The Hateful Kashyap - part I

Part -1 – the Prologue

“I am a sucker for Shahrukh Khan”, said Anupama Chopra in one of her reviews and probably on her show on channel Zoom, while reviewing Chennai Express. I guess I know what she meant but I am not aware if there was any pun in that sentence. If we take out that pun and see what she actually meant I would say I am a sucker for Anurag Kashyap.

I have read what Parallel Cinema is…I have known what is Italian Neo Realism and French New Wave. And I would like to believe, even if Kashyap himself doesn’t, that he is in the process of giving the hugest contribution to the cinema world. May it be Directing, Writing, Editing (for Queen, 2014) or for that matter producing a few content wise promising films. For the emerging and aspiring film makers he is known as most accessible and sensible director-producer. He is an inspiration to many. An Atheist himself, Anurag, is The God for many. I don’t believe in the term God or the names given to the idols that are worshipped, but I believe in the positive energy around, to which, people have named - God. The strength of your belief is the level positivity in the energy.

I am fond of cinema. I am not a clichéd person to say that cinema is my first wife…but I love this phenomenon more than how much I might love my wife. And if someone is doing good for something you love the most, you tend to like that someone too. Hence, as a small time tribute from all what I could manage to do it, I decided to shoot a Short-film dedicated to Anurag Kashyap.

The film was called, Being Kashyap.

The lingering thought of doing this one thing for the person who keeps me inspiring and motivated, even without his physical presence and relation with me, got its way out of my mind in December – 13 while I was doing a short term film making course in Pune, just to answer the people who judge the film-makers, not on their films or work, but on where they have learnt. So I had to have the best course and the smallest course as I didn’t want to waste my time attending lectures and writing 15,000 words thesis. I was studying at Vikshi Institute of Media Studies, where A.S.Kanal and his better half, Jayashree Kanal teach the basic film-making.

That way-out of the lingering thought was in the form of dialogues. Dialogues - that would be delivered by the true and genuine fan of Anurag Kashyap. It was when a huge smile came on my face when I saw a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, where we hear a gunshot. In the frame we see a white horse running, being ridden by the character called, Big Daddy…and with that gunshot the film goes high-speed (Slow-motion) so does the sound…and we see blood spilling down the horse’s legs and after a moment Big Daddy enters the frame, falling down, being shot dead and falls down going out of the frame. The rider less horse keeps running.

The huge smile was because I felt that Kashyap is the superb mixture of three-four things together, the Quentin Tarantino, the Martin Scorsese, some garnished Woody Allen and on top of everything, the main thing…Anurag Kashyap himself. The scene of Gulaal, 2009, during the final combat where Dilip is storming into Duke Bana’s Rajwadha, he shoots a couple of guards. The shot is this way, Dilip is climbing stairs and only the lower half portion is in the frame, camera is flowing him from behind and we hear a shot, camera keeps on following and as Dilip is storming in we see a guard lying dead on the right and we hear another shot again as he is walking up, a guard enters the frame rolling down the stairs and frames out. Both the scenes do not reveal the killing in their frames but show is the impact of the gun shot that is heard.

This is one example where I could see the co-incidental similarity of thoughts between Tarantino n Kashyap. Taking into consideration many such examples I felt that I don’t know If I would be working with Kashyap ever ahead…but what I really want is not working with him or for him but I want him to be fond of me or my work somewhere in the future. At least he should be proud of me and feel somewhat nice about him being my inspiration.

And that’s where the writing of Being Kashyap began...

With the Last scene written first and with the initial thoughts kept last.

To be continued…