Tag: StreeStrikes

Though he has a master’s degree in engineering followed by MBA, Niren Bhatt’s life has always been about writing. He has written plays in his school, and in college and now he writes for a living. The stupendous success of Stree2 has made him the cynosure of all eyes. Some excerpts from a recent interview:

How did you get into writing?

I grew up in a small city called Bhavnagar in Gujrat where only 1 or 2% of people speak Hindi apart from that everyone speaks Gujarati. But my mother was a professor of sociology and she used to take me to her college. There she introduced me to the library. She used to take me to youth festivals and that was my first introduction to theatre. I found it so fascinating that I started doing and writing plays in my school. I wrote a lot of plays in my college too and some of them even won state and national awards. I was a good student and I continued doing theatre and even wrote songs. Most of my plays were very popular because they were musicals.

But if you were so inclined towards writing, why didn’t you choose it as a career in the initial days?

(Laughs). I was good in my studies so it was natural that I would do masters in my engineering and then MBA. These days, there is a joke going around in the industry that with double masters in engineering and management, I am the most educated writer here! So, once I completed my engineering, I worked in a corporate setup for like around four years I was a business consultant at a cushy corporate job with a big fat salary.

When did you realize that writing was your first and only love?

After some years in the corporate world.  I realized that this life doesn’t belong to me and I don’t belong to this world. I am a creative person and I need to find my own thing. So that’s when I started writing alongside my corporate career. Managing two things at the same time was very hectic but I started writing plays, films, songs and whatever came my way. It was in 2011 that I finally left my job and became a full time writer.

Didn’t your family object?

Initially my parents didn’t know. I didn’t tell them. My wife knew and she being an artist supported me wholeheartedly.  It was when I started writing for Tarak Mehta ka Oolta Chashmah and it became the most popular show in the country that I told my parents about my writing and that I had left my job. For my mother, it was a matter of pride and she also supported me in my decision. Somehow my life in a way built by very strong females. My mother, and my wife, have always supported me and motivated me and somewhere I think it reflects in my writing also.

What inspires you to write the horror genre; especially the horror comedy?

I have always been writing comedy from the very beginning. Whether it was serials like Tarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashmah or movies like Bala or Bhediya, comedy has been predominant in my work.

 I always had a fascination with horror because I’m a very voracious reader. I read a lot whether it is Hindi literature or Urdu literature or Gujarati literature or English literature. So, I was a big fan of authors like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, Peter Straub and I have devoured almost all their books. I actually started my writing career in television with a horror show. It was called Yeh Kaali Kaali Raate which was produced by Rajiv Mehra, who later made films like Chamatkar (starring Shahrukh Khan, Nasiruddin Shah) and serials like Office Office  (starring Pankaj Kapur).

Could full time writing support you financially initially?

In the initial days of switching my career from the corporate world to full time writing, I was very speculative whether I’ll be able to survive or make enough money from writing or not. But I took a plunge and in a couple of years, I think things fell in place and I started writing episodes for Tarak Mehta ka Oolta Chashmah.

 Now, by that time, I had written story and lyrics for a  Gujarati film. It was called Bey Yaar which became a very big hit. From there, my Gujarati film career also took off. So, parallelly, I was writing television, Gujarati films,  songs, and  Hindi films. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t. I also wrote for OTT which made me confident that my writing would be able to support me.

How did Stree 2 happen?

 The first movie Stree was based on a folk legend called Nale ba. Naleba is a legend of Karnataka. For many years in the past people used to write Nale Ba which means come tomorrow on their doors because they believed that evil spirits roamed around in the night and could be distracted by writing Nale Ba. So, the first story was written by Raj and DK. I loved the first part and the crazy energies of all these actors. Amar Kaushik, the director roped me in for the second part. By that time we had already done movies like Bala, Bhediya and a couple of other films that Amar was directing. So, we already had a four-year-long association. The final script of the movie happened only after rigorous writing for around two and a half years and about 15 to 17 drafts later.

How did the drafts change in those years?

We had two completely different versions of it. When we started working on Bhediya and we discovered what all we could do with VFX. So, for Stree 2 we wrote a completely new version of it and then it also went through, like, numerous drafts. Because, see, in this kind of film, you need to write a lot because it’s also about the dialogue. It is not just about the progression of the story. For example, we showed Shama, the girl friend of Pankaj Tripathi who was mentioned in the first part. For a movie to become an enjoyable experience for the viewer and the creators, one has to do a lot of brainstorming. Characters are created, discarded, written about, and sometimes included but in the end, it has to satisfy the needs of the narrative and the story.

Who are involved in this kind of brainstorming?

It is generally between Amar Kaushik and me. I throw up an idea, he throws two ideas back at me, then we decide, out of all these three ideas, what we want to do and then I write  down with dialogues and everything and then we take a call whether it’s working or not. If I have some concerns, I raise them to him  and tell him that see, I think, this scene is good, but  it can be better with dialogue, but it has this kind of a flaw. So, if he has a fix to it, then, he says that we can fix it in this way, but, these dialogues are working. So, this is how we have worked. Though it is a hard process to follow, I think it has worked for us.

How does writing for a web series differ from writing for a movie?

Writing for a web series in a way is very fulfilling for a writer because the film has only about 120 to 140 minutes of the story. It is like fitting an elephant into a matchbox! And I love all my characters in whatever movies or series I have written. So, I would like to go into all their stories. I would like to explore all their equations, but films are more or less about the hero’s journey and it has a plot that follows one person’s journey mainly.

And that’s why the scope of exploration of all other stories is less in films. Hence writing for OTT is a dream for a writer, but it’s a very hard process because again, it’s like, like I said, it’s 120, 140 pages in films, but in OTT is 500 pages of script. It’s like writing a novel. Okay. There are like six to eight episodes, each episode is supposed to be like a film, it is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and an end. It is also supposed to have a cliffhanger, which will, make people watch the next episode and binge-watch the whole show. And it is also supposed to have a story of a full season. On top of it is also supposed to have a broader story, which will span across two or three seasons. Yes, it gives you a lot of opportunities as a writer, but it’s a very tough job.

What is the life of a writer like? What’s your daily schedule?

I used to be a very erratic writer when I started because I was working so hard and also  doing a corporate job. With time, I have learnt. I read a lot of books on productivity and time management, what are the psychological challenges one faces as a writer or as any creative, and how to overcome them. That gives me a perspective of what to do.  I try to keep it very simple. I try to be like a clerk in a bank in terms of following a schedule of writing.

  I normally wake up around 8 or 9 am and go about my morning routine. For some time, I read and then I take a walk or go to the gym. At about 10.30 or 11, I start writing.  I write till about 2 or 3 pm. If there are any meetings scheduled, I go for those. Once I come back, after everyone is asleep, around 9 or 9.30 pm, I write again till 11 or 11.30 or even 12, depending on the deadlines. There have been times I have written for the whole day and whole night. But now I avoid writing nights because it is not a very healthy schedule to follow. When I was writing television, I wrote a lot of nights.

Do you write longhand or on the computer?

 I’m a techie. I write using my computer. And so I have a desk which is a standing cum sitting desk.  I have a mechanical keyboard. I adjust the laptop at different levels so that my neck and fingers don’t get hurt. I’ve had all sorts of health issues related to writing, sometimes finger pains, sometimes shoulder pain, and sometimes neck pains. And all those are recurring physical issues associated with writers. Then I consulted doctors and they advised me to spend money on ergonomic equipment, ergonomic stands, ergonomic chairs, ergonomic tables, mouse, a keyboard, so that I can work for long hours without harming my body.

Have you ever been spooked?

 I never get spooked.  I am a person of science. And now if you ask me, personally, I don’t believe in ghosts.  I like the idea of it. Because somewhere ghosts are metaphors.  For example  Sarkata is basically a metaphor for patriarchy. Pankaj Tripathi says also that he is Chanderi ka Pitru who has come back to establish his power. So pitru is basically patriarchy. So I mean, ghosts for me represent different aspects of humans.

How much of your writing is modified on the set?

A lot of it. Okay, because we have a process, me and Amar that, I always have to be on sets of all my films. And I sit next to him. And we both are looking at the scene and we are talking constantly whether it’s better than what we have written or it’s not coming out as we expected. Who is doing what, which is like taking the scene in that direction? So what can be funnier in this? Of course, our actors are champions. So Raj Kumar Rao, Abhishek Banerjee, and Pankaj Tripathi add lots of things they are performing in the scene. A lot of improvisations happen on set.

After the shooting for the day is over, I rewrite the next day’s scenes again and I think the best one-liners and the best dialogues have come from there.

What advice would you give to someone who is new in the industry or wants to make a career in the industry?

I always have the same advice for me as well as anyone who wants to make it big in the field of writing. It is a hard thing to do but the foremost thing to do is to cultivate discipline in your writing. The second thing is to read a lot because the more you read, the better you will get in writing.

…To be continued