In those days I was new to covers; merely felt pleased that a story of mine had been honored. I later met Rogers who did some of my early covers and I was impressed with him.
It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.
I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.
Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.
There are a couple of things that I'm sure people don't think are important, but I do. I don't like hair changes unless there's a reason for it. Clothing - I don't like to see an outfit worn more than one time in an hour - you can wear it again a few weeks later.
If you catch me coming out of a film, when I'm emotionally involved, I can tell you at that moment why I like it - but to talk about it years later is not logical to me.
If I look at Dad's earlier work - 'Bandini,' 'Satyakam,' 'Chupke Chupke,' 'Jeevan Mrityu' - and then his later work, I realize that when something works, the industry doesn't want you to do anything else. They just typecast and milk you.
10 Endradhukulla' is a thriller and the characters are all on the run. The film travels from South India traversing through the North, to the mountains where the climax takes place. Mine is a different kind of character; he is very suave and stylish and only later it is discovered that he is not what he looks like.
I really believe at the end of the day, regardless of how noble you are or how patriotic the film might be, it has to serve as entertainment in order for your audiences to come into the theatre and watch it. Otherwise, audiences will wait and see it a few months later when it is premiered on television.
Casting director was a part-time thing, which later became a full-time job because there was a lack of casting directors in our industry and people were looking for professionals to do it.
