So here I am back in Mumbai. This time it’s a short spell and so I’m quite enjoying it. Mumbai and my experiences with the city are so terribly intense that beyond a point i start wanting to get out and go for a holiday. I think it has to do with the fact that in Mumbai all the people I know are from or related to the film industry. Actors, directors, musicians and so on. This means that there is no down time. Conversation, more often than not, centers around what’s going on in the film industry. Beyond a point it can become quite an exercise in navel gazing and hair splitting. Before I moved here, I used to love the intensity of being surrounded by film. Now it just seems too much.  And I’m left wanting to flee.

And so I am really excited about the fact that my company (Ekaa Films Pvt Ltd) is line producing a foreign feature film, besides the fact that I get to be on a set and not direct, I’m looking forward to being with a new set of people in a village near Ludhiana, on location.  The added advantage is that my next film is set in a village, and so I get to sit around in village and watch it and draw some visual references and other impressions.  Can’t wait to be on a set again and be near nature again!

In an ideal world, one should work eight months of the year and holiday for four months. Just live life on a holiday!

I am back in Delhi after the recce for a film that we (My company) are line producing. We travelled to Ludhiana and it was hot as hell, dusty as can be and there were hot winds blowing. I should have been cowering and complaining but my heart was celebrating. This is my element. It’s where I belong.  I think two years of the somewhat sanitised sets of Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye has me craving to go back to the documentary setting that I know. While working on documentary one lives with heat, cold and winds - its physical deprivation that feeds the soul.

 I can’t wait to start on my film. “Kajarya”. This time I’m going down and dirty. Gritty and real. But I have to hold my horses and wait till all deals are signed and in place and we can actually start pre-production.

Back in Delhi, it’s so hot, but i must be feeling really happy because the heat feels like deep heat that warms my insides.

I don’t know how it happens, and may be it’s to do with the altitude, but sitting here in the mountains I feel like I have a “higher perspective”. Sanctimonious as it sounds, it’s true. I think the fact of the matter is that, somehow, our perspectives get braided with “practicality”, the voices of the “experts” and others who pretend to know. But no one really does know. No one knows if what they will make or create will turn out the way they imagined, no one knows if anyone will see it the way they saw it, it will work with the viewers and in some cases no one knows if it will even translate from the mind to something physical. And so, in the abyss of”not knowing”, the only thing that can hold true is one’s internal vision. Purifying it. Believing in it, nurturing it….

I want to thank Orijit and Chetan; their words are kind and so true. I am all ready working on my next film; it’s a script that is very dear to me, it’s called “Kajarya”. I am trying to look at it afresh and at the same time take some of the relevant lessons I learnt while making Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye. I have no superimposed expectations from the film (like I did the last time - I pegged so much on Mere khwabon Mein Jo Aaye) as yet, I am hoping to just make the film well…that’s all!

But for now, I am up here, in Kasauli; I just met my daughter and spent last evening with her. There was a show at her school and she danced beautifully. I feel still and blissful…Tomorrow I will descend in to real life again.