Anurag Kashyap

It was 2001 and censor had refused certification for Paanch. I was angry and pissed off and I wanted to say a lot. On November 9th 2000 there was a new state of Uttaranchal and six days later on november 15th Jharkhand was formed. The 27th and 28th state. I was upset about everything, as to why these new states were being formed to why can’t i release my film to why do people fall in love to what is the point of anything. At that time my actor of Paanch, Pankaj Saraswat (now the creator of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge) introduced me to a part time model. His name was Raja Chaudhary. I never took him seriously. He had written a story on college politics, which was a nice story but nothing more and I told him so. I told him this story needs a milieu, where it is set and why is it happening. He did not know what to say. I asked him where is he from, and he said Jaipur. I said take me there. I was depressed,I needed to go away. We, him, me and Rahul Mahariya, the co-writer of the story. In Jaipur I met a lot of royalty, and heard their stories. They all had their own version of history but at the same time they had a grouse with the government. The grouse was common, based on history. That gave me a milieu for Raja’s story. I started writing. I researched, Aparna Malhotra, my researcher and assistant in Black Friday helped me. I read history from Sharda Dwivedi to Romila Thapar and others and found about how the Republic of India was founded and the roles of the Rajputs in it. I read the Patiala report. A lot came to the surface for me and I rewrote and rewrote and Gulaal was born.

It was and is my most angry film. It was influenced a lot by the songs from Pyaasa. That is the music that I use to hear at that time. Particularly “yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai”. At the time I was writing the film, I had a visitor, Piyush Mishra. He was sitting in my office when I was writing the film. A music director came to meet me and started to play his Nadeem Shravan kind of songs. I wanted to get rid of him, but Piyush borrowed his harmonium and started to play it and started to sing the songs he had written and composed for his various plays. Songs from “Suno Re Kissa” and “Jab Shahar Hamara Sota Hai” and various others. Those songs were provocative, inspiring and I realised that is the kind of music the film needs. I convinced him to stay back in Bombay, we bought him a harmonium and I asked him to do the music of Gulaal. The film changed again. This was before Black Friday, before he wrote “Bandey”.

Michael Arrakal, who use to work for USL was trying to produce the film. He couldn’t because Paanch had not released and I was labelled untouchable. We did a small schedule and after that the film was shelved. I got to do Black Friday after that. Jhamu Sughand was a partner in Black Friday. After the court stopped the release of that film I sank into further depression. At that time Jhamu read the script of Gulaal and based on the confidence he had on BF he said he wants to do Gulaal. We started preproduction, we started shooting and 20 days into shooting, new problems cropped up for Jhamu Sugandh. Gulaal was stopped midway along with Johnny Gaddaar and Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na. The two other films of Jhamu. The former was picked up by Ad labs and the latter by Aamir Khan. Nobody picked up Gulaal because it had nobody that was saleable. I made No Smoking, Return Of Hanuman and Dev D. Now finally it was Zee Motion Pictures that bought the project and decided to complete and release it. Now finally we have finished shooting and we are hopeful. Now finally my dream project has completed shooting. It has taken seven years since I wrote it to find takers for it, and hopefully we will put it out in the theatres too with the same cast barring one, and the same way it was intended to. And I am ecstatic about it.

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