Six years ago, Delhi Belly introduced a fresh talent to Bollywood — Akshat Verma. The former adman wrote the screenplay and was the associate director of the Imran Khan-Vir Das-Kunaal Roy Kapur- starrer that was produced by Aamir Khan. This Friday, Akshat makes his directorial debut with Kaalakaandi, another black comedy. t2 sat down with the debutant director at a cafe in Bandra in Mumbai to chat about the film, casting Saif Ali Khan in the lead and why it took him this long to get the film on the floors.

What does Kaalakaandi even mean?

It literally means a big mess — when things go bad, when things go wrong. Isn’t it a fairly common Bombay slang?

I’ve never heard it before!

(Laughs) Maybe it’s the company I keep… it’s not respectable!

What made you write this story?

The thing with most stories and films is that you often have an end point and that could come from anywhere — from a visual or a piece of news. I often cut out bits and snippets from newspapers. Kaalakaandi was triggered by one such snippet from a newspaper. I can’t tell you what exactly it is because I’ll give away the film.

At what point did you know that you want to direct this film yourself?

I have always wanted to direct. Delhi Belly was a film that I intended to direct. I stepped back from that situation because I realised I had never shot anything in India before. I came here from LA to make the film and having never worked here and not understanding the system, it was a complicated film to execute. I certainly didn’t want to be the weakest link on set. So the next best thing was for me to be associate director and we were really fortunate to have a fabulous director (Abhinay Deo) for the film. It was a great experience because I was there from beginning to end and I saw the whole process which prepared me for this.

For me, writing the material is a way to understand and get into it. You know how (Alfred) Hitchcock spoke about storyboarding a film and once that was done, it is just a matter of execution. When I write a story, I understand the characters, nuance and tone. While writing, you spend so much time in your head with the story that you’re essentially describing scenes mentally. So when you direct, all you have to do is execute them.

Like Delhi Belly, the gestation period for this film has been quite long...

I don’t know what to say, I’m fed up with the time it takes to put movies together. This one was done after Delhi Belly (2011), when I started the writing. It took a year to get to the final draft. And after that, it’s been about putting it together. I got Saif for the project in five minutes, but it took me two years to get to meet him. So it really was two years and five minutes! (Laughs) When you’re banging at the door, things seem insurmountable, but once the doors open, you wonder what was the big deal?

In this town, you blink and six months have gone by. It’s quite frightening because if you have things to do, you never seem to physically have the time. All the things that need to be put together never coalesce before they’re meant to. I’m learning to now have multiple projects in place, so you’re not just setting up one thing — and then go with whichever one moves first. In this business, you’re waiting for your ambitions and desires to align with someone else’s who’s in a position of power to say yes, and therefore it gets made.

Do you think why it took you long to get this off the ground also has something to do with the kind of material you want to make?

I imagine it would be that because I’ve been rejected in this town multiple times. And they would always say, ‘We love the script but....’ It’s almost like saying, ‘I love you, but not enough to marry you!’ (Laughs) What is frustrating, though, is not fighting the battle but fighting the same battle. When you’re told this material would not work, this kind of language would not work and we’ve had this conversation before — Delhi Belly came out and it was demonstrated that there is an audience for it.

Even if we say there’s only two per cent of the population that speaks English, that’s two per cent of a billion! We have more English-speaking people here than in the United States. I don’t know if it’s a lack of ambition but we have certain circumscribed areas where our films go. People forget that we’re not just filmmakers but we’re part of the audience as well. And when we’ve sat in the audience with friends, we’ve gone through how frustrated they are because this is the same audience who’s watching Netflix and is connecting with material that is smart and intelligent. Why do we need to pretend that our audience will only look at material that is only from this box?

Is there then a temptation to just give them what they want?

No. I used to be a copywriter and I’ve done enough of giving ‘them’ what they want. If I’ve decided to do this and this is a story I want to tell, I want people to be excited by the story and not anything else. And if they’re not or they don’t see it, it’s fine, but it’s not like you can hustle them. It’s not like you can give them what they want and be happy with it... I’d be miserable on set.

You mentioned trying for two years to reach out to Saif. What made you want to work with him?

When you’re writing, you have a person in mind. For this story, it was Saif. I still remember when I texted him. I was walking up and down Carter Road (in Mumbai) — it’s something I do to destress — and I thought I should just go ahead and write to him. So I wrote to him and told him who I was, that I’d written Delhi Belly and that I have a script I’d just finished, written with him in mind, and that he’d elevate the material. And I asked him if we could meet, fired that text out into the night, not expecting anything to come back.

Finally, I was in a meeting with Saif in his study at his house, almost two years to the day.... this time we’d managed to get the script to him and he’d read it. And I walked in, there were introductions, chit-chat and it took five minutes for him to agree to do it. I kept thinking to myself that it took two years to get to this, and the film could have been made and released by then. But that’s just the way life is. I still have that first text I sent him!

Karishma Upadhyay