TV and movie scriptwriter Kanika Dhillon’s debut novel is about real life in the film world. She tells Anoothi Vishal about Bollywood’s new hunger for story ideas from real life.
Every year, thousands make their way to the city of dreams: most to become actors, to emulate the success of the tall clerk from Kolkata, the karate cook from Bangkok, and the handsome farmer from Punjab. A handful come to Mumbai, well, to just write. They are not rejects (Salim Khan, the writer, first wanted to become a hero), nor ugly people who somehow want to become a part of Bollywood (many of whom have given up perfectly good careers for a shot at cinema); to be not stars but the people who make them: directors, editors, stylists, publicists, storytellers.
An alumna of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and the London School of Economics, Amritsar girl Kanika Dhillon could have climbed the corporate ladder, but Mumbai beckoned. Dhillon wanted to be a writer for films and says she met Sanjiv Chawla, the CEO of Red Chillies Entertainment, Shah Rukh Khan’s production company, with a couple of short stories she had written. Chawla advised her, instead, to start as an assistant director on a film set. “I took his advice,” she says. Her break came with Om Shanti Om, where she was an assistant to director Farah Khan. Today, she heads the creative content division at Red Chillies, and has co-written the script and dialogue of the much-awaited Ra One, SRK’s ambitious opus.
But Ra One is not the only reason that Dhillon is making news now. Busy as she is with the film, she has also managed the launch of her debut novel, Bombay Duck is a Fish (Westland), in Mumbai. SRK cut the ribbon to launch the book. The star, after all, makes a guest appearance (as himself) in the book, and one supposes that Dhillon is as much a fan of the man as her protagonist. “What struck me visibly and forcefully,” she says of her first meeting with SRK, “was his humility and larger-than-life charisma”.
Bombay Duck is a Fish is about the deceptiveness of the world of cutout moons, fairytale romances and giant artistic egos. It sees the world behind the big screen through the eyes of small-town girl Nekki who, like her creator, is from Amritsar. Nekki comes to Mumbai and works as an assistant to a big-time woman director. Dhillon says that despite the similarities with her own life, the story is not autobiographical. Her protagonist, who makes some questionable choices, including falling in love with the second lead in the film and jumping off a building, is definitely not her.
While the plot is fictionalised, Dhillon concedes that “some characters and situations have been inspired by real life interactions”. She adds that the protagonist, who is “not an ideal idol… she has her own weaknesses and shades of grey”, will be “identified by each one of us — in her flaws and her failures” — and that “she will not be judged too harshly as the protagonist can be difficult to relate to, because the lines of morality are murky for this character”.
Despite the fact that Hindi cinema, by and large, seems in dire need of strong stories — filmmakers today are so enamored with the latest technology and marketing that they don’t seem too interested in that (think Om Shanti Om, Thank You, Houseful, Ready) — a new breed of writers has been emerging in the industry. While people like Jaideep Sawhney, Anurag Kashyap, Prasoon Joshi and others have become brand names in themselves, there are authors like Chetan Bhagat and Anuja Chauhan whose works are also being picked up by filmmakers on the lookout for marketable subjects. Writing for films, says Dhillon, is definitely evolving. She argues that the “lack of story ideas”, as seen in the films, “is definitely not because of lack of talent, but merely a question of providing the right kind of environment, tools, and the skill set for existing and emerging talent to boom and thrive”.