Letter from Kaushik Roy - the Director of Apna Asmaan

Hey Abhijit, great reading your bit about Apna Asmaan in your blog. Wanted to post this there but realised that this to long. May be you have a way of doing it.

The sad truth is that after having got 80% to 100% over the weekend the film is almost out starting next Friday. Almost because it will continue in some obscure morning and afternoon shows. Why? Because people who love different kind of films actually don’t get off their butt to see the films that they want through the week. They then say “Oh no… it’s gone? How sad… We will watch it on DVD … chalo DVD dekh lenge (चलो डीवीडी देख लेंगे)”Now here’s the catch… DVDs are not like books - at least not yet. You can’t market a DVD till it has hit the theatres and has qualified to be called cinema. So we are the biggest enemies of good cinema because we are not like the die hard fans of commercial cinema. Those guys queue up to create what is called an OPENING WEEKEND. But we have have our cocktails and dinners to do over the weekend… and may be a bit of Golf? But then what the hell…there are DVDs right?

So all those who wanted to see India’s next Omar Shariff - Abhijit Bhaduri in Apna Asmaan, have a choice: they can prove it that you love different / non Bollywoody films and go to see Apna Asmaan in large numbers for those early morning shows. Or be the cocktail circuit supporter and pick up a DVD. If not me, Saregama will make money!

Abhijit, you have been a great support. There’s a 1.20pm (thank God not am) show at Gurgaon PVR. Why don’t you do a little viral across your HR community in Gurgaon to get them to see AA during lunch? It’s just a 2 hr outing that will make everybody feel nicer when they get back to work. Good HR policy - believe me!

Cheers -
kaushik

PS: Nabomita sends me this great link on Kaushik’s art collection. Click Here

Apna Asmaan - Now In Theatres Near You

Sometime back I have blogged here about my acting in a movie. The movie has now got released under the name Apna Asmaan अपना आसमान। Yesterday was the premier of the film at PVR Saket, New Delhi. The film also has Rajat Kapoor (remember the pedophile character in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding) and Anupam Kher in some interesting scenes.

This is a film is directed by my ex-colleague from Mudra Communication, Kaushik Roy. Kaushik belongs to a family of film makers (he is the nephew of the legendary Bimal Roy - of Madhumati fame. (The director of Do Bigha Zameen, Madhumati, Devdas etc) That by the way is a photo of Kaushik trying to throttle me on the sets. Irrfan and Shobna (My God, she has pretty eyes) have played the lead roles. In one of the scenes, Irrfan is taunting his young colleague that he is “an M-B-A … Mediocre But Arrogant, as in the novel”.

Times of India says, “This one is a must for all parents who push their kids too hard.”
Check out this photo from the shoot. Never published before on any site.

More about this film on other posts. Will try and get an interview with Kaushik for the blog. So watch the space for more.The story of Apna Asmaan was inspired by Kaushik’s younger son Orko, who is mildly autistic and has just recently completed his first exhibition of paintings. Orko is a fabulous artist and you will see many of his paintings in the film. In fact the film opens with a shot of Orko drawing animals. He loves to draw buffalos.

Left to right: Kaushik Roy, Harsh Kulkarni, Abhijit Bhaduri, Irrfan (green kurta), Mini (who is the chief camera person Barun-da’s daughter) and Abhishek.

From the sets of Qatra Qatra Jeene Do

It was an amazing experience to say the least. To act in the film Qatra Qatra Jeene Do. The first shot was at Film City. The shot was supposed to be a ‘dream sequence’ in the film. My co-actor was Abeer Goswami who quit his corporate career to pursue his dreams of being an actor. Abeer is a regular in the TV serials. Good luck to you Abeer - more power to people who chase their dreams.shot shows the character wearing the same shirt in the evening it should be creased and “fatigued”. Hmmm… “Sunoh” (meaning Listen). Another suggestion was “Laxman Rekha”. That sounded too much like the name of a popular brand of pest repellants. Naah. So finally the name that appeared least controversial and “numerologically appropriate” was Qatra Qatra Jeene Do. That’s Barun-da (Barun Mukherjee who had done the photography for the film Baghbaan. He gets a special lunch box from home with all kinds of Bengali delicacies packed in. I sampled some so I know. is “clean” and does not have the sounds of the location where it was shot. Shobana (Full name Shobana Chandrakumaran Pillai) - a veteran of 150 films in five languages, was also dubbing her lines the day I had time booked at the studio. She plays the lead in this film and she was in the studio trying to read Hindi dialogues of the film written in Roman script. That is tough work. To be able to hear the track that has been recorded on the set and to lip sync the same dialogue while keeping the emotion consistent with the film’s story and say the words within the same duration as they appear in the film is a challenge. Then for someone who does not speak the language it becomes a bigger hurdle. If I had to dub in Malayalam (or Tamil/ Telugu/ Kannada for that matter) I would have failed miserably for sure.

Films is all about precision. There is a Costume Coordinator whose job is to ensure that the clothes follow the chronological continuity in the film. So if the shot is about the character coming in to the office in the morning, the shirt should look appropriately crisp and ironed. If the

I was very impressed with Irrfan’s no nonsense approach to acting. When he comes to the set, he knows the lines for the entire shot. I would see him getting into elaborate discussions with Kaushik about the character and what was the key aspect of the character a particular scene was supposed to convey while the shot was being composed. All what one heard about temperamental movie stars certainly did not apply to Irrfan (why does he spell his name with RR?). Must be some numerologist’s suggestion. Film folks are superstitious to say the least.

Kaushik has been agonizing over the title of the film. For a long time the title was “Buddhi” (the word for brain in Hindi) . Then someone put a spanner in the wheel by saying when written in English it could be mistaken as the word meaning old woman. So the suggestion was to change the spelling to “Budhdhi ” or even “Budhhi Mera Naam” or “Mera Naam Budhhi”. Someone suggested a one word title

After shooting the scenes one has to go back to the sound studio to dub the lines so that the soundtrack

Apna Asmaan was named QQJD

Recently got a chance to act in a movie called “Qatra Qatra Jeene Do” - Qatra literally means a single drop of any liquid.

So the title describes the theme of the film - about living life one breath at a time.

The film is a story about Buddhi a special child whose parents played by Irrfan (of Maqbool fame) and Shobhana (of Mitr fame). The film is the debut film of Director Kaushik Roy (that’s Kaushik the perfectionist trying to straighten the tie before shoot) and stars Anupam Kher, Rajat Kapoor among others. The costumes have been designed by Kaushik’s wife Nina. Kaushik recently held a joint exhibition of paintings with his son Orko that was a runaway success. Besides being an artist, a film director and an accomplished photographer, Kaushik is a well known face in the advertising circles of India. The film is due for release in October 2006. Here are a few moments from the sets of Qatra Qatra Jeene Do.

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