After The Storm

Unadulterated, unabashed, uncensored... that’s Anurag Kashyap in a candid

- Raghuvendra Singh

Some folks are good at courting chaos. They thrive on the madness, the blitz and living on the edge. Yet, they have an uncanny ability to cull out genuine grit and gumption from the most intimidating of bedlam. Anurag Kashyap is one such artiste. He’s a fierce filmmaker, who’s had as much drama, if not more, in his personal life as in his films. But he’s never shied away from controversy or from the spotlight. He hasn’t just survived showbiz, he’s changed it and he’s tamed it. Not one to mince words, he’s unapologetic and blazingly confident. Spend an hour exchanging ideas with him and you won’t miss caffeine. He’ll give you a rush. He talks about the most inconvenient truths of life like they’re vanilla. And yet, nothing in Anurag’s oeuvre can be bland. He spikes up everything with unabashed candour. In a fiery interview, about everything from his latest film Mukkabaaz to the myriad relationships and rumours that fuel his career, the gritty storyteller takes it all on the chin…

How did Mukkabaaz come about?

Vineet Kumar Singh, its lead actor, had written a script called Olympic. He wanted me to read it as it was rejected by everyone. After reading the script I told him there’s no boxing ethos in India to justify a Rocky like film. What made sense in the script were the actual problems faced by sportsmen around India. It came from Vineet’s own experiences of being a national level athlete. That element was great to explore as it came from an honest place. I told him I’d direct the film only if he trained in boxing. Because I wouldn’t have the budget to hire boxing choreographers. I’d be putting him in the ring with real boxers and he’d have to put up a real fight. He sold everything he had, went to Punjab, trained for a year and came back as a boxer.