THE DISRUPTOR

Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai is Anurag Kashyap’s 19th feature film as a director. That number alone, or the fact that he did it in less than 20 years, should ensure him a place in the pantheon of great Hindi film-makers who were also very prolific, an exclusive list that includes the likes of Bimal Roy, Manmohan Desai, Yash Chopra, and Shyam Benegal. But the numbers do not tell the full story of what Kashyap has managed to achieve

- MAITHILI RAO

Catalyst. Creative Disruptor.

An auteur who made subversion an art form. Not an ivory tower intellectual, but a market-savvy adventurer who managed to convert Bollywood moguls who really matter. Patron saint of a nascent indie cinema, or should it be the godfather of the cinema of the underworld, its crime and grime? All these labels fit Anurag Kashyap, who could have been the enfant terrible of Hindi cinema, but turned out to be an unlikely energiser who helped alter the millennial taste for a new kind of entertainment that had a disconcerting cutting edge, and yet, is rooted in Indian soil. It was the soil ignored by mainstream films that either catered to the lowest common denominator — sentimental, formulaic narrative that was more anodyne than entertainment — or chased the NRI dollar dream.

The big, fat NRI films drew the Indian diaspora, who flocked to see super star-studded films like Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham in the spirit of a sworn act of collective tribal loyalty. Kashyap spoke to, and of, a woke audience that wanted Hollywood flair, with an Indian sensibility. This audience rediscovered India of the hinterland, that spoke in an authentic un-bowdlerized language, had both a desi sensibility and international vision of where cinema was headed. Hindi cinema could head that way too. A promise of what could be done hereby, a film-maker who was willing to take risks. Kashyap fits the bill of inchoate, but very real demands. Subverting the prevailing formulae was the means to do this.