I was all of 12 years when I learnt a very important lesson. I was at a friend’s birthday party and participating in a race, making a dash to the finishing line along with a bunch of other kids. I was much ahead of the rest till a friend called out to me asking me to wait so that we could chat as we ran. As we neared the finishing line, he suddenly turned competitive, ran ahead and won. Losing this race taught me never to let go of an advantageous position till the end.

I also learnt an important thing about myself when I was in class XI in Delhi’s Air Force Bal Bharati School in 1994. For a better understanding of an English play, our teacher asked us to perform it in groups. While my classmates wanted to be actors, all I wanted to do was direct them. When it was staged, our group’s play was the only one which had a semblance of being directed. I enjoyed that first experience as a director and it helped me decide on taking it up as career later. This was a turning point for me.

But before taking up a course in direction at the National School of Drama (NSD), I joined the College of Vocational Studies where I launched a theatre group. I became an actor-director and during my three years in college we staged 18 plays.

When I joined NSD in 1998, I was confused about whether I should specialise in acting or direction since I’d done both in college. At this point, my elder sister (who knows me better than most people) told me to focus just on direction as I was much better at it.

After graduating from NSD I got a fellowship from NSD during which I made a short film on lighting in theatre for which I interviewed many doyens of theatre lighting. Making this film further strengthened my resolve to take up direction.

I went to Mumbai in 2004 and wrote the script for Tere Bin Laden. Three years later I pitched it to Adlabs and they asked me to do a test shoot in 2007. The film was a success.

Another interesting incident took place when I was sitting in a bookshop reading Superman comics. I thought of writing a graphic novel on the monkey menace which plagued Delhi in 2001. This was published as the graphic novel Munkeeman in October 2011. Munkeeman 2 will be hitting the stands in October at the first Mumbai Film and Comics Convention.

I’m now looking forward to the sequel to Tere Bin Laden.

(As told to Saimi Sattar)