'Vaastu Shastra' director Saurabh Narang dead

The filmmaker was brought here to seek treatment under the eminent Ayurvedic specialist Dr White, who is also a consultant to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

He breathed his last at a friend's residence here yesterday and the deceased's emotional father Dr Virendra Kumar Narang said that his son kept saying, "I will fight it out," to the end.

"His body is kept in an mortuary and will be taken to Delhi after clearing the formalities," said Dr Narang.

The late director is survived by his 35-year-old wife Priyanka and three-year-old son Agastya.

Late last year, Narang had visited Sri Lanka to search for locales for his film 'Return Gift', starring Rajeev Khandelwal, with which he was planning to make a comeback.

Dr Narang said that his son was detected with an advanced stage of stomach cancer in November last year after he complained of continuous hiccups.

Narang who directed the hit TV horror series "Shhh... Koi Hai", started his Bollywood career when he bagged an opportunity to direct one of the first horror films coming from the house of Ram Gopal Varma, 'Vaastushastra' in 2004.

Acclaimed filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt mourned the death of the young filmmaker.
"I mourn the death of a bright young filmmaker. I worked with him on 'Haqeeqat', a show on human rights violation. I still remember Sourabh's last words to me, 'I am going to survive this sir', he said with a shy smile. Something told me he would not," Bhatt wrote in his blog.

After his schooling from a private school in Delhi, Narang went on to study at the St Stephen's College and then pursued a mass communication course from the Jamia Millia Islamia.

In an interview to a website in 2002, he was asked, "Where do you see yourself 10 years  down the line."

Narang had replied, "Given the amount I smoke, I should be dead."