750 words: Day 2 – It takes audacity to write fiction

For the second day of this mindfulness exercise (wherein I have to commit to writing 750 words every day or else I lose my mind), I was planning to get ambitious. Ambition and grand vision are the greatest enemies of writing. I thought I could easily slip back into writing fiction like I used to, regularly. Unfortunately, I no longer command the arrogance of a 21-year-old with yet another unique take on the “it-was-all-a-dream” premise. Ideas weigh you down once you learn that you can monetise them. And you start to dethrone the ones that don’t put food on the table. In 2017, I took up a job where the merit of each of my thoughts was measured by “Yeh viral jaayega kya?”. I lasted all of four months there. That’s the baggage I carry as a writer now.

I’d like to believe there is hope. Plenty of inspiration to be found in accounts of how men like Vishal Bhardwaj decided to tell their weird stories anyway. We’ve been taught that in order to get a project green-lit, we have to make it sound like something that’s been done before. For instance, Nic Pizzolatto would have had to pitch True Detective as a mundane “procedural with two buddy cops hunting down a serial killer.” Only those who’ve watched the series can know what poor justice that logline does to the story. I’ve always wondered what Vishal Bhardwaj’s pitch for his debut, Makdee sounded like – “Blood-sucking witch. Missing children. Indian village. Also, twins.” Anurag Kashyap’s Last Train To Mahakali (1999) was another strange tale that would raise eyebrows at OTT headquarters today. “Doctor on death row claims to have discovered a cure for virus-based disease but actually uses it to kill people painlessly.” I can feel Netflix executives sweating in the palms (“Can we just do a second season for Bollywood Wives?”)

My favourite from this era, though, was Aks. It’s definitely not a fair addition to the list, because it’s not original. The plot is lifted from Fallen and Face Off. But I still wake up every other day picturing how they convinced very mainstream, very staid Amitabh Bachchan and Raveena Tandon to star in a “supernatural action thriller” (I don’t imagine Manoj Bajpayee dithering) back in 2001. Hollywood inspired plots were not uncommon. But Baazigar (A Kiss Before Dying), Murder (Unfaithful), Aitraaz (Disclosure) and others Indianised the setting and the characters, and inserted the morally correct ending to season the fare for audience back home. Aks stood out like a sore thumb in this sea of pirated adaptations. It was heavily stylised, carrying this neo-noir Dark City aesthetic that seemed out of place in the Indian context – it was nothing like we’d seen before. They didn’t cut corners with the music either. They went overboard, actually. And I loved every bit of it. Every frame from Aks looked like it was straight out of a graphic novel, long before graphic novels were a thing for us Ambala kids in the early 2000s.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made Rang De Basanti later in his career. But it’s Aks that feels like the film that took audacity to make. I am all for making political statements through art. But I have a soft corner for people who insist on seeing the final product of their craziest ideas all the way to their execution and release. It takes a special kind of courage. I know this because today, at exactly 10:30pm, I sat down to write a short story and it frightened me so much, I stalled for about three hours. I’ll hold back on this space for a few more weeks. Every once in a while, I’ll listen to Yeh Raat from Aks and take solace in the fact that, at some point in his life, Rakeysh Omprakash went over to Raveena Tandon and said, “Look, this is some kind of post-apocalyptic nightclub and you, Miss Tip-Tip-Barsa-Pani, will be playing vamp to this serial killer-black magic dabbler we call Raghavan.” And then I convince myself that asking an influencer to smile into the camera for “Happy Branded Content Mubarak” is practice for a day like that. Until I find the audacity to write the stories I want to tell.

It’s not a stretch to say that Aks paved the way for the shortlived era of very stylish action thrillers. Musafir, Kaante (Desi Reservoir Dogs), Zinda (a shameless retelling of Old Boy). But without the supernatural element that makes Aks the delightfully, audacious bit of cult-y cinema it is.