This picture was clicked by my friend Dinesh Shenoy,
whom I met right there at Radisson MBD Noida, back in early 2005.
Wait, I’ll introduce you to the people here, the one only
whose forehead can be seen is Dinesh Kapoor, he had already published books
related to Indian history, on his left is a sardar ji I do not recall, towards
his left is Dinesh Sood, (Kuljinder’s best friend and partner in a multimedia
academy), then it’s me next to Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar and finally Kuljinder
Singh Sidhu, probably wondering about the camera angle… Dinesh Shenoy is a
trained Cinematographer, involved in various aspects of film-making.
What had happened was, we (more than 150 people from
all over the country) had all gathered in Noida for a 5 day Scriptwriting
workshop organized by UPFDC, Mrs. Jaya Bachchan and Mr. Govind Nihalani;
conducted by Late Krishna Shah.
Late Krishna Shah had developed a method of writing straight
from the heart, fast and with the formula in place. He taught us some processes
(around 2 minute meditations) to answer questions about characters that we
wished to develop, with some truth that we could identify with. That, for me
was a painful process up until recently, but it definitely is the key to it
all!
So anyway, during that workshop, Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar
happened to come to Delhi for his latest film ‘Swades’ ‘s promotion, and
coincidentally was staying at the same hotel. He asked his film’s
Chief-Production-Coordinator-Delhi, Dinesh Shenoy (who was also doing the
workshop) to join him. Now, this was just at the end of the first or second
day, we were probably all going out for fresh air when someone pointed out, if
it was Mr. Ashutosh Gowarikar, over there. I said, “haan, par bolenge kya? Koi script toh hai
nahin, idea bhi nahin hai… lekin hare-raam toh kar hi sakte hain”/ ‘yes, it is…
but what do we say to him? I don’t even have script or an idea for him? But we
can always say hello’. I moved ahead smiling confidently and Kuljinder mumbled to
his friend, “who bhi sochega kya tope cheez aa gayi”/ ‘he’ll also think, she
must be some important entity’.
I stretched my hand out to Mr. A.G., “Hello…
Congratulations! (pause) for ‘Lagaan’ He
smiled resignedly. I explained, “We haven’t seen ‘Swades’, yet.” “You guys must watch it”. “Yes, we want to”. And
soon the conversation drifted to what we were all doing there. He was very
happy to learn that so many people were getting trained to write for films.
 |
| Kuljinder Singh Sidhu in Yoddha |
No comments:
Post a Comment