By Sandeep Mohan

That ‘light’ kinda feeling:
As my new film Shreelancer inches its way towards completion, there is this familiar feeling of lightness easing into me yet again. It is a difficult feeling to express in words, but it is a good kinda feeling, maybe something similar to how you feel after you make love passionately. Or maybe after doing wholehearted potty.

Light and nice.

This good feeling remains for a while until the public screenings for the film begin. Once I let the audience into this till-now ‘personal’ process, the good feeling vanishes. Too much analysing and debating screws up the film for me.

Quite soon, another strange kinda “feeling” creeps in…

“Bye bye, you’ve no more stories within you”:
This feeling scares me. It’s a nightmare for any filmmaker. It tells me that I’ve no more stories to tell!

It is tough to stay pleasant and get some sleep during this phase, so I normally travel around hoping to shake this off. Easier said than done.

With not much to do while traveling, except walk around, I go to a pub or a cafe, sit there and watch people. After a few days of this, as my pocket starts feeling lighter, I notice a theme raise its hand through the crowd. I even hear it say: “hello indie dude, look at me, I am the theme that you are hunting for.” I stare long and hard at it. I toy with this for a few days and nights. And then, one day, just like that, magic happens.
I am a big believer in magic. What about you?
Anyways, an idea takes form roughly. I am excited now having got back my purpose in life. Now I feel that I am back inside a movie where I am the main protagonist.

So I get back to Vikhroli, find a corner seat in the cafe near home, get into a regular routine as I write, raise funds, cast, film, edit — all this while posting inane stuff on social media, and then after a few months, this film gets ready to go to the screening phase too.
And then?

I am back to where I started.

Vicious cycle.

“Dude, think big!”:
Friends: “Now that you have done 3 tight-budget features whose combined cost is less than the budget of a 1-BHK flat in Juhu-Versova-Andheri West, don’t you want to do a bigger budgeted film that might help you move into a 1-BHK house in Juhu-Versova-Andheri West?”

Friends (don’t know whether I have any here in Mumbai of this tribe, better let’s call them ‘experts’) at times convince me with their power of logic and persuasion that it is important to get bigger with each film.

So as I wait at Starbucks after placing an order, I hear my restless mind trying to counsel me: “Listen, maybe these experts are right…maybe I should do one big movie, and then with that good money I get as director’s fees, I will secure myself and…”

Starbucks Announcement (Indo-American Kurla accent): Short Green Tea for Sun-Deeeeep!

I snap out of this thought before I sink deeper into it.

Don’t like the smell of too much cash:
The reality is that if I have more than money than I need, I feel paralysed. If I have just enough money to survive, I create. This has been a pattern in my life. Money doesn’t have that kind of power over me as long as my stomach is half-full, which I somehow manage.
Please don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I am a communist, though I admit that I was one before I grew up and had to stare reality in the face at the age of 21.  

Now when I fold my hands to pray, all I say silently is:

“Please, higher power, please give me just enough money to help me lead a decent middle-class life and also just enough money and good-hearted friends to help me make a tight-budget indie film, and yes, give them the confidence to give me total creative freedom too.”

Don’t know about the future, but the higher power has been good till now.

“Why don’t you work on a festival-type film?”:
Smart aleck friends: “Dude, research the kind of films that have been getting shortlisted or winning in the A-list festivals, okay…then write a film in that same space. Try it once, what’s the harm?”

Yes, what’s the harm? Some temptations are really tempting!

Starbucks Announcement (Indo-American Kurla accent): Short Green Tea for Shaaan Dip!

I pick up my drink, sit in the corner seat. I read the online reviews of some of these festival films. I realise that interesting films are getting made all around me, and are being feted around the world too. I tell myself that I should watch these films; reviews are not movies after all.
But then I hear my mind say: “What if these films are so fucking good that I lose my motivation to make my kind of films. What if I start thinking that I can never make a film like these guys do?”.

So I don’t watch these movies. Or any new movies. When in doubt, I watch an old Truffaut or Woody Allen movie, then get on with my life of watching people come in and out of this cafe.

The circus of real life excites me more nowadays.

Film Festivals are good to see new places:
I love to travel.

So I, too, at times send my films to the festivals, hoping to see a new country or city if selected. Mostly, they are rejected. I am more experienced at getting rejection letters than acceptance letters, and I am cool with it. Rejection is not a bad thing, you know. I get charged up with each rejection — to make another film that engages with my audience, a film that helps me express myself, a film that helps me feel lighter after I finish making it.

Something unique about unique ‘voices’:
Sometimes I feel that a rickshaw driver with a unique POV towards life is more interesting to listen to than a movie with no specific point of view.

I live a rather ‘secluded’ life away from the house parties and the various Bollywood gangs. I find it tiresome not to express myself or nod in agreement just because the person in front of me has seen more films or made more films than me, or in most cases, has a better vocabulary than me. Also, I am no nerd. I cannot suffer someone who talks films 24×7, the place for such people according to me is rehab. They are addicts. You can disagree with me on this. Your opinion, of course.

So I find weirder ways to retain the only thing that I have: “My Voice”.
My voice is not a baritone. Nor is it anything super-exceptional. But it is my voice. All the battles that I pick up or fights in life are just to retain the clarity of this voice. It is tough I agree. But then life as an artist has and will always be tough.

This is the freedom that I am after.

This is why I am an independent filmmaker.

So when and where is ‘Shreelancer’ releasing?
Hopefully soon.

Might travel with the film to international film fests if they accept it, or maybe travel with it under what I call ‘The Great Indian Traveling Cinema’, just like how I did with Hola Venky. Or maybe a limited theatrical release. Or maybe a combination of all the above.

Or just for the fun of it, since there is such a shortage of screens to show alternative stuff, I was thinking it would be interesting to release Shreelancer into the Holy Ganges.

Imagine the DCP (Digital Print) of Shreelancer floating peacefully through this holy river. Might as well add some agarbathis and diyas for the visual effect. Imagine…Shreelancer could be the first film to be released in a river.

Starbucks Announcement (Indo-American Kurla accent): Short Green Tea for Su Deeeeep!

These fucking Starbucks guys will never get my name right. Why, I wonder; such a simple name. At times I suspect it’s because the guy is from Kurla and he is trying to talk in an alien American voice. Wish he was allowed to call out in his own voice.

Anyways, I should go and get my drink. And dream.

(Disclaimer: I am and will never be an expert on anything. And honestly, I don’t know what this article is about.)