UP CLOSE ometime in 2004, when film-maker Aanand Zaroorat Hai on Sony, Imtihaan on Doordarshan. But, then, the L Rai was doing “exactly nothing, trying to millennium changed channels, weekly shows became daily shows, figure from where I was going to get` 40,000 and the television set truly became the idiot box. Rai decided to to run my house,” he met screenwriter take a break and have a KitKat. “Television had given me that kind Himanshu Sharma. Sharma, too, was doing of [financial] strength that I could survive [without working] for jack shit. According to Rai, Sharma told him, a couple of years. But, those couple of years became ten years.” “‘Mereko nahi samajh aa raha yahaan ka Between 2001 and 2011, Rai sat at home, did an occasional television [scene]. Roz mujhse sindoor udwate hai.’” So, Rai told project or two to support his wife and daughter, and became a A Shim, “‘I’m also searching for my survival. You tell me, how much student of cinema. He learnt from the VHS tapesCDsDVDs you need for your survival?’ He calculated and said, ‘`5,000.’ So, of masters of the craft: Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Govind Nihalani, I said, ‘Okay. That means now I have to look for `45,000. Kal Bimal Roy. “I’m a very good struggler,” he says. “In those ten years se aaja.’” After the meet-cute, Rai tells me, “He joined me as an also, I used to sleep very well. What helped me was the middle- Class assistant, but he never ‘assisted’ assisted me. He only acted like an class man in me who knows how to survive with very little and assistant. And, the minute he got a chance to write, Tanu Weds stay happy. I never got irritated. Actually, I was preparing for Manu happened to us.” Rai and Sharma have consciously coupled cinema to happen to me. [But], there is a time for everything, on four films together: Tanu Weds Manu (2011), Raanjhanaa and you have to wait for it to happen to you.” (2013), Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015) and the upcoming Shah Rukh Khan-starrer, Zero (2018). A few of the ISI marks in ortune can be kind-hearted to the kind-hearted, Apart their films include: good-hearted characters make bad decisions; and it was in this phase that Rai met Sharma. They Aanand L Rai has warmed sunshine and shades fill each scene; the laughs are rowdy and the became friends, bonding over food, and Sharma tears gentle. “The [one] thing we had in common from our first pitched Tanu Weds Manu to him, about a demure the director’s chair for meeting,” says Rai, “was that even in our tough times, we knew NRI boy (R Madhavan) falling for a cocksure Tanu Weds Manu, Tanu how to smile.” FIndian girl (Kangana Ranaut). It’s tough to believe now, but Weds Manu Returns, Rai, 46, is originally from South Delhi, and according to him, the script of Tanu Weds Manu found few suitors. “Tanu Weds Raanjhanaa and the 1980s South Delhi twinned 2018’s Kanpur. “You know those Manu took me two years to get a producer,” says Rai. “Actually, upcoming Shah Rukh yellow houses that look the same? I have grown up in those. I I never got a producer. I had to decide I’ll produce it myself.” Khan-starrer, Zero, and Its screenwriter, Sharma, tells me over the phone, “Everybody worn the producer’s hat was liking the script, but the film was not getting made. That for Nil Battey Sannata, “In 2011, Tanu was new. When you thing never bittered us. We always had this sense that you’ll Happy Bhag Jayegi, used to see a girl on the roads smoking have to prove [yourself], only then will people look at you. This expectation of a grand justice from life: life is never just; you have Shubh Mangal Saavdhan a cigarette outside a paan shop, you used to look at her. But, in 2015, Tanu was not new. to manoeuvre your way through it. In the process, thank god, we and Mukkabaaz. He has a That was the time to get Datto” never turned bitter. We enjoyed a lot.” jeweller’s eye for stories from the heart of India, in which simple, middle-class flaunt that. I like saying that with one subzi and one dal, we used people lead entertaining to have a feast,” he says, in Hinglish. His upbringing was liberal lives — perhaps because and creative (even his elder brother, Ravi Rai, grew up to become he, too, is a simple, a very successful television director). Their mum was a fine arts teacher; their dad was an English professor at Delhi University. middle-class man leading “I used to have a great time talking to my dad. I never sat with a truly entertaining life. him for studies. That atmosphere he gave us, that creative world TEXT BY EKTA MOHTA he gave us, actually made us what we are now. He always used to PHOTOGRAPH BY ROHIT GUPTA tell me, ‘Yaar, woh karna jo tumhara mann karein. Don’t push yourself for things which you feel will make others happy. Do what makes you happy.’” Rai took his words to heart. “[At] my core, I’m a happy person. I’m not a very ambitious guy.” This strain of light-heartedness, of laughing in the face of After graduating from Summer Fields School, Kailash Colony, adversity, permeates their films. Rai tells me, “The best thing and making the perfunctory pit stop in engineering (MGM about Tanu Weds Manu is ki har kisi ke andar ek Manu hota hai College in Nanded), Rai joined his brother, who is ten years older, aur har kisi ke andar ek Tanu hota hai. The percentage might in the television industry. “From the word go I realised I’m in the differ. I can be 60 per cent Manu; somebody can be 80 per cent right place. I enjoyed sets; I enjoyed my floor; I never wanted to Tanu. But, there’s something very nice about both of them. And, pack up. I enjoyed every department: from direction to edit to somehow very middle-class and very progressive. I loved that music. I started knowing myself in those few years, and I started thing. I caught hold of that: that storytelling should be Indian, liking myself.” The Rai brothers worked in television in its golden and it should be progressive. Because I did not have the money run in the 1990s: Sailaab and Teacher on Zee, Thoda Hai Thode Ki to mount it like a cinematic experience, I had to set it in the real

114 FEBRUARY 2018 • MW FEBRUARY 2018 • MW 115 UP CLOSE RAI'S ONSCREEN FAMILY world. I got into the lanes of Kanpur and Lucknow, and made a love story in a very real space. We had nothing to lose because no one was paying any attention to us.” After the success of Tanu Weds Manu, people started paying attention to them. His sophomore film,Raanjhanaa (starring Dhanush and Sonam Kapoor), was an even bigger hit, but Rai MANU values it today on the basis of his personal growth. “One reason to go for Raanjhanaa was that, in 2009, I lost my dad. That was TANU the first time I understood a vacuum and a sense of loss. I wanted UNTITLED to make a conversation between me and death. So, Raanjhanaa (ZERO) DATTO happened. I knew it would be a difficult journey, but I never KUNDAN knew that it would change me. Raanjhanaa gave me a certain kind of maturity, a certain kind of foothold in manhood. I used to than the setups. I know how important it is to secure a director, cry a lot, but while doing Raanjhanaa, I started holding myself and say, ‘Ja, tu apni kahaani suna.’ I’m not looking for stories in a better way. I became a man. When I say a man, I mean I can [set in small towns], but the films I get attached to are very take care of people; I can take care of situations; I can take care original films. It’s becoming a theory for me on how to choose: of my loved ones. Success gave me something else, but the film stay close to your roots, and you’ll get original stuff.” gave me this.” This year, Rai directs Shah Rukh Khan in Zero, in which the Between each film, Rai is conscious of the difference between megastar plays a dwarf. “After [Tanu Weds Manu Returns], I achievement and success: achievement comes first; success had reached a point, where, Ekta, I felt I was tired of doing one follows. So, even though he thing: that Aanand is very good with mad women; Aanand keeps directed a sequel next (in essence, things real; he shoots the interiors of India so beautifully. I felt repeating a formula), he turned “Raanjhanaa if I did the same thing, I won’t enjoy it that much. There should it on its head. Tanu Weds Manu gave me a be something challenging. So, it started around four to five years Returns is better than the original certain kind back when a lot of superhero films were happening like mera bhi because the character of Datto is of foothold in abhi Krrish hoga. I felt that deep down, as Indians, we were not better than Tanu. “In 2011, Tanu manhood. I used ready to create a superhero, kyunki hum abhi kadd mein bahut was new,” he says. “When you used to cry a lot, but chhote hai. Himanshu came up with this idea of a vertically to see a girl on the roads smoking while doing challenged man.” a cigarette outside a paan shop, Raanjhanaa, I you used to look at her. But, in started holding his is typically how Sharma and Rai work: one 2015, Tanu was not new. That was myself in a proposes, the other disposes. “We’re not a [typical] the time to get Datto. She was a better way” writer-director combo,” says Rai. “He’s my youngest different kind of independence, friend. He understands me as a director, and I and somebody who, at that point, was representing my really understand him as a writer. We used to talk a country.” In the intervening four years, Ranaut, who played Tlot, [but] now we have started talking less and understanding both Tanu and Datto in the sequel (and did an outstanding job more.” Sharma says, “The best thing about Aanand is that he of it), had become a top-grade actor and a top-grade fighter never dictates. He’s a very democratic man, and he will listen to cock. Rai is polite yet honest about the shoot. “We had a great everyone. He never tells me that I want to work on a romantic understanding, but definitely those four years had changed me, comedy or an action drama. He completely relies on me in that changed her. As a person also, she’d had her own journey, her way. I get to write whatever I want to write. Right now, we’re own ups and downs, which helps an actor and director. We were working on Zero, which is a romantic drama-slash-comedy. both peaking at that point of time. We had a great time. When Tomorrow, if I tell him I want to work on an action film, he I say great time, it doesn’t mean smooth. Many times I used wouldn’t have any problems with that. And, within a couple of to think, ‘Why is she not understanding this?’ Many times she months, he will prepare himself to do an action film.” Familiarity used to think, ‘Why am I so rigid?’ At the end of the day, we has bred respect in them. “After doing three films, I don’t have to knew we were talking about the film. There’s nothing personal.” explain what I’m trying to say,” says Sharma. “I have never The ginormous success of Tanu Weds Manu Returns (it earned narrated anything [to him]. An unsaid comfort is there [between six times more than its budget) paved the way for Rai to become us], where he understands the layers of what I’m trying to say. All the dream producer. In the last two years, he has backed Nil these things I don’t have to explain to him. He just gets it.” Battey Sannata, Happy Bhag Jayegi, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan Because both of them are the kind of men always looking for a and Mukkabaaz. “For me, my director is the hero. I really want silver lining, Rai had explained their equation to interviewer to see him happy, in control,” he says. “The only thing I’m doing Rajeev Masand thus: “When unemployment brings you together, different [as a producer] is that I’m believing in my director more you end up with a longer-term relationship.”

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