You are one of the finest standup comics in this country. How related is your standup career to your film career? Was it a stepping stone, or simply a passion that you will continue to pursue?
A. Standup comedy is one place where am able to express myself without any friction losses. No one else is interpreting or translating my thoughts for the audience and that’s why i think i’ll keep doing it till a major backlash (which is always just around the corner in India) makes me rethink.

But standup has no connection to my film career. Except that am crazy about films and hence those references or sometimes a set on cinema (good or bad) appears in my routine.

You’ve written for a lot of comedy shows (TV and web) over the years. Though India is a topical country with a controversy for every day, do you not get saturated trying to churn out funny content week after week?
A. I do get philosophical at times thinking, why the fuck am i joking about every random thing, and then I switch off for a couple of weeks. Or try not to tweet jokes and tweet only poetry or short stories or music I am consuming. Because the present-day twitter has kind of made standup-comics on twitter look redundant, if not absolutely talentless hacks. They may still be kings on the stage, with good reason, but it’s a new craft that’s developing – call it twitter-comedy may be? Memes, stories in 140, trolling, etc. – so many new genres. And twitter is full of specialists in these genres.

And that’s why, this need to compete with the world in being funny is exhausting.

But on-stage, it’s a different game altogether. I don’t think I’ve felt saturated till now. As you said, there’s a new joke around us every day anyway. There’s always more to talk about than the time we have on-stage. Also because i perform sparingly, and i always try to incorporate new stories every time i perform, that keeps the ennui away.

While writing MASAAN, how did you go about the entire process? Whose idea was it? And at what stage did Neeraj and you pitch it at?
A. Neeraj had a short film idea, based on a Dom boy’s love story with an upper-caste girl. He had spent nearly 6 months in Banaras during the shoot of GoW and like a romantic, he wanted to go back to the place and that’s why he thought of an idea based in Banaras. So this story originated from Neeraj’s need to spend some time in Banaras, again.
He told me the idea for feedback and I was not very kicked about it initially. I felt it was too hurried a script and this story needed a time-span which is difficult to show in a short film. Then we kept discussing and Neeraj decided this could be a full-length feature. But now the dilemma was that it didn’t have enough ‘plot’ to be a full-length feature. Then we decided to go the ‘Inarittu’ way and make it a multi-story script. We started exploring the characters and eco-system from that short and found some more interesting characters around the ghaats and interiors of Banaras.
When we had a vague story in our hands, we headed to Banaras for a month in September 2012 and started meeting people. Two very resourceful journalists (Utpal Pathak and Abhay Tripathi) helped us in getting access to various places (like the haveli of Dom Raja, the king of the creamtion ghaats) and our story gained shape.
We came back to Bombay with a treatment note and then i started writing the screenplay and dialogues. After 3rd or 4th draft, sometime in March 2013, we sent the script to an informal script lab being run by Vikramaditya Motwane (comprising of Vik, Sudip Sharma, Navdeep Singh, Anvita Dutt, Devashish Makhija, Akshat Verma, and Abhishek Chaubey) and got a very positive and helpful feedback. Another couple of drafts later, Phantom Films decided to come on-board as a producer.

As the writer, do you completely shape the texture of the film too? The milieu, background activity, mood, tone– how much of that is down to the writer? How detailed are your drafts in this sense?
A. The thing I love the most about writing is the detailing. That’s kind of my speciality, I think. I love filling in those details about the setting, mood, dialects, locally available foods etc.
So I would like to think my drafts are very detailed. But still, it’s always good to have a hands-on Director and a knowledgeable local person to add to the final draft. Like in Masaan, we had Utpal Pathak and another senior journalist from Banaras, Amitabh Bhattacharya to add many more details to the ‘Kashika’ dialect spoken by Dom community in the film, as well as tips on the costumes (like Doms being Shiva-devotees wear a lot of blues) and interior design.

A. A shoot is the most scarring experience for a writer I think. It’s a constant process of letting go. Letting go of what you thought while writing a particular scene and let it be interpreted, under-produced (“100 junior artist likhe they, 20 aaye hain”), context-changed or diluted or not-scaled-enough all in front of your helpless eyes. Like in those films where after an accident, a doctor changes the face of the patient in a plastic surgery and he/she becomes somebody else – it’s that kind of an experience for the script looking into a mirror. “The voice is same, the ethos and soul is same, but why the fuck am I looking completely different?”

But I don’t think it has happened only with me or it happens only on a particular kind of project (indie) – every film changes. Yahi har script ka muqaddar hai. And then it changes again on the edit but by then, you are a war-hardened soldier and you just shrug and say ‘haan jo karna hai karo yaar.’

In case of Masaan, I’d say around 70% of the 1st draft is in the film. And the rest, though not improvised on the sets, is re-interpreted by Neeraj Ghaywan either on the shoot (with Avinash Arun, the DOP) or on the edit (with editor Nitin Baid). And I think it’s a good ratio for a writer, this 70%.

A. Yeah, I think the focus has shifted to scripts in the last few years (thanks to lots of new directors having the sense and courage and craft to make those films) and it’s a good time to be a writer in Bombay. But at the same time, I can understand why writers aspire to be directors. The difference in amount of respect, payment, command over the final film entice the writers to go that route. But I don’t think being a director is as easy as writing a script. I find the idea of managing a set of 100 people, dealing with producers, production controllers, actors’ egos, and (once the film is ready) marketing managers really unappealing.

I hope to stay happy as a writer and may be make 2-3 films over the next 15-years or so. That too on scripts which are too personal to be trusted with any other director.

Is writing as technical a craft as editing, cinematography, sound designing? There’s no hierarchy; they’re all equal parts of a process. Then why is it that a writer here is always asked, “script toh theek hai, direct kab kar rahe ho?”
A.  Writing is technical but not in the conventional sense like cinematography or sound editing is. I’d say closer to editing, where a few tools or grammar rules are needed but beyond that it’s a lot of instinct, common sense, and ‘trying things out’.
I think people asking that question, most of the times, have these hierarchies in their heads and they want to see you grow, or push you towards that mythical growth. Like those relatives asking ‘Bachha kab kar rahe ho!’

A. (Laughs) Well, yes, things have changed. But my constant effort is to raise my game as bigger opportunities come my way. Also, as a writer, one needs to constantly be a learner and not settle for the cliches, which also means that being up-to-date with the latest cliches in the market is also a task.
In terms of external changes – yes, people sometimes do recognise me (mainly due to my standup comedy) and that is always an awkward moment. Taking compliments seems to be the easiest job but i just can’t handle it.

What was the question by the way?