For Pravesh Bharadwaj, a writer and maker of B-grade films, writing is a funny catharsis. He writes into the night creating pages of off-beat stories, which Bharadwaj feels can make the audience sit up and think. He says, his intuition helps him understand the multi-level games played out right from the time a story is put out into the public domain.
“My time is not over yet. It will begin soon. The lines on my palms cannot be wrong all the time,” says the soft-spoken storyteller from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, who is waiting to arrive. Bharadwaj came to Mumbai in 1992 to make films. Like many others, who come to the mayanagari—the city of illusions—as Mumbai is known in the Hindi film industry, to make it big in films, he too packed his bags and traveled by train to the city. He did not know anyone. For him, it was a journey with a one-way ticket.
For some time, he took up employment to earn money to help fund his Bollywood dreams. While he worked, he also tried his hand at film direction. When his directorial debut Mr. Singh/Mrs. Mehta hit the theatres, he quit his job to concentrate on making films. The less-than expected performance of the film hit him in the gut a while, but he bounced back to make another, Niyati. The structure of the film, according to Bharadwaj, is unique, Niyati has not yet been released.
His debut directorial venture for TV was a Hindi serial entitled Shaheen. “I wrote my first script after being thrown out of Shaheen,” he says. “It took me a decade to realise that Niyati will never be released. There were many issues, and in the years after I wrote and made Niyati, things have changed,” says Bharadwaj. Though his previous attempts have been hit by the lack of financial wherewithal, the factors leading to shelving of Niyati made him reevaluate at his career.
He has understood that all his ideas cannot be made into films despite them being different. His fascination for stories has taken him through the pages of several books of all genres and turned him into a voracious reader. Unlike his contemporaries who have reached high on the ladder of success, Bharadwaj is in search of that one person who will listen to his stories, look at the scripts he has written and has the wherewithal to translate all of it into celluloid creations that people can see. “I do not want to write or make a film for the A category as it essentially means big banners. I will continue to write for B-category films. I want to make offbeat stories without stars,” says Bharadwaj. “I am looking for someone who will find fame and glory in my story.”
He does not like to be categorised a struggler for he feels that if is akin to laughing at his efforts to establish a toe-hold and carve a niche for him. Despite the struggle to give wings to his dreams, Bharadwaj says that he has not slept hungry or been homeless. There has always been a home to go back to because of family support. Being out of a job or the struggle to succeed was not planned. It trapezed into his life out of the blue and has stayed on for a while. This is how he sums up his years in transition from holding a successful job to being without it.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Writing As Catharsis")
