#
they had to break away,
#
and make another publication house,
#
and start that publication house with this,
#
as one of their first books,
#
which we then printed in Chhota Nakpuriya,
#
and after that it has been amazing,
#
that the response that has come,
#
generally from everyone,
#
especially from the Chhota Nakpuriya community,
#
and people who are scholars in that language,
#
again because of pandemic,
#
so this book came out in 2019,
#
and after that there has been pandemic,
#
there are some other books for children,
#
now being planned in that language,
#
representation was also found,
#
that this is not that alien language,
#
difficult to understand,
#
for people who don't even speak that language,
#
there is a lot of struggle here,
#
of dialect and language,
#
this seems like such a fantastic,
#
but I still worry more about the network effect,
#
like in terms of incentives,
#
it just makes sense for anyone to master a language,
#
which maximum people speak,
#
people will forget their own dialect,
#
but will learn Chinese or Spanish,
#
because those are the other languages,
#
where there is in this globalized world,
#
and I guess Urdu could fight back,
#
that kind of army of its own,
#
in the shape of all the literature and poetry,
#
have accumulated over time,
#
so you can rally your troops around that,
#
smaller dialects may not have,
#
I want to go back to something else,
#
which I kind of mentioned about,
#
that how in English you can write something,
#
but in Punjabi you can't,
#
and the interesting thing is,
#
and I was thinking about this earlier,
#
and I wanted to ask you about this,
#
because this confuses me a little bit,
#
that when I think of English writing,
#
and English songwriting particularly,
#
the key thing that all great songwriting has,
#
is that you are using words,
#
like Bob Dylan is saying,
#
the answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
#
the response comrade is wafting in the breeze,
#
the kind of flowery language,
#
beginning writers might use to impress,
#
the answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
#
or there is a great song by Bruce Springsteen,
#
someone goes back home,
#
and the person isn't there,
#
and the refrain of that is,
#
everything is everything,
#
everyday, simple words,
#
and when I teach my writing class,
#
I take them back to Shakespeare,
#
about how he was using,
#
the simple everyday language of his time,
#
and capturing those rhythms,
#
so those who say in a fancy way,
#
that's the way we speak,
#
let's go for a cup of coffee,
#
that's iambic pentameter,
#
that's the way we speak,
#
and there is a reason it's like that,
#
in Urdu for example, is that like you said,
#
that they'll often be words,
#
which not only will I not understand,
#
but someone who knows the language,
#
they'll have to look them up,
#
and in a sense it's almost like,
#
it's even a feature not a bug,
#
that looking up the language,
#
will enhance your understanding in some way,
#
and it's not a bad thing at all,
#
somewhere else in some interview,
#
of something you've spoken about,
#
because it was that impression,
#
that nobody understands the language he uses,
#
but as you pointed out,
#
Gulzar's most popular songs are incredibly popular,
#
in just that kind of language,
#
I have seen you use simple language,
#
like the threads around your fingers,
#
the Dushyant Kumar poem,
#
that you kind of took forward,
#
with the rail and a pull, you know, simple words,
#
metaphors of everyday things,
#
which people relate to,
#
so what has been sort of your approach to this,
#
like I understand languages are also fundamentally very different,
#
in different ways, you know,
#
like Japanese and Korean are minimal,
#
English is somewhere in the middle,
#
you know, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu,
#
can all be quite maximalist and expressionistic,
#
so what is your sense of the different languages,
#
and is it some inherent difference,
#
that this particular quality is coming from,
#
and how did you then sort of begin to approach this,
#
there are two different things,
#
I think, for a language to have an impact in poetry,
#
you can use simple words only when you know the complicated,
#
and when you know that this is simple and this is complicated,
#
another example is for,
#
for example, for Picasso to arrive at that very typical Picasso form,
#
he started just as a very serious portrait artist,
#
and all the superrealists of that time,
#
he started with portraits,
#
and then he started reducing and reducing,
#
and arriving at that, you know, oversimplified form,
#
which had two things, one was simplified,
#
but the other was his voice,
#
and every artist reaches his voice through his own path,
#
and that path always, I feel,
#
goes through mastering the most
#
and the most complicated of things,
#
and then reducing them one by one,
#
and reducing the ingredients,
#
and then coming down to something which is very,
#
which is the optimal or minimal or whatever is your taste,
#
always, in every language, if you say,
#
yes, in English, or in Hindi too,
#
time-elastic kind of things,
#
which have always been, will always be,
#
most of them are the same,
#
which are simple, Ghalib has written a lot,
#
which are in Persian, or which are lost,
#
because they are either not translatable,
#
or you will have to do a lot of research to understand them,
#
that's why the easiest is Ghalib's thousands of wishes,
#
which he has learnt, and he is satisfied with every wish.
#
So, it is the easiest to understand,
#
that he started learning from the age of five,
#
then probably at the age of sixty,
#
which became his kind of identity in a way,
#
same for the Bob Dylan example you gave,
#
or any, any great artist,
#
ultimately, you can't start with saying,
#
I know only simply, I will write simply,
#
you will always start from where,
#
all the tools should be in your hands,
#
all the vocabulary should be very deep,
#
whatever you want to write in the language,
#
which is why I was saying,
#
that in Punjabi, I feel I can't write,
#
because I don't even know,
#
that what I am writing,
#
has happened a thousand times,
#
that it is completely new.
#
To understand the quality of what you are writing,
#
you need to be very aware of the cliches of that particular form,
#
I know a lot about Hindi,
#
I know a lot about Hindi films,
#
from the beginning till now,
#
all the songs that have been made,
#
and the way they have been made,
#
and what is their poetry,
#
and what is their style,
#
and what ideas have been made,
#
and what are the new ideas,
#
I can confidently say that,
#
as much as I have read Urdu poetry,
#
I know that this is a general,
#
but not as deeply as I know Hindi.
#
as much as I have read fiction or non-fiction,
#
that this is the level,
#
if I write a page in English,
#
Indian Express or some newspapers,
#
So, I have so much faith,
#
that what I am writing and sending,
#
there is something to say in it,
#
there is something new,
#
and the language is not such,
#
that it is complete nonsense,
#
the second biggest thing,
#
you have to find your voice.
#
could lead you to using very complicated,
#
there are many such poets,
#
and they are also celebrated,
#
like Mukti Bodh is one of them,
#
which is mentioned in the Mahantam of Hindi,
#
Mukti Bodh, on the other side,
#
Dushyant Kumar is also very deep,
#
very heavy, very politically sharp,
#
is used in their language.
#
which is also a very simple thing,
#
it is said in very crooked and heavy words.
#
So, it is about finding your voice,
#
what you are comfortable with,
#
or what you are made for,
#
or what kind of literary world,
#
you want to channel through you.
#
as to master that vocabulary,
#
from a technical point of view.
#
That finding your voice,
#
which I find disappointing,
#
that a lot of people don't really value that.
#
People understand the rigor needed in mastering
#
the technicalities of a language,
#
or technicalities of a form.
#
or the elements of its craft,
#
for example, it is a very specific kind of poetry,
#
with a specific kind of meter,
#
let's say it is Haiku, or it is Triveni,
#
which is Gulzar's one kind of form,
#
A lot of people learn the technicalities of Ghazal.
#
In fact, there are teachers who teach you Ghazal writing,
#
but they can't really write a Ghazal,
#
which can be truly called a Ghazal,
#
which is great or even worth printing.
#
I think the major struggle or quest for any artist
#
And how that voice is found,
#
everyone has their own way,
#
but that too is a very abstract process,
#
Because no one can even tell you what your voice is,
#
and there is no dictionary for your voice,
#
it is not even like you can tick,
#
or you can do by trial and error,
#
or you can do by elimination,
#
that this one fits me and this one doesn't.
#
It is ultimately how I see it,
#
you are dropped in a very dark place.
#
You don't even know where you are dropped.
#
There is zero visibility.
#
So is there any wall here?
#
And if there is a wall, how far is it?
#
So imagine an infinite kind of a space with walls around.
#
There are walls at some point,
#
but you are not told, you have been dropped.
#
Now, to get out of that place,
#
generally the logical thing is,
#
you take a step in some direction,
#
which you intuitively feel or be random,
#
even if you don't have any intuition,
#
be random and just start walking.
#
you have found one anchor, kind of a thing.
#
And then you start walking along the wall,
#
and then you see, oh, maybe the darkness is kind of getting deeper or getting lighter.
#
So maybe there is light that way.
#
So it's like finding yourself every step of the way
#
and trying to get out of that darkness.
#
And you may never get out of that darkness,
#
but you may arrive at a place where there is a hole in the roof of that cave,
#
and there is some light streaming in for five hours a day.
#
And you know for sure, okay, this is light,
#
very clearly, this is the cave where you are.
#
And either you're happy with that small chunk of light,
#
or you then try to make that hole bigger by finding a break
#
and then trying to break and maybe at some point,
#
trying to break out of the cave and arrive,
#
come out of the cave and actually see proper sunlight and all.
#
So it's that kind of a process where
#
you have only one thing driving you that you have to find your voice,
#
where you have to invent the tools to find your voice.
#
You have to also know what voice you are seeking
#
without knowing what voice it is going to be.
#
So it's a very, sorry, I'm sounding very, very abstract
#
and very, very, I don't know, over philosophical or something,
#
but it is, I think it is the only process you can follow
#
because no one can tell you that this is your voice.
#
And that was one of the reasons why I didn't join FTII.
#
So I did write the exam in 2003 because I wanted to become a writer
#
and finishing college, my engineering degree from IIT-BHU,
#
which is now in IIT, at that time it was IIT-BHU.
#
But from there I left and then in 2003 I came to Pune,
#
and in Pune I did a year's job in software.
#
And there again in FTII there was a diploma film,
#
for that I translated the dialogues and assisted in that film
#
as an art team. I was making lots of Chinese lamps
#
for the art team on a daily basis.
#
But there I, then I thought we can give an FTII exam,
#
screenwriting course, that year was starting in 2004.
#
So I did write the exam and I cleared the exam interview
#
and I got selected and then I got scared.
#
Because I was like voice, I mean at that time I didn't even have
#
the words to understand that I was searching for this voice.
#
I just knew that I didn't want to be pushed in a certain direction
#
and being told that you have to seek this.
#
I didn't want to be told at that point.
#
I was like okay, you have to come back, you will come back.
#
But at least at this point I need to know what I want.
#
I don't even know what I want, except I want to be a writer.
#
But then is this the path where they tell me this is what a writer is
#
and this is how you achieve that dream?
#
I didn't want to be told at that point.
#
Because I was like, I understood so much that this process
#
will not be so easy where they will make me a writer in a year.
#
So I thought that I will first take the clarity of what I want to be
#
and what kind of writer I want to be and what kind of stories I want to tell.
#
Instead of at this very easily influenced kind of mindset if I go there
#
and then it takes me another five years to get out of that
#
kind of a de-addiction program.
#
So then I thought okay, I will go later and I never went back.
#
I like what you said about when you talk about simplicity in language
#
about getting to the essential, you have to first engage with the inessential
#
and figure out what it is that you need to strip away.
#
You know regarding voice, even when my writing students ask me about that
#
like one metaphor and I know it's an inexact metaphor
#
but that I use is you think about how a baby learns to speak.
#
In a cruel thought experiment you put a baby in a room without human contact
#
it won't learn to speak, there's nothing to take from.
#
You might have structures in your brain that could potentially speak language
#
If you are just exposed to a couple of people, say the parents
#
you learn to speak in a very limited way.
#
The more people you are exposed to, the more sort of influences you are taken by osmosis
#
or usme se nikal aata hai.
#
So everybody will have a particular way of speaking.
#
But like voice, like that artistic voice you speak of, it's nebulous.
#
It's impossible to define. You can't say ki ye hai iska voice.
#
But you know it when you see it and it only comes over a period of time of immersion
#
which is why I guess I get your decision not to join FTII
#
because you just wanted to continue immersing yourself in everything
#
rather than being put in a particular direction.
#
So what was the rest of that process of sort of finding that voice like
#
and would you say that there is a similarity between, like you've created in so many mediums
#
would you say there is a similarity in your voice in all of these different mediums?
#
Like when I look at something like Masaan, the voice is restrained.
#
It is respectful of the viewer.
#
You are not spoon feeding the viewer with explanations and background music and all of that.
#
You are respecting the intelligence of the singing.
#
That's kind of a voice.
#
I mean I guess it's a voice of both Neeraj and you or it's a voice of the film that you decided upon.
#
I'm waiting to see your film when it comes out to see.
#
And in your music obviously you are also working with guardrails
#
where a director will want a particular feel or a music director will want a particular feel.
#
But at the same time you have a voice and then there are other forms where you don't have those guardrails.
#
Like when you are doing a stand up or you are doing poetry or when you wrote a book in Hindi as well.
#
When you are doing all of that there are no guardrails.
#
You can do what the hell you want.
#
So how did you come across these different voices?
#
Is there sort of a common element in all of these voices over time?
#
How did you arrive at it?
#
So very difficult for me to kind of find the common element apart from what has been told to me.
#
Like I don't see these things as, I have never analyzed them with that sense that what is common in this.
#
Except the only thing I can say is again it's like I know when the voice is there.
#
And what that voice is is difficult for me to define.
#
But I know that the truth is clearly understood that I have written this thing from a stream of consciousness space.
#
Instead of pleasing the other person or I have written it with a lot of thought that I can see the formula in it.
#
So again like politics where it has to be very present without any effort.
#
So when whatever I write if there is an effortless quality to it while writing.
#
Then I understand that there is truth in it. Whatever kind of truth it is.
#
And across forms. When I perform a joke or write a joke for my comedy.
#
So there are a lot of things where I have to fill time and I know I have the setter but I don't know the punch line.
#
And then I kind of write something which is a bit of a force fit.
#
I know which one is very natural and which one is the kind of force, kind of forced punch line.
#
Same for song writing. When I wrote Mohmoh Ke Dhage, I didn't know if it would be commercially successful or not.
#
In fact most of the things which look good don't work.
#
That is also one of the signs. Like later signs like after creation one of the signs is okay it didn't work.
#
So yeah probably there was some truth in it.
#
Or it was done with a lot of honesty. So there is no calculation in it.
#
So most of the people didn't understand it.
#
So in most cases it has happened. In rare cases it has happened.
#
There are two Masan and Dam Laga Ke Hisha.
#
I mean Mohmoh Ke Dhage.
#
Where while writing I felt that it has come very naturally.
#
And it has come so naturally that in fact all through the shooting of Masan I kept thinking no one will see this film.
#
This film will never come out.
#
I was kind of sure about this. I kept telling this to Neeraj much to his irritation.
#
And later I thought I was being very stupid about it.
#
Like telling a director that this film will not come out.
#
Because in small things if something was happening that they should do this or that.
#
So I was saying that you just be very very out there and don't think about consequences.
#
Because no one is really going to see this film.
#
This film will never come out.
#
This is so whatever true in our expression that it can never come out.
#
Who brings such things out.
#
So that was always in my mind.
#
But then it came out and it kind of found its audience.
#
So whenever it happened, how did it come to me?
#
It was in the beginning when I moved to Bombay.
#
I moved to Bombay at that time in 2004.
#
So one way I kind of figured on my own again just by trial and error kind of a thing.
#
But engage deeply with anything you do.
#
And not just work of art.
#
Just anything you do in life.
#
Cooking, eating, travelling like taking a local train was a major high point for me.
#
I was always trying to understand the system better.
#
Engage with the system better.
#
And there is a system even of taking a local train in Bombay.
#
It's a major system because you have to.
#
Like when I used to go to Boriwali, I used to live in Kandivali and Boriwali used to take train for Andheri, Bandra or wherever you want to go.
#
So you have to see 3-4 things when you reach there.
#
And this was pre-M indicator days.
#
M indicator is an app which tells you which train is coming on.
#
In which platform, in how many minutes and how much delay it is or how crowded it is also.
#
Now they are telling this is a new addition to M indicator.
#
But these were pre-M indicator times.
#
And you had to be your own M indicator.
#
So there were many ways to engage.
#
So I know there are many people.
#
Most of the people actually don't engage on that level with the system of local trains.
#
They arrive at the station.
#
They go and stand on the platform.
#
And whichever train comes, they get into it and they get out.
#
For me, that was quite boring.
#
And that was quite frustrating also a lot of times.
#
That I could have taken that train and I could have reached early.
#
Because that train came fast.
#
So there were these 3-4 things you had to figure out.
#
First of all, which platform you are taking from.
#
Because there were 3-4 platforms in Borivali from where trains used to come for the Charchgate.
#
On some fast, on some slow.
#
On some fast, which used to go from Borivali to Andheri.
#
But there used to be less crowd.
#
So depending on what time you are at the platform, you have to figure out these 3-4 variables.
#
And then make the best decision.
#
So I kept adding layers to it almost like a video game.
#
Now I know which train to take and which platforms to take and all.
#
But now which bogie to climb in.
#
Those first class 3 bogies.
#
In the first, second and third.
#
Depending on which platform I am getting down at.
#
Because the stairs are closest to that.
#
So in Borivali, do you have to take less stairs or less there?
#
And the train is coming in 1 minute.
#
Because you utilize that 1 minute here.
#
And move to the end of the train.
#
Which you don't have to walk there.
#
So these strange things I was doing with even the train system.
#
And of course with understanding cinema.
#
So I didn't go to any film school.
#
I picked up a couple of books for screenwriting.
#
And I didn't understand much.
#
Because most of the references were of American films.
#
And watching those films and reading books is better than that.
#
I thought I will analyze the film myself.
#
So what a very rudimentary kind of a process I started following is.
#
I would read a script and then watch that film.
#
And then again read that script.
#
And then again watch the film with the script in hand.
#
And see what they have done, what transition they have used.
#
And then I found out later at some point.
#
That there are two versions of the script.
#
One is pre-shooting and one is post-shooting draft.
#
So a lot of scripts that were available.
#
They also make post-shooting.
#
So that exactly what has been shot in the script.
#
I think for the libraries and all they make those versions.
#
So then I started comparing these two documents.
#
Without even watching the film.
#
So that was again another layer of being.
#
So my general what I also tell lots of young writers.
#
I tell them to be a nerd.
#
That's all. Just be a nerd.
#
Otherwise if you think you can be a writer.
#
If you think okay I have a great story.
#
Everyone has a great story.
#
You have to make that story unique.
#
Even if it's old, cliche, whatever.
#
But it has to have completely new take of your own.
#
And that can happen only if you are a nerd about it.
#
You have to know every small technicality of how it works.
#
Writing prose, writing fiction, non-fiction, whatever.
#
In that you can create a new form every week.
#
Of course market will still kind of push you into this thing into bracket and into rules.
#
But in cinema those rules are very strict.
#
Because there are a lot of people who are going to interpret your script.
#
So where rules are very tight.
#
You have to be very very aware of what every word matters.
#
So you have to write that very carefully.
#
So my process started from there.
#
Where I started engaging deeply with everything.
#
From cinema to music to ordinary things in life.
#
And then analyzing what is resonating with me in this process.
#
So for example in railway station, taking a local train.
#
What was really driving me to do all that.
#
It was being very smart design in a way.
#
Whatever I was creating designs of my own.
#
So brevity came into my work through that engagement.
#
That it matters. It kind of gives me a high.
#
It's something which I like.
#
So that is part of my voice in a way.
#
What kind of defines me as a person.
#
I want to be very precise in expression and in general way of living.
#
So I shouldn't waste even a second.
#
It is almost like an OCD for me.
#
To give you a very strange kind of an example.
#
When I take off my shirt to take a bath.
#
And I have to wear the same shirt again after taking a bath.
#
So I make sure that if I have to wear it again.
#
Then I take it off straight.
#
So that after taking a bath I don't have to turn it around.
#
And I will have 1-1.5 seconds left.
#
And if I have to keep it for washing.
#
Then washing is the opposite.
#
So I take it off the other way.
#
So that I don't have to turn it around to wash it again.
#
If I have to take it off straight.
#
Then I have to turn it around to wash it.
#
And if I have to wear it again.
#
So these very strange minute things I take care of.
#
Which defines me as a person.
#
I want to save my time.
#
I want to save everyone's time.
#
So when I write I have to be very very precise.
#
I don't want to waste anyone's time in understanding what is written.
#
Then later cutting it at the edit.
#
This was not necessary.
#
I want to use words which are powerful.
#
And which are absolutely unambiguous where needed.
#
And ambiguous where needed.
#
In terms of the interpretation of the song.
#
But that preciseness kind of I figured is my part of my voice.
#
I saw what was resonating with me.
#
Through those experiments with reading scripts.
#
I figured which recently I read a book.
#
In which this research came.
#
It was a book of statistics only.
#
But it was about how generally the system.
#
Any system rewards risk taking.
#
I think it was called the generalized world or something.
#
Which was one of the I think subtitles of the book.
#
This thing caption of the book.
#
Which I came to know now.
#
But I was always observing these things.
#
That I am responding better to stuff.
#
Which is even if badly done.
#
Even if it is you know not commercially successful.
#
Something completely new.
#
Which no one had done till now.
#
I mean after that the rest of the things were small for me.
#
Or whatever they wanted to say they couldn't say.
#
But at least they were trying stuff.
#
So that was the second thing which kind of.
#
Don't like cliches at all.
#
And then I thought OK I will have to understand what cliches.
#
And what are the cliches.
#
Start writing anything.
#
Remove cliches from every line.
#
It becomes something which is.
#
We found a way about ourselves.
#
You know the metaphorical hole.
#
In that cave wall I am talking about.
#
So even if those were small holes.
#
From where some light started to come.
#
These are the things which.
#
Then I slowly understood.
#
Language which is Hindustani.
#
In itself is a big non-cliche.
#
Not just represents a particular culture.
#
But it also represents a particular time.
#
In that culture which is.
#
I think all times are equally all decades.
#
Who has lived through that decade in their teen years.
#
Would say that decade was the most turbulent.
#
I think in an objective way.
#
Very unique in probably in the last 100 years.
#
That when the world moved from analog to digital.
#
In all the aspects of life.
#
And we have seen analog world also.
#
We have seen digital world also.
#
At that age when everything is kind of.
#
Awesome and everything is kind of bullshit.
#
In that hormonal phase.
#
Where you respond very very.
#
You know sharply to things.
#
So at that time we saw that world.
#
And the language of that world is also with me.
#
The memories of that world.
#
The transition phase of that world.
#
So almost like the world was also going through.
#
The same adolescence as I was going.
#
So that kind of became my.
#
Trends or defining points.
#
I thought I can channel that.
#
And the fears of that age.
#
Whatever I kind of create.
#
So all those things slowly.
#
I think they fell in place through that six year period.
#
2004 to 2010 was probably my.
#
Self learning phase where I was.
#
Constantly writing and checking.
#
Ideas and then saying okay this is one step closer but it's.
#
I'll come back to biography but from what you've said one sort of.
#
Digressive question before that like firstly.
#
I'm very impressed by the.
#
Intentionality with which you do things and even your.
#
Habit of optimizing for everyday things like wearing a shirt because that.
#
Makes me feel better about myself like I remember a friend berating me because.
#
I was staying with him in Bangalore and we got off the lift.
#
And he got off first and he's standing and waiting for me.
#
And I told him bro why are you waiting the optimal thing is your door is there.
#
You have the key you go and open the door save time.
#
That's kind of how my brain works that you know initially you might want to learn.
#
Something by analogy but then you want to learn it from first principles.
#
You know so that you can do it really well.
#
And I also you know saw glimpses of this and you know.
#
I went through your course on front row your course on screenwriting.
#
And you're also talking there about.
#
Watching a film mapping emotions.
#
X axis may up films can I'm like a books can I'm like a Y axis pay up.
#
Sorry different emotions go across first go.
#
I mean I would recommend every listener to check out your course.
#
I think it's a steal at the price at which it is selling there I'll link it from the show notes.
#
And which was also a demonstration of how.
#
Mastering the craft or thinking deeply about the craft can often improve the art so much in ways that you might not realize.
#
Now I want to ask you a question that I would hesitate to ask many people.
#
Because I don't know if they would have so much intentionality in their work or whether they would have been so self reflective.
#
But I feel this is something you would have thought about.
#
And a couple of things came to mind.
#
When I was watching rewatching Masan yesterday.
#
The unabridged version on Netflix.
#
You know one of them is from the great director Ramin Behrani.
#
Who made films like Goodbye Solo.
#
Where Behrani once in this fantastic interview with Roger Ebert a link from the show notes said that the central.
#
And it's a central question in Herzog's films also according to him where he got it from.
#
Is how do you live in this world.
#
And that's a central question.
#
And when I kind of go to that last scene in Masan.
#
And that seems to be at that point five minutes before the film ends.
#
A central question for the characters to kind of navigate in so many different ways.
#
And the other quote that came to my mind was something that one of my favorite novel is George Simenon once said.
#
Where he said that the central theme in his work was that two people can never truly know each other.
#
Right. And I saw that last scene where these two people whose strands have been so separate.
#
Are kind of about to meet and you know they're about to meet.
#
You also know they will never truly know each other because you as a viewer now know their stories in so much depth and you've been in their skin.
#
And they'll never know each other in that way even though obviously you know and you hope that there is a connection between the two of them.
#
And I liked how Simenon who wrote more than 400 novels by the way extremely prolific.
#
Said that this was a question in every single thing he wrote.
#
Right. And how Ramin Behrani spoke about the leitmotif so to say of his and Herzog's work being that question.
#
How do you live in this world.
#
So in your work what do you see as the concerns which are central to you.
#
Like in that course on front row you spoke about how when you do this emotion mapping and you try to figure out what appeals to you and why.
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And you said that I understood the reason I liked coming of age films.
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Right. But that was understanding something about your taste as an artist.
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Do you feel that there are central threads which you know that go through all your work that you keep coming back to.
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Yeah I think there are a few. One probably the strongest is this desire to escape.
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And desire to just I don't know deal with this almost an extension of how do you live in this world by hoping for a better world that exists outside this world.
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So I don't know there are some probably some psychological reasons and there are some whatever some whatever personal reasons I can't really talk about.
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But there is always that feeling that I don't belong here. That is something which has been a constant theme in my life.
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And which something I want to keep talking about even in my comedy.
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How do you kind of deal with this feeling of being a misfit.
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And the way is that yes there exists a world where you won't be a misfit which is what Deepak and Shalu or Deepak and Devi.
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Everyone in Masaan kind of believes that they are not kind of accepted in this world but they want they imagine a world where they will be kind of OK.
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Same for characters in Sandeep or Pinky Farrar where you know they are kind of of course they are flawed characters much more flawed as compared to the characters in characters in Masaan.
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Characters in Masaan were mostly you know whatever victims of their circumstances and the systems in Sandeep or Pinky Farrar.
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They were victims but they were also aggressors in many ways.
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And still at some they become misfits they are kind of on the run and they start imagining this world and that possibility of that world kind of creates that space of agreeable.
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I don't know what's the word. Agreeability is a word? No.
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OK. Yes means there is a world between them where they both agree that maybe there is a better world for us otherwise they don't really agree on anything in the film they are from two completely different worlds and kind of start understanding each other only through this lens of victims of the system they both are a part of.
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So and in comedy also again how why do I do comedy is exactly because I really can't deal with what I'm seeing on a day to day basis around me.
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I really have no reason to do comedy because it's it's very it's a very it's probably the most traumatic thing I go through writing comedy and then performing on stage and then kind of reflecting on it and how to make a joke better.
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And the joke is about some like really serious you know systemic atrocity which is happening around us and we can't really do much about it.
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But for me that imagined world where talking about that thing and joking about that thing kind of relieves the pain for me also and for probably someone who has who has the same feeling or who is kind of victim of that act of violence or aggression.
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So the world of writing and world of books has been an escape from the bullying and from all the other from the ordinariness of life.
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So I want to create that through whatever stories I tell and I always want to tell a story with some sense of hope.
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Comedy is always hopeful cinema what I want to write and create has to be hopeful in the sense.
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Okay there is you will at some point you know at some point you will be sitting by the bank of a river and a boat will come and you can get on that boat and you will probably go across to a better place.
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So that has always been I think that is the leitmotif in a way.
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I am struck by what you say about wanting to get away like one of my favorite songs as a young teenager was Tracy Chapman's fast car which is about exactly the same thing if you remember.
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And I am also struck by like my follow up question comes from something that Amitav Kumar wrote and I discussed it with him in an episode that we did together.
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Where he wrote about the scene from Rahim Azum Raza's Adha Gaon where you know just at the time of partition these young Muslim students have gone to a village and they are telling another Muslim hey you should come to Pakistan.
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And I will read that para out where Amitav is describing what is in the book where he says in Raza's Adha Gaon the protest against the nation is being made in the name of the village.
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When the fiercely well-educated Muslim students came to Gangali to preach about partition and the necessity for the creation of a new nation of Pakistan the Muslim villagers are genuinely bewildered.
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One of the villagers is a young man called Tannu who has returned from battle fighting for the British in the Second World War.
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He argues against the urban visitors in the name of his village and these are now his words.
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I am a Muslim but I love this village because I myself am this village I love this indigo warehouses tank and these mud lanes because they are different forms of myself.
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On the battlefield when death came very near I certainly remembered Allah but instead of Mecca or Karbala I remembered Gangali.
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Right and lovely and they moved me so much and the question I asked Amitav and which I have asked some of my guests since is what is your Gangali?
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My Gangali is probably not a place but people, voices, sounds, maybe a Punjabi Qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Biba Sada Dil Mor De,
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or maybe just you know some piece of poetry by Dushin Kumar or Maisar Alib.
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So these are the things which I feel I belong to and these are the things which I actually I probably at one point tweeted that when I die I will miss the food and the poetry the most.
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So these are the two things I kind of belong to. Food is again something which very I know it's a very...
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Yes it will seem like a very light thing but I kind of belong to food also and when I say food because for me food is again another non-controversial bridge between people across you know places.
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Like okay you may say that okay Muslims should not live in this country but you still when you go to Lucknow you go to tunde kabab shop and you eat you know and you kind of you are consuming a culture which is not of today and which is not of even...
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I mean it's something which has Tony Joseph in early years.
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So has shown us it's not even 500 years old or 800 years old it is probably 1.2 lakh years old.
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The whole culture and how we came to this land and how we all kind of arrived from different places and slowly built this community and then someone came and kind of started making these different tribes and then tribes turned into kingdoms and kingdoms turned into these kind of this current modern nation state and their lines which we kind of believe in but they don't exist.
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So all of these things kind of are difficult to explain to people but these food is the most tangible and most accessible part of that entire history of human evolution which brought us here where at some point you learnt that you know lamb is really tasty if you mince it and kind of cook it over fire and all.
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So these things I know they don't probably they are not even a dent on the mindsets of people and whatever they will still keep on doing what they do or believing in what they believe.
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But it is still keeping the symbols of that culture alive and that will be there.
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So for me those things have a lot of value and of course poetry, music, some pieces of cinema and when I said people again they are not I don't mean people in the sense okay Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan it's just art they have created or music they have created or sometimes the food they have created or stories they have told me.
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Some you know some person I mean I will remember that lady in Egypt we met on the road we were like in Cairo and it was the last day and we had to take a flight.
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Before that we had to go to a Baklava shop called Abdul Quedar which is very old maybe 250 years old and from there we had to take Baklava from Quedar and we were very tensed about how we would get there because we had to pack our bags and leave in 2 hours and there was no taxi on the road to take us to that place.
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And randomly one cab stopped and there was a lady inside one Egyptian lady and she saw us kind of struggling and checking other cabs so she stopped and she said where are you going and we said we have to go to that place and we are really like in a little bit anxious because we have to go by taxi and she said come in I will drop you and she had to go somewhere else.
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So first the cab took her to that place and then she told the cab guy to take us to where we were supposed to go and when we arrived there and we asked the cabbie kitna hua and he said no she paid for your this thing fare and you just get down and I am waiting for you and I will take you back to the hotel and he waited.
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So these are the strange things which I will I mean which are my gangali in a way these experiences of life of with sometimes with random strangers and like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a stranger or Kishore Kumar is a stranger or Mohammed Rafi is a stranger generally as a person but yeah we know them through what they created or R. D. Burman or S. D. Burman or
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you know Abhidha Parveen or whoever right now whoever has kind of enriched us.
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You mentioned Cairo and I had asked a similar question to a previous guest of mine Max Rodenbeck who was brought up in Cairo and his answer was Cairo but not the Cairo of today Cairo the time you know Cairo of the time when he actually grew up.
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And it's that kind of makes me think that perhaps you are building imaginary homes for ourselves like invisible cities like Alvino may I put it right it's like there's a beautiful phrase Sugata Srinivasa Raju used a few weeks back in an episode with me and the phrase was rooted cosmopolitanism.
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And when I and that's how he kind of described himself and I felt it fit him so perfectly and I felt that that would be something to aspire to but I feel that that rootedness part is somehow missing that I'm kind of that I'm rooted to these nebulous things like the ones you mentioned.
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You know certain kinds of music certain kind of books and so on and so forth but there's nothing concrete there but anyway that is what it is and this sort of reminds me of like another question that I sort of wanted to ask you about you know you spoke about how a lot of these music they carry memories you remember a particular memory comes back when you hear something.
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And one of my writing students wrote a post beautiful newsletter post I'll link it from the show notes where he's talking about exactly this about music and memories and how they all come together.
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But one part of his piece which I argued with was he said he loves this scene from Veer Zara where you know Veer and Zara are meeting at the absolute end and you see this wide angle shot from across the courtroom and there is this music playing right and that always moves him a lot.
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And the weird thing is when I saw it it moved me also but at the same time at an intellectual level I was thinking what shit is this I'm being spoon fed like one of my sort of problems with Bollywood is that we are being condescended to all the time we are being spoon fed key background music will tell you how to feel and things will be too overt.
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And in Massan for example one of the things I liked was like with all good cinema is that you're treating the viewer as an adult. So you have those early scenes for example with Devi sitting with a father in the room and there's no background music not a word is spoken is beautifully acted but you can you're letting the viewer do the work of putting themselves in those people's heads and imagining what they are going through.
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In fact not to give spoilers away but everyone should have seen the film already and if they haven't please do. But that last scene was interesting to me because I was thinking about the extreme approaches you could take to it you know when the two of them meet they go on a boat they say a few words then you have that song which kind of drives home what is happening that you're leaving the past behind and taking something new.
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And one minimal way of ending it perhaps would be that you just show the two of them on the steps and show nothing else and let the viewer fill in the gaps. Another one could be you just show them getting in the boat and not talking.
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Maybe a third one is a get in the boat and they're talking and the music doesn't spell it out. A fourth one is what you did a typical Bollywood film might even go further and add half an hour to the film till they are happily in love and all of that.
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Now I don't know what debates you had over that particular scene and how that came to be but what is very clear is that in this journey of yours you have now developed a sensitivity which is perhaps from world cinema perhaps from elsewhere I mean obviously from world cinema and elsewhere.
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Which is also very different with the tide the commercial tide the career tide that you're part of. You're part of Bollywood you're working in the Bombay film industry they are the guys funding you and yet you have a sensibility which is different.
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I mean a separate question is about the courage to go on a different path but first that sensibility is so how did this evolve because you grew up like you mentioned in the 90s watching Bollywood blown away by Ham Aap Ke Hai Kaun you know feeling really bad that Renuka Shah died waiting till Monday you see her in Surabhi she's alive.
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From those kind of influences shaping you you almost come to this very different place so how did that sort of happen and what was and did you like with that last scene you know taking it to exactly the point where there's a continuum of show don't tell that you could have done.
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You know what were your thoughts on that I'm very fascinated.
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So I can't imagine a viewer like I can't imagine the person I'm writing for I always imagine myself I'm writing for myself.
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To mere liye wo phir wo sawal nahi hota hai ki yeh samajh aayega ki nahi mujhe samajh aara hai jitna bhi wo subtle hai aur in fact jitna zyada subtle hoga utna zyada lagta hai because so two things a subtlety.
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Kyuki main apne liye likh rahe hoon doosra wo brevity wala point jo maine bola ki being very very optimal so jitne kam mein samajh aaja hai utna aacha hai jitne kam footage mein aur jitne kam whatever page count or word count mein samajh aaja hai koi cheez to utna aacha hai.
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To ek to wo hai to wahan pe I am writing for myself so there is no challenge of explaining or over explaining things there is no need for that.
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What you are talking about I think it probably is from world cinema kyuki yes 90s mein aur till probably 2003 jab tak main college mein tha mainne proper commercial Hindi cinema aur commercial Hollywood ke alawa kuch nahi dekha tha.
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Hollywood ke bhi jo matlab sabse aada art house film mainne dekhi ho ki wo Forest Gump thi jo mere liye bahut badi art house thi ki aacha hai isme to love story bhi zyada nahi hai isme to ek poora ek matlab the amount of detailing they were doing as compared to I am saying something like Notting Hill or you know something like
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what other films were there at that time like The Rambo aur those kind of films jo hum dekhte the college main to un sabke samne Forest Gump looked like a very art house kind of a film and then we found out okay it is like it is much celebrated and award winning kind of a film.
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To wahan se shayad ye hua achanak se faida ye hua ki jab Bombay aaya aur jab mainne samjha ki okay mujhe khud se mainat karne hai khud se cheeze seekhne hai and then again the thing about finding your voice or finding what you resonate with and you know kind of interacting with everything on a very very deep level.
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To wahan se jab world cinema discover kiya aur jab jo bhi ek uss samay ka jo world cinema which was mostly Iranian cinema at that time which was you know on the rise at that time Majidi and you know Kherostami and Jaffar Panahi.
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So a lot of these people were making cinema which was very realist and still not as alienating as the French new wave of 50s.
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Jo ki humare liye ek alak culture tha alienating main isli bol raha hoon kyunki uss mein bahot saari cheeze thi jo matlab humko mujhe nahi bahot aata samajh aari thi jo theek hai hua achchi filme hain aur ab dekhta hoon tana I can appreciate them for those nuances which I kind of missed at that time because at that time I was looking for stories and looking for relatability which was not at all there.
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But uss samay Iranian cinema and some other Korean cinema of that time of the late early or whatever late 80s and wo jis tarah se influence kiya wo bhi uss tarah se kyun kar paya kyunki I was very obsessed with Bollywood of 90s.
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Matlab main koi bhi super commercial filme jo ki super violent also films like Loha and Farishte and there was a film called Hindustan Ki Kasam.
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So uss tarah ki jo bahot hi ultra border, ghadar, yeh sab filmin mujhe bahot-bahot kamaal ki lagti thi. Toh at least mera meri ek understanding wo jo cliché ki understanding thi wo wahan se ban rahi thi dire-dire.
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Pa phir uske baad jab yeh dekha toh it was first of all it was a shock that the same impact can be had without music, without over the top acting, without any flashy camera work and you just are kind of living with people.
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And even so films like Babel and Amores Perros and all which was a major influence for writing Masaan.
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Just the intercutting of stories and having multiple stories and going into a world which is and going with as much realism as possible and avoiding all because we were shooting in Banaras Masaan.
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We also had that fear ki we should not have that the typical white gaze of exoticizing the place and Banaras is very easy to exoticize and has those very touristy pictures all over the world which people know the chatta on the ghat and sadhus taking a dip in Ganges.
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Toh cheeze hai humko pata thi ki humko avoid karne hai and then we found some of the templates in world cinema.
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And then at some point I also discovered this new American cinema of the 70s where killing of a Chinese bookie or even Scorsese ki jo realist filmi thi us samay ki Main Streets and Taxi Driver and all.
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Toh wahan se phir ek aur aesthetic ka ek aur rasta kulagi ho ki you can still be cinematic and still be realist jo ek jo Iranian cinema mein missing tha.
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So there were these many many influences and I was always kind of putting them in that pot and kind of trying to make a recipe which was jo.
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So of course all of it whatever I am doing till now it's still aisa nahi ki koi voice mujhe apni mil gaye hai it's always work in progress.
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But wo Arun Kamal ki line hai ki poetry ki apna kya hai is jivan mein sab toh liya udhaar, saara loha on logon ka apni keval dhaar.
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So loha toh duniya bhar se mila hai I am just probably learning my craft of sharpening the loha.
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But yeah all of it is basically and which is probably true for art all the time you always take what is around you or what has been before you and then you try to interpret it in your own way.
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So let's get back to biography but you know you've got this excellent interview with Nilesh Mishra the slow interview I'll link that from the show notes that you know so I won't repeat any of that.
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You speak about your college years there and how you worked for a year in Pune and then you kind of moved on from there.
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But one strand that I want to kind of pick up on is something that you almost apologize for mentioning which is a love for food.
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You know food and cooking and all of that. So tell me a little bit about that because you are right that people will almost treat food like a guilty pleasure.
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And cooking as something you know not a great creative activity as such though you have you know in that interview I think you described you compared cooking with Buddhist mandala painting.
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Where you spend a lot of effort and you make something beautiful and then you wipe it off it's gone but you have the pleasure of the moment.
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So how did you kind of get into cooking what were your processes like initially I guess we all learn by analogy right.
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In the sense that okay do this and that but then you think about first principles that this is the smoke point and so on and so forth and you start.
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So is it something that kind of puts you in a state of flow as it were.
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Is it that kind of sense to it and do you feel that you know being a cook requires being a particular kind of person.
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Because it requires a particular kind of patience and terror and sometimes just sticking to the process like when I cook.
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I find myself cooking things which I can make in 10 minutes.
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Right to make steak or bacon and eggs and I just want to get it over in 10 minutes and I don't have the patience to put something on a low flame for one hour checking.
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You know I don't have that and I think that that also points to some character defect in me.
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That at some level I want some immediate gratification I'm impatient that terror is not there.
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And I wonder if that approach can then carry on to other things.
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So what has been sort of your sense of cooking and does it gel with the kind of person you are or the kind of qualities you wanted to build in yourself.
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I don't know I won't look at cooking or my whatever relationship with food in those whatever in those economic terms in a way utilitarian type.
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It's just I'm I think what so all of cinema also kind of evolved from the idea of magic.
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There used to be magic shows where they used to take out a trick that the shadows would get bigger and people will think people will kind of be awed by it and stunned by it.
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And most of the most of the early whatever cinema makers were magicians before turning into filmmakers.
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And so I like that kind of thing about about you know elements the one thing transforming into another.
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And when you can facilitate it like in cinema you write something and then there are 100 people who create that magic and make you believe that this actually happened.
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It's not like we shot this story and these are actors you are really you know you believe okay this is Deepak this is Amitabh but this is Kuli or whatever this is Vijay in Diwar who is getting you know who is about to be killed by his own brother and all that.
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So that kind of make believe or whatever suspension of disbelief is called but it is not really after a point you are not really suspending the disbelief you are actually into it.
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And you start believing in magic. So same with food for me.
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I just love the process of one thing transforming into another something which is completely inedible in one form and 10 minutes later you put chemicals into it and like in a certain proportion and add fire to it.
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And it transforms into something which is so beautiful and so beautiful not just to look at yeah to taste and it nourishes you.
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So food for me is a form of meditation not just cooking but eating also when I eat food I give proper whatever attention to every element and I eat slowly.
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So for me that whole process is so magical of food existence and I always I still love it's biologically easy to explain why we eat food and how we digest it and all but it's very strange that living beings have this hunger.
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So on many elements the idea of food is magical for me from a biological point of view from a very basic you know the mechanics part of it of putting things together.
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And then the history or historical perspective to it ki koi cheez kahan se humare paas aayi hai aur wo theke bahut door se aayi hai aur wo theke Portugal se aloo aaya hai aur yeh wo.
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So there is always this these elements which are affecting your food on a day to day basis and then that food is affecting you on a day to day basis.
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So for me all these small details about food generally are very very fascinating very interesting and I can.
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So jaise log museum ghumte hain kisi shahar mein jaakar main shahar ki sabse badi jo sabzi mandi hai main 2-3 ghante aaraam se wahan bita sakta hu aur just looking at food aur aur agar bada koi grocery store hai foreign jaake mere liye America aur Dubai
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jahan bhi wahan ka sabse fascinating part actually wahan ke jo supermarkets hote hain. As fascinating as I would say the American Natural History Museum jahan 1 lakh saal purane dinosaur hain.
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Utna hi fascinating mere liye wahan ka traders jo ya whole foods hoge raha hota hai jahan pe nahi-nahi cheeze hoti hain and I am like constantly fascinated ki achha yahan 50 tare ke doodh hain main har ikko utha ke dekhta hoon ki isme kya hai alag usse.
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Toh wo hai phir aata hai cooking ka process which is always a challenge because I don't cook with measurements. I always want to be intuitive about it.
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And koi bhi cheeze main agar jo ki main kaafi zyada banata hoon koi cheeze hain jaise pulav hai main bahut baar banata hoon ya pasta hai bahut baar banata hoon. I try to kind of, I make sure ki ye wala pulav main pehle kabhi nahi banaya hoga.
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And agar main maan liye pehle 10 saal mein agar main 100 baar pulav banaya hai toh wo 100 ke 100 alag honge.
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Koi na koi ingredient alag hoga, koi na koi uska process alag hoga, kahi baar wo bartan alag honge, kahi baar wo usko poora pakane ka time alag diya jayega, kahi baar usme poora hi element replace karke chawal ke jage I will put something else and still try to achieve the same quality of texture and all.
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Toh wo bahut saari cheeze hain, I keep playing with it and it's always a kind of a challenge. It's like I don't play video games but this is my video game where I create challenges and then try to excel at it.
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And it puts me in, as you said, it definitely puts me in a flow state where I am cut off from the rest of the world.
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Sometimes there is music playing and all I like playing music while I am cooking but that music is only in the background.
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But I always like to be involved seriously in this alchemy which is day to day alchemy we are kind of blessed with.
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And then of course cherish the food, mujhe khana banana bhi bahut pasande, khilana bhi bahut pasande, lekin unfortunately a lot of people, in fact most of the people don't really give that kind of serious attention to food.
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No matter how much effort you put in and no matter how many times you tell them you have put in lots of effort.
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So it kind of becomes slightly frustrating to feed people because very few people actually interact with the various changes or whatever the ingredients in the way you have kind of very thoughtfully put in.
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That I have fried a little bit of garlic in it so it will look a little different or I keep collecting. So one of my weird habits is that I try wherever I go in the world, wherever.
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In fact in any other state even if I go to Chhattisgarh or to Himachal or Kashmir or wherever, try to bring local fresh produce.
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So it has happened many times. Once we were coming from America. No, from where were we coming? We were going to Nepal.
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So I was coming from Nepal and I was stopped at the airport that what are you doing with so many potatoes in your bag.
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So then I explained that the red mountain potatoes that are found there, they are not found here. I saw them there and they were very tasty.
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So I took 2 kgs from there. I definitely bring potatoes from most of the places, the local potatoes from there.
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Because potatoes from every place are very local. It's not a thing which kind of grows centrally in India. It grows everywhere and then it has a different taste.
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Rice is fine. There are 2-3 places where it grows. It grows there and goes all over India.
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Potatoes are local. It is easy to bring potatoes. It stays for many days.
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And the second thing that I bring from different countries is the noodles from there.
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Because that again is something which every culture has their own kind of noodles and the noodles, whatever instant mix they create.
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So the local fast food noodles or any other kind of noodles because the world is kind of, suddenly the market has woken up to that people want the supplement, health, healthy alternatives to everything, all kinds of carbs.
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So that's why they are creating lots of new stuff and I like that.
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You mentioned sometimes replacing the rice in your pulao with something else and I remembered I was in Athens earlier this year and we were just walking on the road.
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So we were damn tired, too tired to go to Google and look up what is a high rated restaurant or whatever.
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So we just saw, there was a small quiet hole in the wall kind of place called Elevoro which we entered and I just, I was too tired to look at the menu properly.
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I ordered something called the Veal Kritharakki. One of the best dishes I've ever had and Kritharakki apparently is a kind of pasta which looks like rice.
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I think even the Italians have a version called Orzo or something but this was a Greek version.
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And it wasn't the veal itself, it was just a Kritharakki and it was all the veg preparation with tomatoes and different things and it was so incredibly delicious.
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My friend was in Athens after a week and he asked me where to eat and I said go here, order this.
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He ordered that and later messaged me and said Amit, the best rice I have ever had.
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So sort of, and that particular meal I loved so much I was mindful through every bite.
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But my other thing I try to watch out for is sometimes I am like many of your guests you are complaining about when you feed them.
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That I am just absent minded, I am lost in conversation or I am reading something and I won't even notice the food.
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Like you put a meat dish in front of me, I will eat it all, you will ask if there was lamb or mutton and I won't remember because I would have not paid attention to that.
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And that is something I try to fight and you have mentioned and meditation is a way of fighting that and you mentioned that cooking is like meditation.
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Do you consciously try to bring that quality of being mindful to the present moment and other things also to things you do?
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Is it something that has happened over time or you were always like this?
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No, I think it has happened over time because at some point I think I realised in those initial years of trying to be a writer.
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I realised two things, one there is nothing called merit or God gifted talent or something like that.
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There is only one thing that is discipline and it is only discipline which can create magic and make it look effortless.
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So from there I started paying attention to small things except maybe the only thing I still don't pay attention to is the clothes I wear or clothes I kind of select or buy or something.
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I have not interacted with that word at all but otherwise yes, food, reading, listening to music, watching movies, walking in a city, something I completely love.
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I just love walking. Even in Bombay I have walked so many times in those six years period especially 2004 to 2010. I would walk from this place, Four Bungalows or Andheri, Versova to Kandivali East.
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Almost three hours of walking, 12 kilometres or so and it was very very cathartic and it would put me in a zone.
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Suddenly it was traffic jammed like end to end at that time and there was so much noise on the street but it still would put me in a very peaceful state of mind just walking and always there is something new to see on the road.
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Every day there would be so many new experiences and those experiences were so fulfilling for me and they still are. I still make it a point to walk as much as I can in the city.
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Though Bombay is one of probably the worst cities to walk in in terms of there are no walking spaces, the traffic is bad, it is so polluted and really there are no pavements left.
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There are pavements but then there is so much encroachment happening and then encroachment is also kind of a systemic thing that they are not given enough space where they can actually put up their stalls so they are on the pavement.
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And people are generally very rude to or unmindful of pedestrians.
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It is very difficult to cross the road when there is a signal, even if the signal is red for vehicles and you have that green walking sign, even at that time you are scared that someone might hit you because a lot of people especially at that time want to leave quickly.
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It has happened a couple of times where I have been hit while walking on the road and I kind of had a mini fracture in my rib because someone hit me, a vehicle and all.
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So all that happened but of course it is part of living in India so no complaints but otherwise I want to kind of be mindful of every moment in every way.
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So a couple of questions rolled into one, in the sense a couple of themes I have explored in the past and one of them is I was chatting with, I had breakfast with a friend of mine in Bangalore who is also a friend of yours, I will tell you who after this episode.
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He is a CXO position person at a major company and he was complaining that when he goes out for dinner or lunch with his colleagues who are all senior people in the company, there is nothing to talk about because they don't read books, they don't watch movies, there is no interior life, everything is straight and narrow, what they kind of do.
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Which also leads me to thinking is that by a process of self-selection, the people we choose to hang out with, we often imagine that everybody is like us, that they are into books and music and they have that kind of interior life but a lot of people simply don't and this is one strand.
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And the other strand is something I have brought up because it has made me introspect a lot which is this book I read called Wanting by Luke Burgess where the primary theme of the book is that a lot of what we want and he got this concept from a philosopher called Rene Girard who was asked to teach a class on literature a few decades ago and he was a philosopher.
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But he said okay, I am getting money, I will do it. He read the books he was supposed to read and he found that all the characters in those books, they wanted something only because somebody else wanted it.
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So he coined the term mimetic desire. So a mimetic desire would be that you want Mercedes, why? Because it's a done thing or a young person may say I want to get married and have kids, why? Because it's the expected route.
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And the term Burgess used for this was thick desires and thin desires. So thick desires are something that you intrinsically want deep inside. It's coming from nowhere.
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And obviously creature comforts are taken for granted so we are not talking about eating and all. Thin desires are desires which come from something around you like the Mercedes, like the I want to get married and have kids kind of thing.
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Those are thin desires and the strange thing is that thin desires can be really intense and thick desires can be hidden in the background so you don't even know what it is.
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For example when you are a young writer, the thin desire could be that I want to be a writer, you are chasing the glamour of writing.
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Write that I will get this prize, he will do that, people will come to listen to me. But hidden behind that there might be also a thick desire to write, to create, to tell stories and all of that.
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And you know when you talk about your time in Pune where you worked in a software company Canva for a few months and you pointed out that what made you decide to leave was when you looked at all your seniors who have worked there for 10 years and you said that in 10 years I am this.
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And you fought that thin desire that I will have a flat, a family, this and that. You fought that thin desire and you went out to look for something else.
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And it's very hard I think when we are young and I find it hard to answer even now though I can do it much better than I could have 10 years ago.
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That what are our thick desires because most people don't have to go back to the first strand, that interior life and therefore that possibility of self reflecting.
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That who am I, what do I want, why do I want the things that I do, why am I sort of on this path.
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You know and again these two seem connected to me for that reason.
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So what is your sense because you had that self reflection to be able to take a step back to look at these people and say that I don't want to become like this, I don't want this.
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And you could also then not join the FTI course you got in for because you were like no, I don't want this.
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So if you have to think about your thick desires like you know maybe 10 years later you wake up in the morning, what do you do?
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And that's perhaps a superficial question, you can tell me surface things like I will cook pulao in my 190th recipe or whatever.
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But in general when you think of your thick desires, you know an outsider can guess that storytelling will happen, this will happen, that will happen.
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But how do you look at this and I am sure you have thought about variants of this question for yourself.
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No I have not actually, for me I can't even think about tomorrow.
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So that's a bit of I don't know it's a handicap or something or a blessing I don't know.
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But for me it's always difficult to see in the future, so whatever desire there was or there is, it's just making sure that the present is present for me.
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And when I was a kid I wanted to become a writer, but those are very very broad kind of desires that you have to go into writing.
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There was probably at some point the idea of glamour also that there is a film industry.
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And then when it came here, the glamour of the film industry would have gone away in a week. But there was always that thing that you can write and you can create magic by writing.
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Where it is again, all of these processes, cooking or writing, both are equally magical processes where you are just black ink on white paper and you are transported to another world and you start seeing these images in your head.
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And you start caring for people who don't even exist, who are in someone else's head and you are caring for them and you are crying for them.
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When I read Gunahon Ka Devta for the first time, Dharamveer Bharti's epic, one of the most celebrated novels in Hindi.
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So I started reading Gunahon Ka Devta in college, I think I was in second year. And there was going to be holidays, I think I started reading it in exam time.
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I couldn't put it down during the exams also. At that time I was quite into, I didn't want to.
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I didn't want to be, you know, below the top three rankers in the class. I wanted to be among the top three.
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And I was studying quite seriously at that time. That's when the novel came into my hands and I started reading it.
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And through the exam, I was preparing for two hours at night, taking out an hour and reading it.
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And the exams were over and at home, the last 20-25 pages were left. And at some point I didn't want to finish or something. I was like, if it ends then what will I do?
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But I cared so much for Sudha and Chandar, the characters.
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And when the last 20-25 pages were left, that day I had to take the train to Lucknow from Benaras.
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So I thought, okay, let's finish it. I read it in the train.
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And when it ended in the train, I was on top berths. Kashi Vishwanath Express used to run from Benaras.
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And in that train, there was a box, S6, which was called Lucknow Bogie. All its reservations were from Lucknow.
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Lucknow to Delhi. So it was the Benaras to Delhi train.
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So when the Benaras to Lucknow box used to be empty, most of the students used to go there.
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Taking a non-reserved ticket to the reserved bogie, because it was empty till Lucknow.
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So I was on top berths. And that novel ended.
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And it stabbed me like anything when it ended on the note. And on the note, it ended.
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And probably for the next two hours of the journey, I was crying like I have lost a very close friend in an accident.
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Like I was in shock, I was in pain. I cried for two hours.
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And people, so many people were concerned, were strangers. They kept asking me what had happened.
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Then probably at some point, they made up their own reasons. It could have been a breakup. It could have been a tragedy at home.
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I couldn't even explain to them that I am crying because of the book in my hand.
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But at that point, I kind of, I think subconsciously at least, I figured that this is a very powerful medium, storytelling.
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And I want to be a part of this tribe that can create these very strong emotions and give people some kind of catharsis.
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Maybe there is a line, who cries, for the sake of someone else.
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Everyone should cry for their own sake.
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So ultimately, probably I was crying for some other, my own traumas, but it was connected to Sudhaan Chander's journey.
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And so to be able to be an entertainer and a therapist and a magician at the same time, I think it was something which I found slowly.
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I kind of figured that's really, really fascinating and good challenge to have in life.
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So probably that was the only thick desire I can kind of talk about, I can think of, that yes, that was there.
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Other than that, I don't know. Thin desires, I kind of, I am aware of and I am constantly like pushing them back.
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I know that when I saw that everyone has a car, then my mind said that how many people have a car?
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Of course, not all of them really, if car is something you get only when you deserve it, I don't think so many people deserve having a car.
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So then there is a problem in the calculation or in what the theory is, that car is a symbol of success.
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My parents still think that, they keep asking me that when will you get a car or you just bought a house, buy a car.
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Because in their head it is still incomplete, that picture of whatever, their idea of success.
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That ok, everything else, you are writing something, you are happy in what you are doing, but that symbol is still attached.
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Similarly for kids, like having a kid, we decided not to have kids because again, that's probably the easiest thing to do in the world.
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And everyone has procreated through generations and that's why we are here, but it's definitely, I don't even understand.
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Car, I can still understand as a symbol of success in some ways.
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How does having a kid, of course, I mean there are people who might feel fulfilled and who might really feel that way, but to attach a sense of failure or incompletion to people who don't have kids by choice or by whatever, by some kind of compulsions is a very strange idea to take root.
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I don't understand how that is a failure if something which can be done so easily biologically, how is that a major achievement if it's just one molecule of semen interacting with one molecule of ova.
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One of the themes I think about sometimes is how we are the only animals who are wired to fight their own wiring.
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So we are programmed in certain ways to have kids, do this, do that, but we are also wired to be rational, that's one level above that.
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And we can fight our own wiring, we can decide that I won't be tribal, I won't have kids, I won't have whatever.
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I once wrote a provocative column about why it is immoral to have children, that was a headline, and the kind of trolling I got from parents everywhere who took it personally, which I didn't expect that way.
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It's a backlash of what Paul Graham calls the aggressively conventional minded, which is a phrase I love, aggressively conventional minded.
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We've got like 20 minutes left, I feel like we should talk for another 5-6 hours, but I know you've got to get back home and all of that.
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I want to talk about, you mentioned 2006 to 2010, what you learnt in those years, your struggle in Bollywood.
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And I'm also sort of interested in different places where you have spoken about say firstly the centrality of satya.
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You've said that if there was no satya, there would be no masaan, because ripple effect ki tarah satya se a certain kind of filmmaking was enabled and Anurag Kashyap came out of that.
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And Anurag Kashyap was a big part in nurturing his own little ecosystem of people, both you and Neeraj worked with him and met through there.
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So this is a question I often ask historians on my show, but it seems pertinent to ask you as well, that Thomas Carlyle came up with what he called the great man theory of history, which is very contentious.
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Great man theory of history is that history is made by great men, and in Carlyle's time obviously great men, but you get it, great people.
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That somebody comes and changes everything and history proceeds differently.
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And people who criticize this theory say that no, it's wrong, that we are giving too much importance to individuals.
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Jo hona tha hona tha, you know, trends go in a particular direction and then whatever has to happen has to happen.
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Now when I think of individuals through history, like I won't use great in a qualitative sense like great great, but people who've had a big impact, I think individuals and accidents play a huge part.
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You know, satya was perhaps something that came about because of a bunch of different circumstances and I've had an episode on Uday Bhatia on satya as well.
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And maybe there were other lucky accidents which could have taken us in a different direction which didn't happen.
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Or some could make that argument ki yeh to hona hi tha, satya nahi hota toh aur kuch hota, anurag nahi aata toh kuch aur hota or you would have been enabled by something else.
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Toh yeh sab hoi jata. So couple of questions and the first question is that broadly, what do you think of this because I feel that too often we don't appreciate how random everything is.
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Right, aapne pehle merit ki baat ki. You know, good things will happen, people will say areh maine kiya aur bad things will happen, they'll let it get them down, self-esteem effect ho jata hai.
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Whereas actually 99% of everything is sheer dumb luck. Right, toh yeh bhi doh lucky cheez ho gaye, unke yeh impacts huye, it is not that there is a larger teleological narrative ki yeh plan hai.
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Toh aapke kya thoughts hai iske baare mein?
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Yes, so I do believe strongly in the randomness of things rather than like you could have planned like certain things and I think ek aur cheez jo mein, about cinema I say but probably true for almost all the things in life.
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Good films happen always by accident, bad films happen always by design. Beautiful.
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You always, like agar aapko film banane mein bahut, agar aapne bhule aapne bahut meinat ki hai, toh phir aapne kharab film hi banaye hai, kyunki mainat se nahi banti hai, kharab film hai banti hai. In fact, kharab film banane mein baniye bhi mainat lagte hai, aapne bhi mainat lagte hai.
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Because again, luck is on your side and then there are many, many factors you can't control. Sometimes it's the time, sometimes it's so many things which happen and I'm again using film as an example or as a parallel to our real life because there are so many elements which help create a person like someone is called great.
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But how does that great happen? Because there are so many factors which are completely out of control of that great person which made them great.
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Toh randomness kaafi zyada hai universe mein and just because we can't, that's one part of our wiring which is still I think primitive, we don't accept randomness. We are baffled by it and we want to find patterns.
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And those patterns have created, so that search for patterns has given rise to this idea of people we trust and then those people we trust mostly historians or you know who have found patterns and who select certain patterns to say, okay, certain things were great or certain men were great.
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And then those people then create further patterns which are let's say the great people effecting great changes.
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So mera toh wahi manna hai aur ussi wajah se again that idea of merit is highly, it's not just flawed, it's completely I would say bullshit, the idea of merit kyunki bahut saara usme luck hai.
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Aur phir luck ke baad aapko discipline, you can be disciplined only if you are lucky. Like if you are really working 20 hours a day, you can't really be lucky or you can't really be disciplined.
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Agar aapko writer banna hai, lekin aapka janam hi aise ghar mein hua hai, jahaapka aapke paas kitabe hi nahi hai, mere paas 8 saal, 6 saal ki umar se kitabe hai aur main tab se pad raha hu and I've had a fairly comfortable life in terms of financial access to things and all kinds of language access to things.
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Toh phir maine discipline usme se dhun liya aur main wo kar paya, but if someone who still wanted to be a writer, first of all people to get the idea that you can be a writer is also part of my luck.
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Luck of being born in a particular family at a particular time and then whatever life path was given to me through again multiple factors, so all of it is I think quite random.
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The desire to seek patterns also gives us religions and conspiracy theories and so on and so forth. Speaking of Bollywood, my sort of second question because in a sense you said that the 90s was a tumultuous decade, so much changed in the world, so much progress analog to digital and all that.
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And I think the current times in terms of what is happening to culture and cinema and all that is also momentous when you think about the pace of change.
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Because what I see happening in different domains in the world and happening less fast in cinema but also in cinema is what I referred to before the crumbling away of the mainstream.
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Like in media we have seen ki 1990s mein there was a consensus on the truth broad, there were your major publications and there was a lot of negative associated with that also because there were gatekeepers for art and artists and access was controlled.
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And now of course there is no consensus on the truth, we are engaged in narrative battles all the time, that's a negative side of the ledger.
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I would still say the positive side overwhelms that in the sense that all of us have the means of production, we don't have to go through gatekeepers, we can do crazy things which would never get past a gatekeeper earlier like 5 hour podcasts and just keep doing it till we refine what we are doing.
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And the mainstream has kind of crumbled away there. We see it I believe even in nation states where lines on a map are becoming less relevant in a globalised world and I see it happening everywhere.
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Now in cinema also I feel like it is just a matter of time because what you really have coming from say any film industry, if you look at Bollywood coming from Bombay, you have a film industry run by a few people almost in a central planning kind of way and they don't really get the country.
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They are either kind of driven by narrow business imperatives but they don't understand the people behind the numbers or they are foreign educated kids in elite film families and they have kind of taken over that family business but they don't get it later either.
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Which is why I love TikTok so much. I thought it was such a tragedy that it was banned because I saw it as such a great platform, the kind of art from villages and towns and people of alternate sexualities expressing themselves and seeing other people like themselves where there is no gatekeeper.
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And I thought after that initial phase of you are going with a meme and you are lip syncing to something, after that initial phase I saw some really cutting edge stuff coming out of there and it's a great tragedy it is in there.
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But in general when we look at and I don't even want to say cinema because that feels like it's putting it in a box.
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But that whole all of audio visual entertainment, storytelling per se, you know, where do you sort of see the future going and I don't want you to be a forecaster and tell me that this will happen in 2035 and I will be here and all of that.
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But just in general what are the sort of trends that you see, what worries you, what gives you hope about the way this world is emerging and what excites you as a creator?
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Okay, so yeah generally I think as whatever, generally humans are really bad at predicting future and I am even worse at it because I can't really see, I can't, whatever my brain kind of collapses when I start thinking okay what's going to happen next.
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So what excites me is this very fast changing world around us and this clash of multiple centers of power.
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And this very contrasting thing about globalized world and then the rise of right wing or rise of this xenophobia around the world.
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So it will be as whatever Chinese say interesting times. So that is what kind of excites me that there will be lots to talk about, lots to reflect on, lots to analyze and make sense of.
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Because things are not getting simple. We are kind of getting, no matter of course times have always been turbulent and times are always look, they always look more complicated than they were previously.
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But if that is true and I think that is true, the world is kind of getting more and more complicated because more and more gates have come down around the world and the kind of interactions that are possible now and that is something which gives me great hope also.
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That this idea that some people in power can restrict what you think or what you eat, that's not possible anymore no matter how much power they put in.
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No matter what, you know, they can't do anything, I have complete faith in them because now what has happened is that the doors have opened, people have seen a lot of things, you can't take that power back from them.
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The things that haven't reached them, maybe you can stop them, some things, some ideas. But what has reached them and there are too many, the ideas that have reached people, the idea of expressing, the free expression that has reached people.
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And that is something which is now very difficult. You can probably control and which is what they will try to say, you can say things but say this particular thing.
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But to convince people that you can't say anything is that is not going to happen.
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So that gives me great hope because internet has been a great tool for the powerful people around the world in polarizing and pushing down their agenda very quickly and very effectively.
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But at the same time they don't understand that right now the medium itself is a bigger message than the message they are giving and the medium is getting empowered.
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The medium of quick effective communication, that medium has reached people and that means everyone will at some point find their voice and find their cause and find through the clutter or through the orders.
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And this is what we want to say and we will say it because we have the medium and that medium is free and that medium is free with all the caveats around the word free.
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But that is generally a hopeful thing for me and as a writer it is very exciting to make sense of these things and to find stories that kind of become a symbol of this clash which we are seeing around us.
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Yeah so we have kind of come to the end of our allotted time but I am going to hopefully if there is listener demand you will come back for a part 2 at some point maybe when your film is out.
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Because I wanted to talk about your time in comedy, the craft of comedy, the craft of writing lyrics, the craft of writing screenplays and much more about cinema because hopefully by the time your next recording with me your directorial debut will be out also.
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So I am really excited about that. But my last question and this is a question I ask all my guests particularly interesting with you is can you recommend books, films, music that have meant a lot to you at an emotional level.
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Like the kind of things you take to a desert island at least your question or the kind of things you want to stand on a soap box and you want to tell the world that boss read this or watch this or listen to this.
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Okay but there are many. That is also a problem with me but maybe top of my mind whatever comes I will keep talking.
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So music, first of all the golden age of Hindi cinema music is 50s and 60s till mid 70s kind of a thing. Some people count 70s also. So music of 50s, 60s, 70s has been a defining part of my life.
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Because of that I have learnt to write lyrics and through that I have learnt and since childhood it is so much in my mind and heart that that is something which pushes me to do better as a lyric writer.
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Because a lot of people speak, it is a general belief and it is not wrong that poetry was of a very good level at that time.
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But a lot of people don't understand and don't realise that how that music is still alive and how it is. There are many people who won't recognise how S. D. Burman looked like or this song belongs to S. D. Burman or Shankar Jayakrishnan or C. Ramchandra.
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It may be difficult for people to tell but the music has survived and music has persisted and in many cases it has grown in value and impact.
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But what a lot of people don't realise is that the quality of poetry was not good, the technical aspect was very correct. So the meter of the song, the phrasing of the song at that time, there is a meter which is an English understanding of meter which comes from western music or western poetry.
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But Hindi film music is a very unique form of music. I feel it should be treated as a very well defined, respected genre of music like Karnataka music or Hindustani classical or western music or jazz or any other form of music which is considered a respected genre.
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So Hindi film music is a very unique form of music. It has all kinds of influences. It is a different history part. I am talking only about poetry.
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Writing for this, if a tune is given, now this is the tune, on which it is written Gata Rahe Mera Dil, it will be in the minds of people only or it will be in the minds of words that Gata Rahe Mera Dil.
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But when the poet has written it, the mouth that opens in Gata, then it will not open in Rahe, then it will open in Mera and it will not open in the heart at all.
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That understanding is also there embedded in the music of 50s, 60s and 70s. The understanding of what the exact phrasing for that particular tune is and how that tune will be enhanced by this phrasing.
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In Gata Rahe Mera Dil, you can write Hasta Rahe Mera Dil and it will sit there.
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Gata Rahe Mera Dil or Jeeta Rahe Mera Dil, anything like that. But because of Gata Rahe Mera Dil, the beauty of that tune increases which takes the poetry of that time to a different level which again is part of the poetry but not the front of it.
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People only, you know, if you get into the technicals of it then you will understand. So for me that era is an emotional attachment but just as a lyrics writer to be part of that legacy, it kind of keeps telling me to not be frivolous about it, to always be very very sure of what you write and what you put out.
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So all the music of that era, I would say that anyone who wants to listen to new music or who has heard a little bit of it, they can interact with it very carefully and very well.
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Then the second is Punjabi music which is probably from the 70s, 80s, the era of Surendar Kaur and Asa Singh Mastana and then the Pakistani music of that time which was Mehdi Asim and Ghulam Ali and Nusrat Sahib and Parveen Sultana and Vinogh and Noor Jahan and all.
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So there is that again that strange connection to a home you have not seen but you have been told that was our home and there is connection to that land, to that culture, to that language and you kind of want to
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connect to that in some ways and in spite of all the political divides that exist and have been constantly nurtured by both the governments.
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In spite of that, you kind of want to transcend that border and reach those people and reach that language and music and anything that can come to us, anything that can come from music, food and other things, food and clothes cannot reach us.
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So that is probably the second thing that has always been there in my life. So that collection again, I can't choose anything particular but all the artists have been there.
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Thirdly, in cinema, it is mostly Iranian cinema which has really really influenced me, which I consider to be the most transformative and then Satyajit Ray's cinema.
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Which again, you used to listen to Satyajit Ray for a while, he is great and he was said a lot of times so you started feeling more scared that you saw him and you didn't understand so you are basically a fool.
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So because of that, I stayed away for a long time, I didn't see him and whatever snatches I saw, they were unbadly preserved DVDs of his initial films, The Apu Trilogy.
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So it was very bad so I got scared that I would have to put a lot of effort to understand it but then at some point I kind of overcame that fear.
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And then the cinema which I got to see, that is something which gave me immense confidence in telling our stories. Telling our stories in whatever level of craft we know and then at some point, as I said, authenticity is its own aesthetic.
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So trust in that part that as long as your authentic craft will take care of its own, so that will happen.
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You just have to go for authenticity and that's what I think Mr. Ray and his cinema kind of taught me and especially The Apu Trilogy and then the Calcutta Trilogy.
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These were two and then how he kind of his last film also, Agantuk.
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The one thing we see generally is that after a point most of the creators kind of have a burnout or kind of lose interest or kind of take things for granted but it was like to see that film and to know that this is their last film, which is I think true for a lot of great artists.
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The last work they have created is really impactful. It's something where it kind of looks like they knew this is their last work and sometimes they do know and sometimes they don't.
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Like Miyazaki's last film, The Wind Rises again has that quality of someone very clearly like writing the last chapter of their autobiography or you know last.
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So it's very clear this is what they want the world to kind of think about them and their work and how they have interacted with the world, which is very, very clear in Satyajit Ray's last work also.
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And that just the entire filmography of Mr. Ray. That has not just inspired me in a whatever in an artistic manner, okay, this is the kind of artist I aspire to be and all.
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But generally how to like again how to just interact with the world on a day to day basis and stay curious forever, forever you can afford to.
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Of course, at some point the health will take over and probably can't stay curious enough about things outside of yourself.
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But again that is their job. Then I would say there are of course snatches of world cinema, there is some French film and then Michael Hennecke has been a really serious influence and someone who is very, very impressive.
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Or Kieslowski, again another great artist who is just so involved in the characters and in the stories and always finding the humanity in people no matter what, you know, how, how, how, whatever.
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For me Decalogue is like just a peak of filmmaking.
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Absolutely, Decalogue and the Three Colours and then there are some of his other works which are outside of Decalogue which were kind of the full length features out of Decalogue.
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Those two films, Short Film about Killing and Love.
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So all of that is, it just creates a new, you know, it's not just almost like it's not a new aesthetic, it's a new form of filmmaking which he created with those, you know, with his very, it's not a big body of work he has created and still it is so impactful.
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So these are some of the people I would say. Then books, Hindi main ne zyada padha hai, Angrezi kam padha hai, jo bhi padha hai usme again kyunki bahut nahi padha hai toh utna mere pass distinction nahi hain.
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But ek kitab jo shuru mein sabse yada mujhe Angrezi kitab jo bahut zyada influence kiya tha, wo Arundhati Roy ki God of Small Things thi, the first time I read it.
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I just, I was blown away ki istare ki poetry, Angrezi mein possib hai. Hindi mein main poetry aur poetic kitabe bahut padhi thi, jis mein ki almost the language is flowing like poetry from Dharamveer Bharti to Hari Shankar Prasai ke Satyar ho gaye,
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or Shrilal Shukla ka Raag Darbari ho gaye, or Uday Prakash, one of the recent, I would say, recent greats. Hindi mein do dhor rahe hain ek tarahe se shayad mere kyaal se, pre 70s generation which were all the, you know, legends of Hindi literature and even Urdu literature of those times.
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And then there was a lull almost, post 70s there have been very few, but 70s to 2000s is one period where, you know, Uday Prakash was there.
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Then there is that post Chetan Bhagat generation which is the new, you know, new wave of Hindi literature which is very kind of after Chetan Bhagat kind of, you know, showed the world that
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these very simple stories about concerns of the modern youth can kind of have a market value.
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And toh uske baad hindi mein wo ju naya ek dhor rahe hain, jis mein aaj ke writers hain, Satya Vyas and Nikhil Sachan and the, toh wo ek alag dhor hai, wo maine nahi zyada parha hai aur wo mere, matlab main usse nahi relate kar paata hoon.
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But in pre 70s, Sumanohar Shyam Joshi is someone I am, like, constantly amazed by unki writing. Nair Masood is one Urdu writer jis ko, jin ko recently maine discover kiya kuch 2-3 saal paile hai.
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Aur mujhe nahi lagta hai ki puri duniya mein, if you make a list of top 5 short stories, of course it's a very subjective kind of a thing, but short story over. Nair Masood sahab, toh this is a collection of his short stories.
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This is an English collection, yeah, collected short stories. Toh unko agar aap hindi mein padh paye toh bahut hi kamaal ka hai. I don't know, translation mein kitna aayega.
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But again, I think you will get the impact, at least just the craft of it, because weaving a short story is a very, very delicate craft.
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Toh Nair Masood sahab ko padha aur achanak se, maine jitni bhi short stories padhi hai, wo sab ek kinare ho gayi aur then Nair Masood ek samne aa gayi.
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Because he was, I think, at some point he was translating a lot of Kafka into Urdu. So he has that, whatever, that eye for abstract and weird and bizarre and still has that language of
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Lucknow ki ek bahut hi sundar si zaban aur phir usz zaban ke jo details hain aur phir usz world ke jo details hain Lucknow ke, jo unhone dekha hai 50s, 60s, 70s ka shayad.
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Khaas kar gaya I think 60s to 80s wala jo daur tha Lucknow ka. Toh Nair Masood hain, unki wajah se maine actually, one of the reasons I learnt reading Urdu, because unki bahut kam kahaniya Hindi me translate hui hain.
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Aur Hindi me hoti hain toh phir bhi bahut saare Urdu love rehte hain usme, lekin toh isli Hindi me padhne me maza aata hain, but phir bhi maine socha ki original Urdu me jo likha hai aur
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bahut saare kahaniya hain usme hain abhi exist karte hain, jo abhi translate bhi nahi hui hain. So Nair Masood is another great writer, I am very very blessed to read and then Shamsur Rahman Farooqi sahab,
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again another, unko sirf writer kahna, he was one of the greatest critics and observer of language and culture, jo unka interpretation jo raha hai poetry ka, Alip ka, Akbar Elabadi ka,
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aur Urdu ka jo bhi pura culture raha hai, Urdu literary world ka, so he has constantly been, he was constantly adding more insights and layers to our understanding of what they have achieved in that world.
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Toh aur unka phir abhi recently jo, recently malo kuch time ho gaya hai, kyaar maine recently padha ho, kahi chaan the, Sare Asma, that novel, jo ki ek toh itna ghazab ka premai se uska,
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about, just, Daagh Dahilvi, jo Urdu ke shahar rahe hai, unka lineage, unhone kuch 600-700 saal ki kahani hain, 600-700 saal ki, or 400-500 saal,
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kam se kam 500 saal ki, before the British era, and wahan se unki lineage trace karte-karte, har generation ki kahani aur kis tarah se ho yaha toh kaunche jaha pe, finally we come to Daagh Dahilvi,
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but it's the story of Daagh Dahilvi, actually the central character is Daagh Dahilvi's mother, but unke upar jate-jate kahani hain, itni saari kahani hain, usme khulti jati hain, har kahani, har page main kahi-kahi baar padta hoon, kyunki har description khubh surat hain,
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and it's a, at some point you think, okay, it is not fiction because a lot of it is actually oral history of that family, but then at most of the points it is just an anthropological study of those times,
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and cultures, jab wo kapdaon ki baat karte hain, toh wo 2-3 page main wo kapda banta kaise tha, kaun si cheez usme kahan se aati thi, kaise weaving process kya tha, rang kahan se aata tha,
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aur phir wo moti kahan se aate the, aur kis tarah se usko pehna jata tha, kis tarah se usko doya jata tha, 2-3 page uspe hain, phir koi khaane ki agar baat hori hai,
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toh phir wo recipe kahan se chalke wahan tak aayi thi, aur kaisi wo banti hai, aur kaisi usko khaate hain, aur agar wo jada khaalo toh bimaar ho jao, toh phir uska ilaj kya hai,
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ustare ki bohot saari galiyon mein wo leke jaate hain, aur ustare ki koi cheez main ne kabhi padhi nahi hain, ustare ka koi novel, I don't think exists karta hai duniya mein, where it is as much a novel as a historical document, as an anthropological study,
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as just whatever, as an encyclopedia of a particular time period in a particular kind of family, just encyclopedia about everything from customs to clothing to food,
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to toh ye kuch cheeze hain jo bohot pasand hain jo top of my mind maine boli, uske alawa of course there are thousand other things which I can't really think of right now.
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But a very fine writer you should read her, so she had also mentioned Ayer Masood and then she spotted the book, which was on the shelf at that time,
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and you mentioned last films and you know that's very interesting, like Louis Bunuel's last three films for example which he made in the 70s,
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or John Huston made The Dead which was based on the James Joyce short story which is so moving, one of those films that really made a mark on me,
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and I was also struck by what you said about Ray that it was more than a cinema and I think I know what you mean, that it was more than the aesthetic,
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it's also the ethic of engaging with the world in the way that he did till his last days,
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and that's also an ethic that I clearly see in you as well, in your work, so hoping for more conversations and to see much more of your work.
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Thank you so much boss, you've spent quite a few hours, there's been a fire outside, don't know what's happening in the world, Twitter must be missing you.
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It was a crazy day, I'm missing Twitter, Twitter is not missing me, I tweet rarely nowadays but I keep scrolling and finding more and more things to make me anxious.
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It's called doom scrolling.
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Yeah, it's called doom scrolling, so I thought Insta is kind of pleasure scrolling but now Insta is also turning into doom scrolling.
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I don't know where to go now.
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Just make it in your mind.
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Okay, it was a lot of fun, I feel I kind of rambled a lot but I think that's also the fun of this podcast that you allow people to ramble and then you find things from that long ramble.
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No, I keep the full ramble because I think the ramble is a point, I think too many people will listen to a conversation and they'll be like what are the bullet points, what take aways are there, I don't want that.
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There must be a place where there's an informal conversation. Yes, that's why in the beginning I was, even though I've heard the podcast but then you kind of keep telling yourself I'm not that kind of person who will ramble and then it was great fun actually.
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And we will hopefully do another soon but depending on how much love or hate we get, we should not care actually but we'll see.
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We should not care but depending on how you feel about this later. Anyway, we'll see about that later but thank you so much for today.
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You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
