I’m always ready with a Plan B: Anurag Basu

The first thing that struck Anurag Basu when he arrived in Mumbai was its pace. Everyone, he points out, is always running. This frenetic rush, along with the fact that it sometimes takes six-seven months to even discover who your neighbours are, is something he can’t understand coming from Kolkata and Shantiniketan where life is slower and human connections run deeper. “That’s why my wife Tani and I sometimes run off to Shantiniketan for a long holiday, but after a week or 10 days, we start missing the city. We are neither here nor there,” rues the filmmaker whose ‘Metro… In Dino’, set in the buzzing metropolis, is lining up for a July 4 release.

He admits he came to Mumbai to join the film industry, but was quickly convinced the dream was too far-fetched. “I’m a pessimistic guy, always ready with a Plan B,” he smiles, saying he gave himself six months and if nothing happened, the physics honours graduate was prepared to return to academics and join the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

Had he arrived two years before or after, it might have been difficult for him to get a break. But thanks to the satellite channel boom, Anurag was soon assisting Raman Kumar on ‘Tara’ and within two years was himself directing the Zee TV soap. He went on to do a lot of television, from the revolutionary ‘Tara’ to finite series like ‘Saturday Night Suspense’, ‘Thriller At 10’ and ‘Ajeeb Dastaan’ and the Ekta Kapoor soap, ‘Koshish… Ek Aashaa’.

After two-three years, he was bored and decided to graduate to movies. At Delhi airport, he ran into Mahesh Bhatt who asked him what he was doing. “I admitted I had landed a film, but had left it. He offered me my first film. I owe my career in films to Bhatt saab,” reminisces Anurag, who went on to direct ‘Saaya’, ‘Murder’, ‘Tumsa Nahin Dekha: A Love Story’ and ‘Gangster’ for the Bhatts in quick succession.

After the first schedule, Mahesh Bhatt told his producer brother Mukesh that the boy was in control and they should let him be. “He gave me a lot of creative freedom, let me bring in my kind of music for ‘Murder’, which was different from the Nadeem-Sharvan songs playing then.”

He recalls how they had picked a Pakistani song, “Menu tere naal, ho gaya pyaar”. The singer (Najam Sheraz) was to come and record it and Anurag was to then take this version to Bangkok for the shoot. “But suddenly, he refused to come, perhaps because he thought the lyrics we had come up with, ‘Bheege hont tere, pyaasa dil mera’, were too erotic. We had planned to go ahead with the original version, but at the last minute, Kunal Ganjawala came in and sang ‘Bheege hont tere’ which was a chartbuster. It’s destiny!” he exclaims.

The film was a surprise blockbuster too, but surprisingly, Anurag didn’t direct ‘Murder 2’ and ‘Murder 3’. “I don’t like doing sequels,” he explains, saying he wouldn’t even call ‘Metro… In Dino’ a sequel of the 2007 ‘Life in a…Metro’. “It’s very different, a fresh take set in a contemporary setting. It’s only because Pritam, who has scored the music for both films, pops up on screen again with his band to musically take the narrative forward, that they appear similar.”

He shares that he had approached the Bhatts with ‘Life in a… Metro’, a story he had written. “But it did not fit in with the kind of films they were making. So, then, I co-produced it with UTV,” informs Anurag.

Another franchise, ‘Aashiqui 3’, which is being directed by Anurag, is opening on October 17, and the filmmaker is finally ready to roll with the Kishore Kumar biopic. “It will be my next film,” confirms Anurag, who grew up listening to Kishore’s songs and stories about him from his father and uncles. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet him. By the time I came to Mumbai, he had passed, but I shot a lot in his Juhu bungalow, primarily because he had lived there.”

What is his favourite Kishore Kumar song, you wonder, and the “tough question” calls for some head scratching as Anurag admits his playlist keeps changing depending on his mood. “An hour ago, since it was raining, I was listening to one of his compositions from ‘Jhumroo’, sung by and filmed on Madhubala and him.”

‘Thandi hawa, yeh chandni suhani, ae mera dil suna koi kahani, lambi si ek dagar hai zindagani’ seems an apt choice given that this writer, producer, director will always be spinning stories of his own.

(The author is a senior film journalist)