*~Battle for Bittora~ - Updates - Shooting starts June 2015 - Page 20

Over a decade ago, a scriptwriter recalls walking into Shashanka Ghosh's office. He found the creative director of Channel [V] outfitted in cricketing gear: right down to pads and gloves, topped off with a helmet. The quirkiness was perhaps par for the course for Ghosh who in the 1990s unleashed TV avatars and iconic one liners such as Uddham Singh, Quick Gun Murugan and We are like this only, Mind It! on a hungry-for-more GenNext audience.

Today, Ghosh is in workman attire, inconspicuous, baggy fatigues and a white T-shirt. Emblazoned across the tee, however, is the riotously colourful image of his celebrated South Indian cowboy Quick Gun Murugan (QGM), who has pistol-shot his way to a cinema release and the reason why the close-cropped Ghosh is giving back-to-back interviews at a suburban coffee shop in Mumbai.

It's taken 15 years for Quick Gun Murugan: The Misadventures of an Indian Cowboy to see the light of day. Ghosh, 47, shakes his head in relief, finally relaxed at the end of a very long journey. "Fifteen years is the official line but serious work on it started in 2006," he confesses.

The script by Rajesh Devraj was written in the early nineties but Ghosh's efforts to convert it to film saw him in an endless search for a producer. An inexact tally puts the refusals at 20. It's taken years of perseverance, and he has seen it all. "All, all. Pretty much every hurdle in the book, and some outside it." Those memories are enough for him to roll his eyes and it's not something he wants to revisit right now.

He talks as film fraternity and fans continuously walk over to tell him how much they liked his film, which reportedly pulled in Rs 3 crore on its opening weekend. The director's eyes mist at one point. "Someone walks up and that makes me feel really good," he says, gripping his coffee cup after a gentleman stops by politely and in old-school Hindi congratulates him.

Not everyone is as pleased, of course " some Reddys are glowering at being made the villains of the piece. QGM (Dr Rajendra Prasad) who wants to convert the country to vegetarianism takes on Rice Plate Reddy (Naseer) who wants to spread non-vegetarianism. The film is made in four versions, Tamil, Telugu, English and Hindi, the last being his personal favourite ("I do feel worried that Hindi is not being noticed"). Giving serious support to Murugan are his dead love Locket Lover (Anu Menon) and the vamp with the heart of gold, Mango Dolly (Rambha).

Perhaps it is only fitting that Ghosh had zero smattering of Tamil. Ajay Krishna, his cameraman, would engage in a volley of seri, seri' and everyone would be careful to mind it. Krishna was one of many friends and crew who, Ghosh found, wanted to be a part of the film through its long haul. "Bloody Cowboy has his own following," Ghosh hoots.

But before the august QGM came with twin guns blazing to the big screen, there was a necessary detour. Ghosh approached Ram Gopal Varma in the late nineties. "He was one of the most adventurous filmmakers of the time." Varma took one look at the script and said "What's this? The (film) grammar in this is so different." He advised Ghosh to make another movie first to help get some credibility before starting QGM.

"He was very right in everything he said. It was the best advice I got," chuckles Ghosh. So he made his first film in 2003. Of course, it was a gangster film. Some refer to Waisa Bhi Hota Hai " Part 2 (there was no part 1, in case you didn't get it) as a cult film, and it went on to win the best film award in the Florence River West film festival the next year. After that it was back to QGM. The pink-cheeked gun-toting Murugan hovered like a haze in Ghosh's mind, wherever he travelled, whatever he did.

When QGM was ready to launch, the spoof was ready with a more coherent filmic journey than a bunch of gags. Not surprisingly, Ghosh has earned a reputation for his ability to turn cultural clichs into a unique comic identity with immaculate affection rather than parody. "You are God," director producer Subhash Ghai commented after watching the film, says Ghosh.

The creative has paid off commercially, whether in successfully setting up television channels (including MTV, Channel [V] and Sahara One TV) or in content for the launch of World Space's digital audio broadcast station. Ghosh is currently the creative director at a soon-to-be-launched TV show, "the cheapest reality show".

This wasn't what he had set out to do, though. Studying in Bhagat Singh College, Delhi, for a commerce degree, he was half-heartedly following the route to chartered accountancy. Instead, he found himself in advertising. Starting out as a copywriter with Hindustan Thompson, he went on to script and make ad films till he eventually ended up launching MTV in India. After the break-up between STAR and MTV, he threw in his lot with STAR and launched Channel [V] in India in 1994. The brief was to indigenise an international music channel. Channel [V]'s ad spots revolving around the Quickgun Murugan character, which Ghosh, by then in Mumbai, produced and directed, with its tongue-in-cheek Indianisation resonated with a fresh mindset among viewers.

QGM, both the movie and the original character for [V], was written by the talented Rajesh Devraj, who remains Ghosh's collaborator. There were offers even then to make a film around QGM: the Spaghetti Western totally idlified. Many promises and many years later, Ghosh found Anand Surapur of Phat Phish Motion Productions and an ex-Channel [V] associate. "Twenty producers later you find the right one, who wants to make it the way it was written," he says.

QGM was Don Quixotic in the director's eyes, an oddball of a figure who takes himself seriously. A decade long incubation later, how did it feel to see the film with the audience in a darkened cinema hall? "I haven't seen it in the theatre yet. I discovered exhaustion on Friday morning (last week). And it was my father's death anniversary on Sunday. But I believe total strangers were exchanging grins after the film ended."

Ghosh, who describes himself as more Jat than Bengali, grew up in Delhi admiring the repartee of the big and sturdy Haryanvis. His father Ashok, a chartered accountant at the Life Insurance Corporation of India, hoped his eldest born would follow in his footsteps. "My mother (Anjali) is definitely off-centre. I wish she was my friend's mother. Then it would be more fun. She has that level of craziness. Can't do' doesn't enter her head. By process of balance and harmony, my father was gentle and full of No, no, it can't be done'."

Their home in south Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave was never locked. A visitor once found himself sitting for an hour as various family members passed him by with a smile, not recognising him and assuming he had come to visit another member. When the man realised he was in the wrong house (intended destination was the neighbouring address), he failed to see the humour in the situation and was most annoyed at having wasted his time.

Is that where he gets his madness from? "I am perfectly lucid. I don't understand why people think I am mad! My wife says it's an utter lie: I am not a genius. I agree. Artists are. M.F. Husain is a genius. I am an ex-advertising guy. I am a communicator who tells a story."

He met his wife Baggy' (Sangita Bahuguna), when they were peddling Four Square cigarettes for a direct marketing campaign. "She is mad, certified!" he guffaws. He was her "boss, it turned into one of the most derogatory terms ever." On their third meeting, she pushed him into a pond. What does she do now? Dances on bar counters, he laughs some more. They have two teenage children, who believe their father has done one good thing in life: making QGM.

Why didn't he ever give up on QGM? "People in advertising say they want to give up advertising, or people in banks want to give up their jobs. But filmmakers don't want to go away. We'll do anything to direct."

The man who was petrified of saying "Roll, camera!" and had to be bullied into learning it by Delhi 6 director Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra (who did the camera for Ghosh's first MTV production), is now planning his next film, a sci-fi thriller.

And, along the way, he is "mustering up guts" to write a book, more autobiographical than fiction. So far though, "Life has been too full to reminisce."