RISING GRAPH

1985: Plays a student leader in Holi 1993: Directs his first feature, Pehla Nasha 1995: Directs another flop, Baazi 2000: Directs Aamir Khan’s Lagaan 2001: Lagaan nominated for an Oscar 2004: Writes, produces and directs Swades.

The curriculum vitae, frankly, doesn?t look all that good. If it weren?t for the last entry in his comprehensive bio-data, the failed actor and one-time-failed director would be just that: a story of failure. But, as it happens, Ashutosh Gowariker is today another term for success.

But there?s another tough exam round the corner. His new film, Swades, is slated to be released on Friday. And Gowariker ? the tall and quiet director of Lagaan ? has to prove himself all over again.

No one knows it better than Gowariker. He is not worried, for when others were laughing him off, he re-invented himself with a generous dose of confidence. One moment he was a director of three forgettable flops ? the next, he was Bollywood?s most promising young director.

?Dream to dare, and dare to dream,? he once told a fan during a webchat while basking in the glory of the resounding success of his Oscar-nominated film, Lagaan. Like the Aamir Khan-starrer shot in arid Kutch in testing summer temperatures, Swades promises to be a forerunner for another shot at next year?s Academy Awards. The promos showing NASA employee Shah Rukh Khan mingling comfortably with a bunch of villagers and A.R. Rahman?s melodious musical score have already raised expectations.

But Gowariker is cool. ?Ashu seems extremely relaxed and is under no burden of expectations,? says film photographer and cousin Avinash Gowariker, who witnessed the metamorphosis of Gowariker from a flop filmmaker into a successful director.

Quite possibly, he is at ease because the man who made his first short film with a handycam as a student in Mithibai College, knows his cinema. His cousin says he was always a film buff ? having picked up his love for films from his father in a middle-class Maharashtrian family. ?As a child, Ashu would scare us younger kids by narrating and enacting the horror films he had watched,? says Avinash.

His passion for cinema drew him to acting. Ashutosh Gowariker made a promising debut in Ketan Mehta?s 1985 telefilm Holi, based on violence in contemporary college politics. Also facing the camera for the first time with him was Aamir Khan in a small role. But Gowariker failed to leave a mark as an actor and after several small ? and forgettable ? roles, he moved to direction. He didn?t have much luck there either, for his first three films bombed at the box office.

But Gowariker didn?t break his ties with cinema during a five-year-long dry spell. He was a regular at all international film festivals in Mumbai and watched contemporary world cinema. ?He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema. He can talk about contemporary Spanish cinema or Russian cinema with equal ease, and he believes in sharing his knowledge,? says Satyajit Bhatkal, a production hand in Lagaan who last year shot a documentary on the making of Lagaan ? Chale Chalo: The Lunacy of Filmmaking.

Among the scripts that he wrote during that turbulent period were Lagaan and Swades. He had taken both the subjects to Aamir Khan, but Khan chose Lagaan and produced it himself. Gowariker?s friends hold that after Lagaan, he did not want to make a big-budget film with star power. ?He had thought of a non-star actor to play Mohan Bhargarva of Swades till all of us convinced him that the sheer economics of filmmaking demanded a star in the lead role,? says Avinash.

The director who was last month nominated as a jury member on the Academy Awards panel to view entries from the world over, shot parts of Swades in NASA. Shah Rukh Khan plays Bhargarva who comes home from the US to fetch his nanny from his native village ? and then encounters another India. Gowariker has been guarding the storyline of Swades like he did in Lagaan, but the fact that he had detailed sittings with Narmada Bachao Andolan activists hints at a storyline that looks at development politics.

On Friday, the secret will be out. The storyline will be there for all to see. And Gowariker will either make it, or break it.