Mumbai, Jun 3 (DIN NEWS)<\/b> Writer Ritesh Shah says writing stories is a lonely and thankless vocation and finds it difficult to detach himself from the arduous process even in his sleep as he feels inspiration can strike any time.<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old scribe has been behind some of the biggest and critically-acclaimed films of recent times, including “Pink”, “Airlift”, “Kahaani” and the latest, “Raid” in various capacities — story writer, screenplay or dialogue writer.<\/p>\n
“Writing is lonely, difficult, thankless and damn hard. It’s not even sit-on-the-table process, it is lonely. Most of the times you are writing alone, the story can come to you at any place – in a bus, while you’re having a drink or in the washroom.<\/p>\n
“There is no escape from it. It troubles you in sleep also. Sometimes, you think you have solved it. Sometimes a scene comes, or the full film comes, and then you realise in the morning, it was all nonsense,” Shah told PTI in an interview.<\/p>\n
The scribe says he would be doing “disservice” if he glamourises writing.<\/p>\n
“It is a terrible job. It’s hard to write and very hard to write commercial Hindi films. It doesn’t come easily,” he says, who has a loyal listener to all his story ideas – Roger, his dog.<\/p>\n
Mainstream films have been Shah’s forte and he attributes his love for it to movies penned by veteran writer duo Salim-Javed, which fuelled his appetite in his growing up years and it ended up having the biggest influence on him.<\/p>\n
The writer, who penned commercially-viable films like “Namastey London” and “Force”, however, emphasises the skill is not easy as “there is a lot of pressure of pleasing”.<\/p>\n
“Forget the audience, first the actor has to be happy with it, then the technicians, the director, the producer, the finance-marketing people have to like it. So, how can you write something, which pleases you and the audience?” Shah says.<\/p>\n
Born in south Kashmir’s Anantnag and raised in Srinagar, the writer remembers his 15-year-old self living in the conflict-hit state. He recalls there was not only a threat to life but the education system was also in shambles.<\/p>\n
“The education got badly affected in the ’90s and the middle-class Kashmiris went to different parts in the country to study,” says Shah, who migrated to Delhi in the summer of 1990.<\/p>\n
He pursued English Literature at the Hindu College and later opted to do mass communication from Jamia Milia Islamia.<\/p>\n
Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali and TV personality Roshan Abbas were his seniors and “Udta Punjab” director Abhishek Choubey was his junior.<\/p>\n
“There are two-three boys in every batch, either in Hindu or Jamia, who migrate to Mumbai. That’s a pattern,” he says.<\/p>\n
His calling to Mumbai happened somewhere around 1998 when he adapted Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek’s play “The Police”, which a lot of people from the film fraternity saw and liked.<\/p>\n
An actor, who featured in the play – Shah swears he will never disclose his identity – asked him to move to the metropolis and told him that a film can be made on his adaptation.<\/p>\n
“I came to Mumbai with that script. I was able to make initial contact with him but after that he didn’t get back to me and I didn’t know what to do with my time. So, by chance I went for a TV meeting with a friend and happened to get a writing job,” he says.<\/p>\n
After working for six years in the TV industry, he landed his first writing job for films with Sujoy Ghosh’s “Home Delivery”, for which he would later pen the dialogues.<\/p>\n
Soon after, he bagged “Namastey London”. Nine years and several movies later, came the massive recognition in form of the National Award-winning film “Pink”.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing that I desire to do as much as I wish to write. I am not tempted to produce or direct or choreograph. I love writing. I love my lines to be spoken on the screen or to be sure that now the audience will laugh or go quiet,” Shah says.<\/p>\n
Currently, the writer has his slate full – he has penned the upcoming Arjun Kapoor-Parineeti Chopra starrer “Namastey England”, Diljit Dosanjh’s “Arjun Patiala” and Nikkhil Advani’s “Batla House”.<\/p>\n
Shah says he has more to stories to tell and his stock is far from over.<\/p>\n
“I came to Mumbai for a week and have stayed here for 18-odd years. I am an extended guest in this city. I am supposed to go back but I haven’t yet,” he says.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai, Jun 3 (DIN NEWS) Writer Ritesh Shah says writing stories is a lonely and thankless vocation and finds it difficult to detach himself from the arduous process even in his sleep as he feels inspiration can strike any time. The 42-year-old scribe has been behind some of the biggest and critically-acclaimed films of recent times, including “Pink”, “Airlift”, “Kahaani” and the latest, “Raid” in various capacities — story writer, screenplay or dialogue writer. “Writing is lonely, difficult, thankless and damn hard. It’s not even sit-on-the-table process, it is lonely.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12335,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12331\/revisions\/12335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}