Varun Grover Interview: 'Satyajit Ray Put His Strongest Themes in That One Film'

This is part I of a long, candid conversation with Varun Grover.

Celebrated writer, poet, lyricist, comedian and filmmaker Varun Grover sits down with Amborish Roychoudhury for a marathon two-part interview. In this first instalment, Varun talks about his early influences, his favourite films from Rakhwala to Ray, and busts some popular myths about storytelling. The second part will follow soon. 

AR: You once said in an interview that you wanted to be a Sai Paranjpye film. Which film would that be?  

VG: Katha, actually. A mix of Katha, Chashme Buddoor and a film called Disha, which came on Doordarshan. For me, it was the kind of conflict in her cinema that worked. But not grand conflicts - conflicts of heart versus mind. These were the kinds of internal conflicts in her films. Still, they were not as subtle or as multi-layered as, say, a Shyam Benegal film - where there is a lot of internal conflict going on and you have to rack your brains to follow the proceedings. So, in my mind, hers was the perfect middle-of-the-road cinema. And she had a hopeful view of the world which was very important to me. As a kid growing up, I wanted to be seen in the films - I wanted to identify with them. Those days, we used to watch everything right from Loha to Tridev to Khatron Ke Khiladi..those films had thrill, excitement and we had a lot of fun watching them, but there was no identification. I still remember when I watched Rakhwala… 

 AR: The Anil Kapoor-Farha film? Did you watch that in a theatre? 

 VG: No, we rented a VCR. But it was a bigger set-up. There was a wedding at a relative’s house. The wedding was three days later, but all the kids and the grownups had gathered, and they had installed a huge screen on the lawn behind their house. It was rigged to a VCR and a projector. And I was really looking forward to it… 

AR: What else did you watch that day? I am sure it wasn’t just Rakhwala…

VG: Nahi, Rakhwala, Loha, Masoom…I remember these three. There were four or five films. We started in the evening and went on till 6 in the morning. At around 5 PM, fooling around on a guava tree, I stuck my hand in a beehive and was stung by three or four of them. My hand swelled up pretty fast and it hurt like crazy. The elders advised me to take painkillers and sleep it off. But I would have none of that. I wasn’t going to let go of the opportunity to watch so many films. Masoom we had seen many times at home on VHS - we loved it a lot.

So I think the first film was Masoom and I was not looking at it. I was in too much pain. Then Rakhwala started and I completely forgot about the pain. It was such a joy to see that film. I remember Rakhwala fondly because it had more emotional content than, say, a Loha or a Tridev. And because it made my pain go away. So, I am saying, those films were typical escapist cinema and had enough thrills for a kid.

But Sai Paranjpye did something else to me. She made me feel like an adult, even as a kid. I thought, here’s a story of grownups and I can still understand it and connect with it. There is a hopeful view of the world in those films. The characters are grey but eventually, good kind of wins. Although later you go back to Chashme Buddoor and you realise it’s a bit of satire on whether good wins or not - but I didn’t catch all that as a child.

Another thing was the way Bombay and Delhi were shown in her films. I hadn’t seen the Bombay of Katha in any other film. The chawl, and the sense of community… these were missing from every other Bombay film we were watching those days. Take Parinda for example. Parinda had such a depressing view of the city that, it kind of scared you, and you never wanted to go to Bombay. And then you see Katha you are like, these people are just like us! The kind of people and the kind of daily struggle. Bus pakadne ke liye line mein khade hain, sab log dhakka maarke aage chale ja rahein hain and one guy is left behind. This happened in our city too. It wasn’t like someone going and shooting Anupam Kher right in front of Gateway of India in broad daylight! That was scary. But this was relatable. Ordinary people with ordinary ambitions and ordinary levels of deceit, which was nice.  

AR: Yeah, there are very few films from that era where you get to see the real Bombay. Like Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman, for instance. Gaman had many shots of the real Bombay, especially in the song Seene mein jalan. And there is a scene in that film where you see Farooq Sheikh and Jalal Agha inside the train, in the middle of the crowd. They used to lug around big heavy cameras those days. I wonder how they shot it. By the way, you have also said that you’ve liked almost everything made by Satyajit Ray that you’ve seen. Have you seen his filmography? 

VG: Yeah, except Chidiyakhana. I have still not found a good print. In fact, I went to SRFTI for a lecture and even they didn’t have a decent print. It was during Pre-Covid times. I still took it from them. It was the same as the bad DVD I had got earlier. 

AR: There’s a very watchable print on YouTube now. Were you introduced to Ray’s cinema as a youngster? Maybe as part of the regional films, they used to show during Sunday afternoons on Doordarshan? 

VG: No, much later, actually. But on those afternoon screenings, I had seen a lot of South Indian films. Like Mahanadhi, the Kamal Haasan film. I saw a lot of Kamal Haasan films those days. We also knew Rajinikanth, and some Malayalam stars like Mammootty. Actually, anyone who had transitioned to Bollywood even for one film. So we watched all these South films, but no Ray. I had tried watching Pather Panchali in college. We got a VCD or something because we had heard about it a lot. It was an atrocious print and it was not a film to be watched with a bunch of college boys in the hostel room. I wasn’t able to watch it back then. So the first time I really watched it - lucky for me - was when I was in Pune. My first job was in Pune, right after college. I was at a software company for 11 months until I moved to Bombay around 2003-04. I used to code for them and then switched to documentation because I just hated coding and I thought, chalo there was at least something to write - it was tech-based writing.

My first gig as a writer was when I went to FTII and asked them if they wanted a writer for something. Shilpi Dasgupta was making her diploma film. She was in the direction course, the same batch as Umesh Kulkarni. I think she came from Calcutta, so her Hindi was not that good. She had written the dialogues in English, but the film, Sanshodhan, was in Hindi. She asked me if I could write the Hindi dialogues. So I wrote them - basically, the job was to adapt her dialogues into Hindi. I think I got a credit for adaptation or something. So, because I made some contacts in FTII, the batch of 2004 kind of adopted me, and they would take me to screenings at NFAI. And that is when I watched Pather Panchali for the first time on the big screen. On a proper film print. And I was blown away. I had seen a lot of Hindi films before this. I was a movie buff, I had seen contemporary commercial and art films, but nothing like this.

AR: Around what time was this? 

VG: This was around December 2003 or January 2004. I saw a lot of films in those two months. There were some screenings or the other at NFAI every day, and I was there. There I saw Bicycle Thieves, I saw the Apu Trilogy over three consecutive days. I also walked out of a few, like the French New Wave films. They didn’t hold me. Bicycle Thieves I liked because it still had a narrative. But I walked out halfway through 8½ because I didn’t quite get it. I had that sense of being intellectually chutiya as compared to those FTII students who were really into it. The screenings were followed by Q&A sessions with one of their professors there and he would pose questions et cetera. I watched some 3 or 4 of them and I was like, I’m gonna come across as stupid if someone asked me something, toh main nikal gaya udhar se.  

AR: I still don’t connect with 8½, by the way. I tried a lot to break it down, but it just didn’t work for me.  

VG: I did revisit it later. I would still say it’s a good experimental film but it doesn’t have the…there was another film recently I think which a lot of people said is an adaptation of 8½. Was it Birdman? Someone said something about a Hollywood film….whatever it was, I liked that film better. Certain themes were borrowed from 8½. Anyhow, that’s the first time I saw a Ray film. Then I moved to Bombay. At the time, many of his films were easily available on CDs. So then I collected whatever I could get. Then I saw the Calcutta Trilogy. There are days when I feel it’s better than the Apu Trilogy, at least for me. Because it has more anger, more urban realism than rural…or maybe it was the Calcutta of that time that I connected with.

It also resonated with me because there is a similar phase in Hindi cinema of the angry young man, which is kind of similar but this is a way more refined and way more nuanced and layered and impactful take than the Hindi cinema of similar genre. Even outside commercial cinema, Amol Palekar’s films or films like Gaman about urban disillusionment, were in a similar space.

At that time, the restored prints of Ray’s films were not available. I saw whatever I could. I didn’t want to watch the films he made for children. Back then I didn’t see the Goopy Gyne films and the Feluda films like Shonar Kella. The Feluda films I saw recently, probably in the past 8 years, because they were all on Amazon Prime Video. I’ve seen Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne as well - I’m not a fan of it for two reasons. One it’s a musical and I don’t know the language. Two, it’s a terrible print. So for me, the greatest joy of the film is lost. Now I am learning Bangla and I am hoping that in the next six months, I will be able to…Also, the print quality was really poor. 

AR: Oh, are you learning online or with someone’s help? 

VG: I’ve got a teacher, I can read a little now. Even write, to an extent. But I don’t understand. Because the teacher doesn’t have time for separate classes on speaking. He just taught me the text and how to read it. I have Rabindranath Tagore’s Shahaj Path which I can read. Usmein jo kavitayen hain, I can read and understand them. I even translated a Tagore poem which got published. Poetry is something I know, so it was relatively easy to translate. So I’m hoping to rewatch everything once I learn the language.  

AR: So now there’s another common thread you have with Gulzar saab who reads and understands Bangla and has translated Tagore… 

VG: Yes, I think so. But then he was also married to a Bengali…. 

AR: In the context of Ray’s cinema, you once wrote about Agantuk (1991) and a scene from it. That is a film that I also personally connect with. When one sees Ray’s work, there’s a general view that his later films, especially the last ones he made, are weak films. That is the general perception. Because of his advanced age, he might have taken a few shortcuts here and there - using more interior shots, how he instructed actors etc. Age affects certain filmmakers more than others. I wanted to know your views on Agantuk specifically because you went deep into that scene and you must have seen that film many times. I’d like your views on it as a writer and as a viewer. How do you see that film? 

VG: I kind of agree with the general sentiment that his last few films are weaker in terms of technical craft. But I also think that you see the greatness of Ray in these films, especially in Agantuk. In that film, he demonstrated that intellectually, he was as strong as ever and probably stronger. Also, he knew that it was his last film, so he has tried to kind of wrap things up, starting from the Apu Trilogy which was about moving out of your home and seeing the world. That's how he started and then he ends with what you achieve when you see the world. It's like the completion of an arc and that was beautiful. That moved me a lot. And this was the last Ray film I saw - because I watched them almost chronologically. I'm also a big fan of Utpal Dutt. So I wanted to save it for the last. Wasn’t he also there in Seemabadhha? 

AR: No, The Middleman (Jana Aranya)  

VG: Yes. So, for me, Agantuk was like dessert. I wanted to watch it at the very end. I saw it after a gap of about a year of watching those other films. Here was someone who knew this was his last film, and knew very consciously what kind of message to convey there. And the message landed perfectly. It's like the finale of a great film - if his life were a film, or if his entire filmography were just one film. That is something very few filmmakers have managed to do. I felt Miyazaki had done it when he made Spirited Away. That was at that time his stated last film. It had a message similar to Ray’s, about completing his life journey with a sense of awe and wonderment, all of which were his major themes. It is also slightly autobiographical. 

So, I think Ray put his strongest themes in that one film through a character who was very Ray-like. People often say that Soumitra was the alter ego of Ray. You can kind of see that right from Pather Panchali where the boy Apu was his alter ego to Utpal Dutt being his alter ego in his last film, it was a great journey. For me, it was something that really blew me away. The writing, the themes, and the intellectual quest continue. This was something that showed me that he was still very willing to engage and very very capable of engaging. It’s just that… as I read later, he was probably directing from his bed or sitting somewhere and not moving about. So there weren’t a lot of tracking shots or stuff like that. Mostly static and indoors.

In the scene I wrote about, with the coins and the magic, I think he matched what he was physically capable of doing at that time with what that scene required. That scene needed that much. All the outdoor scenes in that film, I felt, were very impactful because he had an eye for nature, which again goes back to his first film. All the elements of nature are still very much there and you can see it in that film. 

And again to connect the themes like the sense of wonderment of seeing a train passing by in his first film and the sense of wonderment of a solar eclipse in the last one. It's like yeah it's a jump and again it's a trajectory. So at some point even in the Apu trilogy, like in the second film itself, the train becomes a part of your life. It’s right behind the small house they live in. So in this long journey, what can still give you a sense of awe? You look up, and you can see it. So I am seeing a grand narrative here. So that was something that still worked for me. 

AR: Typically, we don’t see as many conversation scenes in Indian cinema as we do in the West and world cinema. In India, unless you have bombastic dialogues, you don't see a lot of engaging conversation. In Agantuk, you have this great epic scene, it’s almost a duel, where Dhritiman and Utpal Dutt are sparring over civilization and so many themes. He speaks about adda, the Greek gymnasium where everyone used to sit around and talk about philosophy, he talks about the bison - the first cave painting, modern medicine, drugs, technology, so many things in one conversation! But what they are really doing is talking about this old man who has almost forced his way into their home and whether he is for real or not. Which is phenomenal. Now, getting a little bit into your writing, especially screenplays. There are dime-a-dozen books on screenwriting and every book talks about conflict and how it is important. Do you think there can be a film or a story which is completely devoid of conflict? From a writer’s perspective, how do you look at conflict? Is it a cardinal rule? A film like Before Sunrise, which has some conflict at the fag end of the film..Richard Linklater’s films…  

VG: Yeah, I was about to say Richard Linklater’s films like Waking Life, Before Sunrise etc. don’t have conflict. I don’t think a film needs conflict. A film needs a thematic enquiry, a film needs characters, and their journey - and that journey can be without conflict a lot of times. A film like Lunchbox, for example, has very little conflict at all. I mean, it’s just about people going about their lives and meeting and not meeting in certain ways. So I don’t think conflict is the cardinal rule. Of course, conflict is the easiest trope to hook people in and to do the other stuff. Sometimes you need that hook to talk about other stuff, which, again, for example, Ray has done in Agantuk, where the conflict is, "Who is this man? Where has he come from? Is he trying to cheat them or something?" But then he's not really talking about that. That is just one seed in your head and then you are just seeing what this man is and that is the film. It’s about the journey of that man or the thoughts of that man. Conflict does help and I'm not anti-conflict at all. It’s a great tool to talk about many many other things. But, just theoretically, there can be a film without conflict and it can be a great film and there have been many great films that didn't have any conflict. One side-note, absolutely random - Hum Aapke Hain Koun! 

AR: Exactly. I was about to say that. In a three-and-a-half-hour-long film, Renuka Shahane falls down the stairs in the last half hour. But that entire film, narrated in the Indian tradition of storytelling, doesn’t have a central conflict… 

VG: Yeah, so my theory is that the film would have been an equally big hit if she had not fallen. Then Salman and Madhuri would have just married. Shaadi ho jaati, last ke aadhe ghante mein shaadi ki taiyaari, do achhe gaane dikhaa dete. It would have been just as big a success, I think. You have entertained people. Job done.  

AR: Do you think that stuff like the Hero’s Journey and the protagonist’s quest are essential? Do you think of them as checkboxes to tick? 

VG: I don't think so. They are so strict about the rules, it's almost like the algorithms that the channels insist on for writing a series: there should be a hook at the end, every episode should have two questions, answer one of them in the next episode, and then open two new questions in the next episode and so on it goes. 

These are those kinds of rules that at some point were made by people who found them exciting, new and helpful. But now they have done their bit and I don’t think they are useful anymore. Except if you are writing a genre film. But if you’re writing a genre film, you already know these steps, so that’s okay.

AR: Who is your all-time favourite screenwriter who you keep going back to for their screenplays? 

VG: Of course, Ray is one. Then Charlie Kaufman, for sure. He manages to make very, very deep films without conflict. There is often no clear conflict, but there’s a fantastical premise sometimes. Erasing your memory is a premise, it's not a conflict (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Or being inside someone's head, the power to be in someone's head is Being John Malkovich. So, it's just a first plot point and not even, you know, it's not a conflict. The last one (I’m Thinking of Ending Things) toh mujhe samajh hi nahi aayi. 

AR: The book is actually a very beautiful…counter-point, if not an interpretation of the film. When you read the book, you understand some aspects of it. If you end up reading the book after seeing the film. 

VG: Ok. There’s one more, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, who collaborated with him in numerous films. 

AR: What is the longest you have taken to write a screenplay and what is the shortest? 

VG: Very difficult to say. You can write the first draft very quickly. I think I wrote the first draft of Masaan in 15-20 days. But the future drafts and the rewriting, which is the actual writing, took about a year. For Sandeep and Pinky Faraar, we chatted for at least 6 months without writing a word. It was just me and Dibakar chatting and just talking about the broad themes we wanted to bring in and some story about someone we know, and something that happened to them. After those 6 months, when I started writing it, it took me 15-20 days to finish one draft. On Sacred Games, the pilot took very little time. I wrote it in about 3 days, and it didn't have too many future drafts. It was almost all there in the first draft - so probably that was the quickest I have written. 

(Amborish Roychoudhury is a National Film Award-winning author and film historian. His second book Sridevi: The South Years came out last year, and he has just finished his biography of Raj Khosla.)