Mikhail Anand; (right) Mukul Anand

The flipside of nepotism, if one were to argue, is that star kids have the onus of taking ahead their family legacy. So, charting one’s own path becomes all the more important. That’s the note on which we kick off our chat with Mikhail Anand, son of the late Mukul S Anand, director of films like Agneepath (1990) and Khuda Gawah (1992). Mikhail is set to make his directorial debut with the short film, The Dinner Invite, starring Divya Dutta, Natasha Bharadwaj and Parzaan Dastur.

Asked about the learnings from his father that he has used in the film, Mikhail says, “He was relentless in pursuit of his vision; he pushed himself to extreme lengths to achieve it. I want to approach every moment on the set with the same passion and conviction.” The crime comedy was shot in Alibaug on November 18 and 19. 

Mukul was all of 45 when he died of a heart attack in 1997. He was in Utah shooting the action film, Dus, which was to feature Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. The film remained incomplete after his demise. Does he feel the pressure of carrying forward his filmmaker father’s legacy? Mikhail says, “I feel a little pressure following in the footsteps of someone whose stories are so loved and well-remembered, but I view the legacy as a blessing. That’s what I plan to focus on, as I try to create my own legacy.”

Sit With Hitlist: Maverick director Anurag Kashyap traces his journey in the movies -- from a wannabe actor in college to now -- via funny, never-heard-before anecdotes
Mayank Shekhar (MID-DAY; June 12, 2020)

The first time ever that filmmaker Imtiaz Ali saw what a portfolio looked like — an album with photos of a person, in multiple looks and poses — was that of an actor called Anurag Kashyap. Back then, Ali was in college in Delhi, helping out a local TV serial crew, when Kashyap approached him with his portfolio.

"It was 1992. Imtiaz was in [Delhi's] Hindu College. I had just discovered theatre, and was told that you need to get pictures clicked, if you want work. I did, after collecting Rs 3000, which was a big sum then. And I started doing a lot of acting on stage, and I did some films," the candid Kashyap recalls.

Ever since Ali told me about that portfolio (in jest, during an interview), I've been meaning to ask Kashyap about it. Besides, he is before me on the screen — this conversation being held over a video-conferencing app. And the last time I saw him on screen was as an actor in the recent, cutesy Zee5 release, Ghoomketu, where he played a cop. Kashyap shuts his eyes with his palm, feigning embarrassment at the mention!

"Also, what Imtiaz did not tell you was one of the first films that I did as the lead-actor, he was my co-star. The only copy of the film is with Zee, where it had premiered on January 26, 1994. We don't talk about it. Imtiaz will kill me. If you ever pull out a copy from the Zee library, he will come after you too!"

"The good thing about being a bad actor is you know how to extract great performances," Kashyap tells me later. Which in his case, I'm told, notoriously involves hardly ever saying "action" or "cut" on set. Often, no lines for actors to mug up, let alone extensive rehearsals, before shoot. It's a process only the best can survive.

Ali, of course, played the '93 Bombay bomb blast accused Yakub Memon in Kashyap's first release, Black Friday (2007). He played a bigger role in his life, if you consider that Kashyap used to shack up at Ali's place while the latter was doing a post-grad course at Mumbai's Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC).

This is also how Kashyap first met his key associate, Vikramaditya Motwane, with whom he later founded the production company, Phantom, where they did a string of films together. Kashyap also produced Motwane's directorial debut, Udaan (2010). Likewise, Motwane was the show-runner for the Netflix global series Sacred Games (2018), which Kashyap directed both seasons of.

He reminisces, "I couldn't get into XIC, and was living in Imtiaz's room. Aarti Bajaj, my first wife and permanent editor for both mine and Imtiaz's films, was a year junior. Vikramaditya Motwane was Aarti's classmate. That's how we knew each other. But we really became friends during the shoot of [Deepa Mehta's] Water. Vikram was an assistant, and I was writing dialogues. The shoot got stalled [due to protests], and we spent a lot of time in Banaras. Thereafter, I kept meeting him because he was first assistant director (AD) to Vishal Bhardwaj in his first film called Barf, before Maqbool — that never got made."

In fact, if it wasn't for spotting Motwane — somewhere in the back, in a baseball hat — in a picture from the 'mahurat shot' of Kashyap's directorial debut Paanch, that he had posted on Twitter, I wouldn't have known that the two went that far back together. No, it wasn't the film's anniversary being celebrated on social-media. Can't be. That movie never released.

Kashyap says, "Yeah, that was sometime around 2000. Vikram was one of the sound designers on Paanch. And because I was scared of shooting songs, and he had been Sanjay Leela Bhansali's assistant, I asked him to direct the songs. He had two credits in the film — sound designer, and director of songs. It was a first for many people —Bosco-Caesar as choreographer, Natty [Natarajan Subramanian] as cameraman, Wasiq Khan as art director, Aarti Bajaj as editor. Abbas Tyrewala was the lyricist in the film and Vishal Bhardwaj did the music. Both of them, Vikram, I and others, used to hang out together. Then, there was Sriram Raghavan, Shivam Nair and a whole lot of others — part of another gang. Even Tigmanshu Dhulia, Irrfan and others were all close to my brother [Abhinav]. That was the third gang. I was the centre-point, everywhere. And then I had another friends' circle, with Anand Surapur [who directed Fakir Of Venice, Farhan Akhtar's acting debut], Zoya Akhtar and the lot. When I wrote a script, I had way too many boards to bounce off. And that's what we did!

"I was a huge fan of Sriram Raghavan's Raman Raghav [a docu-drama on a serial killer that Kashyap remade in 2016]. And I used to write with Shiva Nair. They gave me credit on their [script] Ranga Billa, although I was happy to work without credit. Likewise, I rewrote a script of Shiv Subramaniam, Auto Narayan, because I had a take on it. But they also gave me credit. Then a strange thing happened, with a script I wrote officially, for the first time, called Nagarajan — with Kamal Swaroop (Om Darbadar) as director. For that film, I found an actor I was a fan of from Delhi stage, called Manoj Bajpayee. I put the film together. But it never happened. Nobody was showing faith in Manoj. He was going through a hard time and doing Ram Gopal Varma's Daud, which is when Ramu ji said he wanted to make a film [Satya] with Manoj. And asked if he knew of a writer for it. Without having seen any of my written works, Manoj took me to Ram Gopal Varma."

The rest, as they say — if you casually scroll up the 'gangs'/cast of characters again — is history. Of post-millennial, part indie, part commercial, wholly entertaining Hindi cinema. Charge of the bright brigade, if you will. The new subversive Bollywood, arguably. It helps that Kashyap was not just at the centre of several spokes (and that he continues to be).

But that he's also a liberal raconteur: "Oh, one of my favourite stories is about Mahesh Bhatt. He happened to me, right before Ram Gopal Varma. He got me to write films. And Mukesh Bhatt [his brother, and producer] was very miserly with money. I was struggling for rent. Pooja Bhatt was the nicest and kindest; I would tell her to talk to her dad."

"Then I just walked up to [Mahesh] Bhatt saab once and said that I'd rather be a carpenter than work in his office. With his brother [Mukesh] around, he didn't say a word. When I was leaving, he came down, said, 'Don't ever change.' And he put Rs 10,000 in my hand. That was big money in 1994-1995."

Years later, at a post-screening event in a film-festival abroad, Kashyap was narrating the first part of the story above. He heard a voice from the audience: "Aur Mahesh Bhatt ne paise diye the. Woh bhool gaye?" "Bhatt saab was sitting in the crowd. I got so emotional. I have had funny incidents like these."

"I remember [the media maven] Amit Khanna trying to hold me back to work on TV serials, where there was so much money. Naseeruddin Shah also cast me in a play, Androcles And The Lion. I walked out of everything to do [Varma's] Satya. It was instinctive. I had to write that film."

My favourite Kashyap story is about a prominent '90s film-critic who was chatting with Ram Gopal Varma on the sets of Shool. Gazing at a young Kashyap, who had written the film, and mainly to haze him, he asked Varma if his bratty assistant even knew what the word 'shool' meant. Kashyap stuck out his three fingers, "That's tri-shool." Staring at him still, he left his middle-finger pointed up: "And this is shool!"

He repeats the punch-line/move, laughs, continues: "There was a time when Mukul Anand was making Trimurti (1995). I wanted to work with him as an assistant. I would call his house land-line. Every call was a rupee gone. And he was always busy. Third time I said, 'Subhash Ghai bol raha hoon. Unko bolna kal se set pe aane ki zarurat nahin hai [This is producer Subhash Ghai, tell him not to show up on the sets from tomorrow],' and hung up. Now when somebody trolls me on social media, I just remember my time!"

There is then the moment he randomly landed up at Shah Rukh Khan's bungalow Mannat (he mistakenly calls it Jannat) on Bandstand: "I was hungry and I walked into his house, using our college connection [both went to Hansraj in Delhi]. I remember him feeding me. He only knew how to make omelette."

And then, there are the more famous spats, with those clichéd kickers, 'Anurag Kashyap ko gussa kyun aata hai': "Karan Johar gave an interview calling me a psychopath. Till then we had not met. I called him a fat kid, who still thinks he is in school. Remember we had this fight in mid-day. I also said something about Anil Kapoor in the interview that became a headline. But people always knew I was childlike."

Of course much about public exchanges have changed since the late 2000s, where the audience is now equally a participant — altering and shaping opinions on public figures, based on beliefs, rather than any first-hand knowledge. Despite lack of the latter, one opinion is as good as the other.

Kashyap vividly remembers, "I bought my first laptop, and discovered the Internet. What's the first thing you do then? Google yourself. I landed on a page where people were talking about me and my films with incorrect information. I was also going through a phase when everybody was saying things that I am not. I told them this is not true. These people were like, who told you? I said I am Anurag Kashyap! They said, why don't you start talking? I said fine, I'll talk, assuming 20 people will read."
That website was called Passion For Cinema (PFC). If you'll excuse the exaggeration, it was Bombay/Versova's very own Cahiers du Cinema, with diverse/off-stream voices expressing themselves as critics/bloggers, before filmmakers.

Kashyap cites, "Chaitanya Tamhane [Court], Anand Gandhi [Ship of Theseus], Dibakar Banerjee, even before his first movie… There was [composer] Sneha Khanwalkar, Kartik Krishnan, who runs Filter Copy… So many names. Vasan Bala [Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota] and Neeraj Ghaywan [Masaan] quit their jobs. Suddenly many of these people started working with me. We were raising money. My office-space became a kind of dharamshala. People stayed and lived there — all we could provide was food."

This alternate eco-system might be Kashyap's far more dramatic contribution to films, than merely his movies alone. He's perhaps a film buff/activist, first. And this has always been the case. He's gone to the extent of rescuing actor Rajpal Yadav from Andheri railway station, since he was returning to his hometown, having given up. That's when, Kashyap says, he first met the nondescript Nawazuddin Siddiqui, standing next to Yadav.

At a data/practical level, consider the ensemble cast of Gangs Of Wasseypur (GOW; 2012), which looks now like the first batch of national school of lead-actors, for films and web-series — besides Nawaz, Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Richa Chadha, Huma Qureshi, even Jaideep Ahlawat, who killed it in the deathly dark Paatal Lok. Or, why not Vicky Kaushal, since he assisted Kashyap in GoW!

Also, over years, he's allowed unfettered access to young/untested/fresh writing-directing talents, having actively produced their films, lent his name/heft for no benefit to himself; or generally egged on peers and past associates alike. "Who am I? Someone like Martin Scorsese still makes time for that," Kashyap reasons. Speaking of which, and exploring the film-buff side still — in a very PFC fan-boy sort of way — Kashyap equally lights up when you ask about his Alice/Anurag In Wonderland moments, meeting his own greats.

Like Scorsese, for instance who, after having watched GOW, invited him to be on the jury of the Marrakech film festival. Before Scorsese walked in, Kashyap was smoking outside with the Oscar winning Italian director Paulo Sorrentino, without knowing it was Sorrentino! Both were nervously puffing away.

"When Scorsese sat down on his table — me, [German-Turkish star-director] Fatih Akin, [French sensation] Marion Cotillard, [Italian star] Golshifteh Farahani…We were all equals, looking up to him. We were also there, because of him!"

Or this other time, Kashyap was in the same room as Francis Ford Coppola, "Sophia Coppola, his daughter, was with him. He is old. I kept staring at him for so long that he made me sit on his lap and said, now talk to me!"

These are of course perks of having your works travel among audiences/aesthetes abroad, as Kashyap's (both as producer and director) have, especially at the movie Mecca, Cannes. Plus a global streaming giant like Netflix helps reach around 200 countries simultaneously.

Since Netflix began commissioning Indian content only three-four years ago, Kashyap has already directed two shorts (in the self-explanatory Lust Stories, Ghost Stories), directed-produced two seasons of a show (the underworld saga Sacred Games), produced a zombie mini-series (Ghoul), and directed a feature (Choked).

While the Netflix model evidently allows him to go out of the box (office), as it were, there is also the mainstream audience that can't be altogether alienated. I know at least one friend who did not understand Kashyap's short film in Ghost Stories at all. While the others were gently scratching their heads, it went totally over hers. It was the same look on theatrical audiences with Kashyap's No Smoking (2007). Where does he stand on the art for self-expression versus art for mass-communication debate?

"No film is ever made with the intention of people not getting it. I just don't like to over-explain. So, I try to leave hints here and there. With Ghost Stories, I thought absolutely everybody will get it. The idea behind that was of a woman dealing with her own trauma. Then Zoya [Akhtar] pointed out that I could have confused people by putting the kid in there. No Smoking taught me how not to make Choked. Both are magic realism."

Choked is about kitchen and bathroom plumbing, choking with money/cash! It's also the first Indian filmic commentary on the 2016 demonetisation. Screenshots of related scenes from the film are already doing the rounds as memes on the Internet. Which is the default pop-culture response to most of Kashyap's films.

For instance, the tagline Emotional Atyachar in Dev D (2009). Where does that come from? "There was a line in the song Pardesi, that went, 'Ikke ho gaye, agge yaar'. Sounded like atyachar to me, which is what I kept humming, when 'emotional' hit my head at night, so I called [composer] Amit Trivedi to write it down. The brass band elements came from Kamal Swaroop's Om Darbadar and Emir Kasturica's The Underground. I told Amit and [lyricist] Amitabh Bhattacharya, "Band ko record karna hai. Emotional atyachar gaana hai. Baaki, you guys figure out."

What about the running/chase sequence in Black Friday (2007)? "There were too many arrests to be shown in Black Friday, so we just compressed them with a chase, where we could see the world these characters [blast-accused] came from." How about 'Tumse naa ho payega' from GOW? "That was all in Tigmanshu Dhulia's delivery!" And what about… Okay, this could leap across pages. Will stop now. Deserves a series.

Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; December 11, 2017)

Long before Rohit Shetty’s first collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, Chennai Express (2013), the two were reportedly keen on remaking Gulzar’s cult comedy Angoor (1982) and had even acquired the rights for it. The idea of recreating the classic took a back seat again, when SRK and Rohit worked together on the action-romance Dilwale in 2015. Recently, when we met with the filmmaker, post the success of his last film Golmaal Returns, we asked him whether recreating Angoor with Shah Rukh Khan was still on his mind. He said, “If you give SRK (a film like) Angoor, he will make it into a watermelon! It’s a very sweet story. But when we try to make a simple film bigger, its essence and sweetness diminishes and it goes into another zone. I can go to a hill station, and make a film like Angoor in two months and come back. But I’m still wondering if I want to make a film on that scale or not.” His reasoning is not misplaced, because generally, when a filmmaker like Rohit teams up with an actor like SRK, the audience expects the film to be made on a mega canvas.

Talking about what inspires him to make films that are larger than life, Rohit said, “When we were kids, we looked up to filmmakers like Vijay Anand and Manmohan Desai. Later, when we worked as assistant directors, we were inspired by filmmakers like Mukul Anand. Back then, they didn’t have big budgets but even then they made grand films. Now we have the budgets and technical advantage, but strangely, fewer grand films. My schooling in movies comes from films of those days. So for me, cinema is 70mm, larger than life. When someone sees a film in theaters, it should be a big cinematic experience.”

Some time ago, there were also talks of Rohit remaking Ram Lakhan (1989), but that doesn’t seem to be on the cards either.

Soumya Vajpayee Tiwari (MID-DAY; January 1, 2017)

Ehsaan (Noorani), Loy (Mendonsa) and I (Shankar Mahadevan) were friends since we worked together in the advertising field. But we never imagined that the three of us would be doing music for films together. We were doing a Pepsi commercial for Mukul Anand and he offered Ehsaan to do music for his next film, Dus. Ehsaan refused immediately. But when Mukul pushed him, he said he’d do it if Loy and I also do the film. We met Mukul and had the narration.

When we reached the studio to record the first song, the makers and people from the industry were all there. They asked Mukul who the composer of the film was and he pointed at us. Everyone was surprised to see three composers. They were shocked that there were no musicians, arrangers and music coordinators, etc. Mukul said these three would do everything. So they told Mukul, “Boss, tumne kisko sign kiya hai!” They’d completely given up. In the evening, we recorded the first song, Chandni, and they were floored. They offered us the entire soundtrack! A few days later, Mukul called me from New York, before we were about to record the most important song of the film, Suno Gaur Se Duniya Waalon. He blessed us, saying, “It’s a patriotic number, but I want it to play for every cricket and football match, and even at clubs.” We did the song and the team loved it.

But Mukul passed away during the making of the movie and Dus got stalled. We were happy doing jingles, but we were upset that our career in the film industry saw such a low right at the beginning. It was then that Nitin Manmohan (the producer of Dus), shot a video for Suno Gaur Se to pay tribute to Mukul. The song took off. It played everywhere, from cricket matches to clubs. Mukul was and has been a guiding force. Later, Vidhu Vinod Chopra gave us Mission Kashmir and Farhan (Akhtar) gave us Dil Chahta Hai.

Priya Gupta (BOMBAY TIMES; January 28, 2014)

Shekhar Ravjiani, 38, is a Kutchi, born and brought up in South Mumbai. He is emotional, sensitive and simple. Emotionally, he depends only on himself and is vulnerable only in front of God. While he is usually calm, there are times when he has a bad temper. He loves his daughter Bipasha the most, considers himself blunt and travels to different places when he is not working. His biggest critics are his daughter and wife Chhaya, who are currently hooked on to his latest song Zehnaseeb from the upcoming film Hasee Toh Phasee. Over an hour-long conversation with Bombay Times in his studio, he talks about the mad Sujoy Ghosh, the extremely talented Sukhwinder Singh and why he needs to go to London every two months. Excerpts:
 
How was the duo of Vishal-Shekhar formed?
Music was a hobby for me. It was also in the family as my dad played the accordion. My dad was a share trader, but it was therapeutic for him to play his favourite songs on the accordion in the evening. Mum also had a beautiful voice and would sing. Their friends would come home and they would have music sessions. We lived very close to Jagjit Singh sahab, who was a close family friend. He would come home and I would go to his house when he was doing riyaz and would attend his concerts. I started learning classical music at eight and then the piano. At 17, my father got me a big keyboard and I started making music just for fun. A friend of mine once came home and said, ‘Why don't you create jingles?’ I didn’t even know what a jingle was, but was happy to do it. He took me to Mad Films to meet Mukul Anand, who coincidentally was making Dus at that time. He liked my stuff and asked me to make a title track for Dus. While the track could finally not be used in the film, it was a great experience just being with Mukul and learning from him. I also started doing a lot of ad jingles for him. At 20, my friend pushed me to audition for Sa Re Ga Ma where I got selected. I was 23 when Raj Kaushal, who had been Mukul’s assistant, gave me two songs to compose for his film Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi. One day, I was leaving the studio and bumped into Vishal Dadlani. As it happens, Vishal and I had met years back, when a common friend had got us together in a band, to perform for the Nofra Navy Ball, since both of us belonged to South Mumbai. He played the guitar and I, the keyboard, and that was like one of the worst bands in the world. Coincidentally, he had also been asked by Raj to compose two songs for the same film. We exchanged our stuff and decided to make the title track together. We felt our collaboration had worked and Vishal-Shekhar was formed. We set up out first studio in 2002 inside a marble factory in Worli, next to a graveyard. While we have now moved to a better place in Bandra, that first studio will always remain special to us.

What is Vishal like?
He is a kind-hearted soul and a good man. Despite not having formal training in music, he is extremely talented and a fantastic singer, composer and writer. We are very different as people, but there is something about our friendship, that is the strong bond between us. Our combination is the force. I believe that everyone who comes into your life is destined.
 
You were obviously upset with Shah Rukh asking Honey Singh to make Lungi Dance for Chennai Express. What went wrong?
Shah Rukh is and will always remain a family member. No misunderstanding can change that. Every family has that and we are now creating this mad album for Happy New Year. Shah Rukh is a really nice human being and a lot of fun. He also has a great sense of music and is a super guy. I bumped into Yo Yo Honey Singh and he is a very sweet guy. I enjoy collaboration and whenever the opportunity comes to work together, it will be fun. His music is doing well and at the end of the day, the audience decides what it likes.
 
We earlier saw music directors singing their own songs and now see music directors singing each other’s songs.
Every single song chooses its own singer. Music directors like Shankar Mahadevan can sing anything. I am also a big fan of his music and we are really good friends and play each other’s music to each other, when we hang out together. I also like Amit Trivedi and Pritam’s music. We have heard stories of how Panchamda and Laxmikant Pyarelal would sit and drink together and jam and sometimes even help each other if they got stuck somewhere.
 
Your favourite singers?
I love Sukhwinder Singh. He is unbelievable and becomes a part of the song he sings. I also like Shankar Mahadevan, Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal.
 
Most promising new singers?
Arijit Singh, Sanam Puri, Neeti Mohan, Nitesh Kadam, and Nandini Srikar.
 
Other music directors you really like?
There were three people whose music I always bought when I started. AR Rahman, Ismail Darbar and Vishal Bhardwaj. They are fantastic.
 
Which directors have you enjoyed working the most with?
We had a lot of fun working with Sujoy Ghosh, Milan Luthria (Taxi No. 9211, The Dirty Picture) and Anubhav Sinha (RA.One). Sujoy is a dear friend with a big heart and is totally mad. Milan and Anubhav are very musically inclined. Also, Farah Khan, who is extremely clear about what she wants and for her, it’s always a clear yes or no. If she doesn't like a song, she will say, ‘Yeh Sujoy (Ghosh) ko de do.’
 
Your song Zehnaseeb from Hasee Toh Phasee, sung by you, is beautiful. Talk about it?
I asked Amitabh Bhattacharya, the lyricist of the song, if he knew of a new word and he said ‘betehaasha’ meaning ‘bahut’. He said, ‘I have another word also and the word is ‘zehnaseeb’ meaning ‘fortunate’. It sounded beautiful, but since I had liked ‘betehaasha’ also, he put both in that song, Tujhe chahoon betehaasha zehnaseeb. We recorded the song and Karan Johar, who is extremely musical, loved it. We kept it on the backburner, till Karan met me two months later and asked for it to be put in the film.
 
Talk about yourself?
I sometimes get up at 2 in the morning and start playing the piano in my living room if I’ve got a song in my head, without realising that there are other people sleeping at home. Sometimes, I just go off on a long drive in the evening to clear my head. Or I will just take off for two days to London all by myself. I take walks around to disconnect. There is a place called Serpentine in Hyde Park, where I just like to sit with my cup of coffee and be totally blank. I try and do it once every two months. In a creative process, there is a lot of usage of your brain cells and you start feeling claustrophobic and exhausted after a while and want to disconnect. But, come to think of it, I feel really blessed to be the chosen one, to be able to create music, be able to sing a little, have a beautiful family and be happy at work. From a time, years back, when I had visited Film Centre to see a recording with 180 musicians, it was destiny to have got to work with the same number of musicians myself in Om Shanti Om. I have no regrets in life.