Having dabbled in acting, writing and direction in his long career, veteran artiste Saurabh Shukla is not yet ready to be tied down to any particular genre and is constantly looking forward to exploring new opportunities. “It’s one life, so I am not going to settle for one! I want to do everything and not restrict myself to just acting, writing, directing, doing theatre or playing table tennis. I try to do whatever I want to,” says the National Award-winning actor, who is currently shooting for his upcoming web series, Bindiya, in Lucknow.

He adds, “I try to compartmentalize and concentrate on things that are going on and are in hand. Jis waqt jo cheez aap sehej tarah se kar paa rahe hain, woh kariye… it’s as simple as that. We all try to balance out things as much as we can.”

After the second wave of Coronavirus, he shot for Siddharth Sen Gupta’s series Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein and another project, titled Fear. “In between, I directed a film. And two of my big films — Karan Malhotra’s Shamshera and Milan Luthria’s Tadap will hopefully get a theatrical release,” he says.

The Raid (2018) actor is of the view that some films are made for theatrical experience and should be viewed only on the big screen. “What we call quintessential Bollywood cinema has its own idiom with panache, songs, fanfare and collective cinematic experience. On the other hand, on OTT, it’s more about realism and edgy content, touching upon things and issues that cinema had skipped (to avoid controversies and censorship) all this while,” he says.

Talking about the pandemic, Shukla admits that it did trouble him a lot, but couldn’t slow him down: “In the first lockdown, I became restless. So, with the help of my cinematographer friends, I learnt operating cameras. With trial and error, I started shooting on my own, sans any script, and after months of shooting, I made a 90-minute film that I wrote, directed, acted in and even edited myself.”