Kamlesh Pandey - Creative head behind Ran

Courtesy: Goher Iqbal Punn
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The coveted writer Kamlesh Pandey looks very much excited about his forthcoming mammoth project, 'Rang De Basanti'. "Till date as a writer I had been just writing what others wanted or expected from me and hence hired me to write. I think I have had enough of it. Now that I do not have to prove to any one about my capability, I have decided to write what I want. And my latest release as a writer is Rakyesh Om Prakash's 'Rang De Basanti'. This is one subject with which I am literally gung ho about." That is Kamlesh Pandey the veteran writer who holds forth on his current pet obsession- Rang De Basanti starring Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Siddharth, Atul Kulkarni and Kunal Kapoor.

Kamlesh who had started his career, as a writer with Pankaj Parashar's Jalwa, has indeed come a long way. Among the films, which he has written, are Tezaab, Chalbaaz, Dil, Saudagar, Khalnayak and Beta. Right now, Kamlesh is excited with the course his career has taken him. Two of his films are seeing the light of the day in January- Sanjay Gupta's 'Zinda' (already on screens) and Rakyesh Mehra's 'Rang De Basanti'. "I am excited about both the films. I have just written the dialogues of Zinda, which has been inspired by a South Korean film called Old Boy. I have written the screenplay and dialogues of Rang De Basanti, which is essentially Rakyesh Mehra's baby," Kamlesh adds.

"Luckily Rakyesh and I share the same emotions and concerns. Rang De Basanti may have a cynical point of view. But I think it is a wake up call for today's youth, who seem to have compromised with the two monoliths- corporate and the family," he states. Kamlesh is happy that Aamir Khan has loved only two subjects in the last ten years- Sarfarosh and Rang De Basanti. "The way Aamir has accommodated himself so beautifully and dissolved himself in the group is to be seen to be believed," Kamlesh chips in.

The under current of the film Rang De Basanti, according to Kamlesh is what Bhagath Singh would have done if only he was alive today. "I wrote Rang De Basanti out of a sense of anger because under the guise of cinema, we only find crap cropping up every now and then. I had grown up on as staple diet of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor as a child. I belong to the school, which thinks that a film ought to have some substance and is set out to say something," Kamlesh adds.

"I have used a very odd structure for the film, which was very difficult. I feel that it is the director's vision, which has to take over once my script is ready because it is the director who sets out to execute on celluloid what the writer writes on paper. It is creditable that Rakyesh has delivered what he had promised," he further chimed in his views. Kamlesh laments the fact that though we claim to be the biggest film industry in the world, we do not even have a film course or workshops for screenplay writing in even a single university.

"It is pathetic that we do not have even half a dozen competent writers though we claim to producer around 800 films in a year. India has been unfair to writers who I feel have not been given their due credit and status. No wonder almost 95% of the films released every year flop miserably. Though the media is ready to write about any girl who is willing to take off her clothes, it does not bother to respect writers who are treated like illegitimate children," Kamlesh thundered.

Kamlesh who has also written for TV serials like Mrs Madhuri Dixit says that he is out of television because he is not able to relate to the vision, people have of television. He added that he couldn't say no when Ekta Kapoor approached him with the offer to be on her panel of writers and supervise her serial Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki with his story inputs. "I have known Ekta right from the time I had commissioned her TV serial Hum Paanch for Zee TV almost a decade ago."

Kamlesh Pandey is not ready to just sit on laurels now that both Zinda and Rang De Basanti have reached the winning post. He has started working on two projects for Rakyesh Mehra for whom, incidentally he had also written Aks with which Rakyesh has made his debut as a director. "One of the two films will be Delhi 6, which will be a light hearted film about real people in flesh and blood who inhabit Chandni Chowk in Delhi. While the other one will be a musical called Bhairavi for which A. R. Rahman has promised to compose music provided Rakyesh is ready to wait for two years", he said. Kamlesh Pandey has added one more feather to his already crowded cap by writing a stage musical called Bharathi for Pashagoshi Productions from Israel. They have earlier produced several stage musicals like The Fiddler on the Roof, Phantom of the Opera etc.

"I was given a brief to write a stage musical on India with 14 popular Bollywood songs and weave a story on India. It is a live show with Bhavana Pani, daughter of Writer-director Uday Shankar Pani in the title role. Ganesh Acharya, Remo and Jojo Khan have done the choreography for the live show, which consists of 60 dancers from India. The play has run for a month and a half in Israel in the Hebrew language and is now all set to open in France on January 26 this year in French," Kamlesh tells. The intelligent writer has always enticed the souls and is geared up once again with the upcoming 'Rang De Basanti'.