Director Gauri Shinde, 42, likes to say that she’s a sucker for “subtle and simple stories”. Her debut film English Vinglish was one of 2012’s unexpected hits and revolved around the everyday tale of a housewife who didn’t speak much English and the dilemmas she faced in a foreign land. Now, her latest project Dear Zindagi is a coming of age film starring Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan. She says, “The film’s about living in the moment.” 

The film has Alia Bhatt playing a budding cinematographer who’s nursing one heartbreak after another. Coming to her rescue is Shah Rukh Khan, who digs deep into a fund of wisdom and helps her to look at life differently. The film releases on November 25.

Shinde says she wrote the script at high speed in just four months. And the moment she finished the script she decided there was only one star who could play the male lead. “When I finished writing the script I felt that only Shah Rukh could play the role,” she says, sipping coffee in her cabin at her production office in Mumbai’s Khar area. Gauri and her adman turned movie producer husband R. Balakrishnan, better known as Balki, run a production house called Hope Productions.

Alia, of course, is currently one of the movie’s industry’s hottest stars but Shinde was clear she wanted a different performance from her. She didn’t want Alia to be a bubbling with life youngster and says: “I think the word bubbly is very overrated. She plays a young cinematographer Kyra. I wanted her to be full of life, natural yet strong.”  

She adds: “Her attitude to love and relationships reflects the way our society is evolving today.”

Interestingly, she was quickly able to convince Shah Rukh to play the character Jahangir Khan. She says: “He didn’t play his star card in the film. After finishing the final draft I was in two minds whether to approach him or not. But he readily agreed.”

She reckons that her films are all about hope and nuanced performances. She says: “I think it comes naturally as I’m a very positive and people-oriented person.”

In her movies, Shinde says she draws heavily on real life characters. In English Vinglish, for instance, she drew inspiration from her mother who ran a pickle business in Pune. She says: “My films represent life and I’m drawn to real people. My forte’s not to focus on the bigger picture but on the smaller details of life.”

But if she loves making movies, Shinde’s very clear that ad films are her bread and butter. She has created more than a hundred films for major brands like Tanishq and Havells and she believes that ad films require huge amounts of discipline because you have only 20 seconds to tell the full story. She says: “It’s unfair to compare advertising and filmmaking. The processes are the same but the effort of making an ad film is far greater. And sometimes we have to deliver ads in a week.”

Her most recent ad film featured Alia Bhatt for Standard Electricals and portrayed women as strong protagonists.  

Shinde has been an ad industry lifer. She was born and brought up in Pune, and after graduation started working as a trainee copywriter in an ad agency there. She moved to Mumbai and interned with documentary director Siddharth Kak after which she worked with agencies like IBW, Bates Clarion and Lowe Lintas. Balki was the Lowe Lintas national creative director. She laughs: “Both of us are movie buffs and Balki wooed me by taking me out for back-to-back films on our first date.” They married in 2007. 

Balki, of course, backs her to the hilt and she counts on him for all kind of ideas. She laughs: “We fight a lot, argue and disagree on our films. We watch lots of international TV series. But Balki loves sci-fi and horror and I don’t have any inclination in these two genres.”

Filmmaking’s her new-found love, but she’s clear that commercial success is crucial. She says: “As a director I want my films to make money. There is a commercial angle to every film that is being made as so much money and people are involved in filmmaking.” Now, she’s hoping that this time too she strikes the jackpot.