In a film we have limited time and space to say what we have to, hence the visual language and brevity needs to be paramount. In a novel, however, we can dissect each thought and emotion and build on it.
Even if you are a superstar, you have to give your audience some content. Because there is so much good content out there that people consume today. To sustain this, you have to nurture good content and writers.
As a director you have to live and breathe that one story for 8 months completely. I like variety, if I write extensively I get a writer's block so I do something else to beat the boredom and then get back to something I've already done.
As a woman, sometimes when I am in discussion with a director or producer, there is some kind of a different politics happening. Basically, 'I know more than you'. I am always on the lookout for that. I don't want to get sucked into that. I am very quick to respond to that.
There is no greater agony than carrying the burden of an untold story.
If my stories make people uncomfortable, because it questions your set ideas and value systems that are convenient for a group of people or ideas that promote patriarchy and religious fanaticism, then my job as an artiste and a writer is done. The more you will cry foul, the louder my characters will speak.
I am happy writing and being a producer not a director.
I have grown up on a staple diet of love stories. But, soon I realised it is not so rosy or divine. It is painful, selfish and ugly. Love is the biggest curse of this generation!
Yes, I enjoyed my share of fantasy fiction series and comics. Among superheroes, Spiderman was my favorite. I always had this fascination for costume-clad vigilante who would come and save the day!
Everyone is hungry for content and you are content creators and if you are not negotiating a good price no Robinhood is coming to save you.
I was 17 when I wrote a collection of short stories and wanted it published but it didn't happen. A lot of publishing houses don't allow young authors to enter into writing segments.
I took six months to rehearse how I'd ask Shah Rukh Khan if he would launch my debut novel. I thought of 100 ways to ask him. Finally, three weeks before the book hit the stands I went to pop the question and forgot everything I rehearsed.
I don't think in genres. Once I get a germ of an idea I wait for it to die! And if it refuses to die and keeps coming back, I start thinking more about it. Then come the world and the characters. I wait to get bored and if I don't get bored- then I start building on them.
You can be imaginative, you have the technology to convert your vision, you have the freedom to write the kind of stories you want to tell beyond the set formulas. Also, you have varied platforms to tell different kinds of stories.
All writers are battling and fighting as to how a woman should be characterised.
I will write an entire script but not be commissioned by anyone. I want the freedom to walk away from it. If you're uncomfortable, I will go away. There is no middle ground with me. Also because if I change my character, my story changes.
I have always aspired to be a writer, be it as an author or a screenwriter, whatever the medium.
I may have a story idea but everything starts moving when I am able to see my characters clearly. They then organically lead or respond to the story or the universe I want to create.
Your influence and remuneration is directly proportionate to your film's success. So in that sense, Bollywood is a level playing field. If you are delivering on certain parameters, regardless of your gender, you will get paid.
We are living in a world where image is important and we feel the need to confirm to a standard of what beauty is and how beauty should look like. We look at the billboard, and feel something is lacking in us.
