From Middle-Class Roots to Making Movies That Matter
My mother was a government employee in Film City, Bombay. During my school days, I used to visit her, which sparked my interest in filmmaking. After watching Satya, I started searching for who made this film and discovered Ram Gopal Varma. I began researching about him.
One day, my mother messaged me through someone, saying, 'Your favorite director is here, and he's shooting a new film.' That's when I met him for the first time.I really wanted to work with him gradually after my graduation. How is getting job offers at that time? then I got to know about Vishram Sawant; he treated me like his son; he taught me a lot. I worked for him for 3 years and learned a lot; and there was this one time where he took a break from filmmaking and he wanted to stop, but then I requested one thing, saying I have one request: please introduce me to Ramu Sir. Then I started working as an assistant director, and somehow I realized that I didn't just want to do any job over there, but I wanted to be a filmmaker.
There is this web series i have made a 'Blind love', and that is on YouTube. I don't know if you have heard about Fern and Petals, so I made this web series for them. So basically I wrote that film when I worked with Ramu Sir. That time I wanted to make an independent film. It got 23,000,000 views on YouTube for Blind Love. that was one of the best works of mine, I got recognized.
There’s only two people in my life through whom I’ve learned filmmaking: Ram Gopal Verma and Vishram Sawant, and they are my inspiration. According to me No filmmaker has a fixed genre; they are called filmmakers because they can make any story into a film. For me, I made 'Blind Love', and everyone was saying that I am a part of Ramu's camp, and I made a romantic story.
I don't come from a big family background; I'm from a middle-class family, and I completed my graduation by studying at night and doing jobs in day as an assistant. I learned everything practically with experience and struggled my way up. Even after working in this industry for 15 years, I'm still trying to prove myself, and I still have to prove myself further.
What inspired me to make the Ayushmati Geeta Metric Pass film is that I come from a middle-class family, I have four sisters, and my mother is uneducated. I saw my mother when we were young; she would be very happy to send us to school; she would be happy to make our tiffin and send us off to school. If we didn't go to school, she would feel like she was going to school herself because we were going to learn so much.
So, for me, this film 'Ayushmati Geeta Metric Pass' is very special because when I was working on a film in UP, I went to villages, and I saw that most children there hadn't studied beyond class 8. This hit me hard: that in villages, most girls don't study beyond classes 5, 6, or 7. Even in my family, one of my sisters studied till the 10th standard, but another one didn't. So, after the film 'Super 30' was made, I connected with Anand sir. So, when we were discussing the film, Anand sir said, 'This film will be very good if you make it on-ground reality, like how few girls study and make a career in IT.' This struck me, and I thought, 'I have to make a film on this.' Then I started working on a story, found a writer, and we all collaborated to write the story of 'Ayushmati Geeta Metric Pass', a story about a girl who takes 3 years to pass 10th standard, and her whole family's hope, dreams, and support are behind her. Her husband also wants her to pass, so this film is a very pure story, connected to reality. Please do watch this film, and please tell others also to watch this film.
When I was casting for Geeta, I met Kashika. She was completely natural, and when I saw her, she hadn't put on any makeup. She confidently met me, greeted me, and even during the ad shoot, she came with natural light makeup. So I asked her, 'Don't you want to do makeup?' And she said, 'No, sir, I'm fine with natural.' I liked that about her, so I offered her the lead role in this film and said, 'Would you like to do this feature film as the main lead?' Because most heroines don't want to do village films, they want to do camera films. But I thought she would be good for this role, so for me, it's Kashika. She has done the entire film in pure Hindi, which was difficult for both of us, but she did it very well.