Fear of speaking out, irrelevance, what scares artistes

From never being able to find one's true potential to putting loved ones at risk by speaking out are some of the fears that "Ghost Stories" directors Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Zoya Akhtar battle in their lives.

Kashyap, who has supported the nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), says speaking out against the establishment means putting people close to him and his work at risk.

"I don't want anyone else to be at risk because of what I do, especially the people I love. When I go on Twitter and talk, I'm putting people who are close to me at risk. I'm also putting myself at risk because of which they're anxious all the time. My fears are only fears of people who matter to me," Kashyap told PTI.

When asked if he feels scared in speaking out, Kashyap said, "Of course, I fear speaking out. I'm not superman. But not because of me. If it had been just me, I wouldn't have feared. It does put people at risk, it puts my work at risk, my investors at risk. People who have bigger stakes, stay silent. My stakes are probably not as big but they are still big to me."

The fear of losing relevance and being reduced to mediocrity is something that "Gully Boy" helmer Zoya worries a lot about.

"Irrelevance, eventually as an artiste, and mediocrity are the two big fears. At the end of your career, you should've been a relevant artiste, you shouldn't have gone up being medicore. Now, we all are work in progress, but at the end of my career, these are the two things I should keep in mind."

Dibakar says he he too fears being irrelevant with his work.

"My fundamental fear is that, which I now realise, is the fundamental human fear: of irrelevance. It means that you don't matter, because you're of a certain gender, age. Maybe there are too few of you, you won't matter, because the ones who are too many, they know what will you be able to do?

"That fear of living with it on a daily basis, fear of not mattering because of your gender or age. That is something that eats the inside of you. That's a relevant fear today. Earlier our fears were, of being dead, being hurt or killed. But we are now updating our fear menu," the director added.

"Ghost Stories" will stream on Netflix from January 1.