The following is an excerpt from Screen Writers Inc. - 33 Masters on the Art and Craft of Screen Writing by Mihir Chitre, published by Om Books International this year.

Reema Kagti is the co-writer and co-creator of some of India’s best OTT shows such as Made in Heaven and Dahaad, and of sparkling mainstream films such as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Gully Boy. Her long-term writing partnership with Zoya Akhtar makes the duo commercial Hindi cinema’s most sought-after writer-creators of our day.

After trying to get an appointment for about a year, I finally got a chance to meet Reema at her house in Bandra, and over some strong coffee, she was kind enough to answer my questions with candidness and a sharp sense of humour, which made the evening all the more enjoyable.

What was your childhood like and at what point did you think of taking writing up as a profession?

My connection to writing developed way before my connection to direction did. I think I enjoyed reading a lot as a kid. You know, they make you do these essays in school? ‘If I were a one-rupee coin’ or ‘If I were a plastic bag’ and those things. Those were the first fiction pieces, so to say, that I ever wrote. I think that kind of set it off for me. I do remember enjoying the process of writing a lot. So, I would keep writing. I started writing a few little stories. I would write a few plays that I would enact with siblings and neighbourhood kids. Then there was a magazine called Tinkle when we were growing up to which you could send stories. So, I started sending some stories to them, one of which they published, and I got fifteen rupees for it. I think in that sense it validated me. Somewhere, I always grew up wanting to be a writer. The film-making part came in much later, writing for film came in later as well. All of this was happening while I was in school.

I was always a film buff. I loved watching films and could have never had enough of them. I would watch a lot of Bollywood and some Hollywood as well. I am a full product of piracy. Back in Assam, in those days, there was a huge culture of VCD (Video Compact Disc). You could get a crack version of anything. So, that gave me access to Hollywood. Then, my parents were fans of Bengali cinema and that exposed me to some art films at the time. But somehow, I had never thought of making films. When I was in ninth standard, I remember, one day, I bunked school and watched Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. And at the end of the credits, I thought, ‘I need to be doing this. This is what I should be doing.’ It was a very sudden realization. It was like a flash. I went in as a school kid to watch a movie, and I literally came out, in my head, as a director. In that sense, Mira Nair’s film changed my life.

My father wanted me to have some formal education in media if I wanted to pursue a career in it. So, after getting rejected at FTII, he suggested I try SCM at Sophia College which was a media course – they still have that course – so, I did that for a year, and then when you finish the course, you’re supposed to intern for a month. So, that’s how I met Rajat Kapoor who was working on a film called Private Detective at the time. I just started working. I did a film with Rajat Kapoor and then met a few more people along the way with whom I worked on other films.

I just started AD-ing (being an Assistant Director). I moved to First AD. In this process, I was working on Kaizad Gustad’s Bombay Boys where I met Zoya (Akhtar). We became friends. So, on the side, Zoya and I started having conversations about making something of our own. We were both compulsive writers. We wrote stuff. We wrote a short film together. We would encourage each other to write. And from there, came up our first film together. It just happened. Though we have not officially credited each other, both of us had a role in writing Luck by Chance, which was her first film, and Honeymoon Travels, which was mine. For example, on Honeymoon Travels, I did the bulk of the writing, but there are scenes that Zoya wrote, and vice-versa on Luck by Chance. But since those were our first films, we just decided not to credit each other. But then, since we had begun writing together, we just kept doing it. We didn’t have a plan..

It’s well-established that Zoya and you write great women characters. But I think you also write some of the best male characters that I have seen in Bollywood. Is it a conscious effort to develop well-rounded characters?

See, obviously, we’re conscious about that. It does happen that sometimes when you are writing, your characters get sacrificed to the plot. But yes, I think instinctively, both of us look at the world in a certain way. One, it’s about how you look at the world and two, it is about how you write characters. It’s interesting what you said about some people writing women badly or some people writing men badly, but honestly, as a writer, you can’t choose to write a character well or not depending on their gender. I think if you write women badly, chances are that you write men badly as well. Having said that, it is possible that as a writer, you might have a slightly lopsided view, a sexist view, a patriarchal view, or a sympathetic view. But within that, it’s still your capability of writing good, rounded characters that shines through. Your worldview is what matters at the end of the day.

Zoya and I have become like a well-oiled machine so if we don’t have a character rounded, it sticks out sorely. You don’t want your characters to be a trope or a half-baked and hollow version of something you see or hear. I think that’s where the craft comes in. There are certain things that we talk about every character. We set a universe for a person – what they want, what they are running from, what they are trying to achieve, what their problem is, and what the solution to their problem could be. All of that is putting it simply, but honestly, a lot of it is just common sense.

For instance, Farhan’s character in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. We were very conscious that we were trying to make a very commercial, theatrical film so we had to set up three friends. We wanted each of them to be different, and we wanted each of them to have complete character arcs of their own. I think Farhan’s character had some flaws, some negative things like he slept with his best friend’s girlfriend. Meeting the absent father kind of makes him understand himself better and accept his flaws. The flaws of that character were that he was a little selfish, and a little insensitive. You know, that’s how people are. Nobody is without a flaw, and that’s something we look at while creating characters. Creating flaws in your characters is endearing, and it also gives you a sense of a real person.

About creative differences between Zoya and me, they happen all the time. When we were writing Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, we were fighting so much and so loudly in Zoya’s house that the neighbours called her mother to ask her if everything was all right. It was obviously not a personal fight, but we had a different point of view on something about the script if I recall it right. Also, I think before Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, we had only written Talaash and one short film together, so it was still in the early days of our working together. Now, I think, we’ve also matured from that point, we’ve become wiser. Back then, we used to think everything needed to be sorted out at that very moment. Now, because we’ve done it so many times over, we have realised there is no point arguing.

I think Zoya and I have similar values, we have similar worldviews, but we are also very different people. We have had very different experiences in life. I went to boarding school at all those three places I told you about, my parents lived on a farm in Assam whereas Zoya’s parents lived in Bombay, and she is very much a city kid in that sense. But I don’t think we would have had that level of writing ability that we bring to the table had we been very similar people. If you have two people, they better be two minds and not one mind. There is no point in just being a yea-sayer. And the fact that we operate this way creates the synergy between us.

Many writer-directors in Bollywood, after they taste success, don’t write much themselves. However, I have heard that both you and Zoya are very much involved with all the writing that goes out of your company even today. Is that true?

Yes, it is true. We do spend a lot of our time writing even today. And we also spend a lot of our time sitting on some Tiger Baby projects that neither of us is directing. I think that is because the script is your blueprint. And if your blueprint goes wrong, everything else is sure to go wrong. I do believe that writing is the most important part of the process of film-making because if a good idea is written badly and gets lost in that, nothing else can revive it. But I have seen many well-written ideas that are not done justice because of the budget or whatever else still making an impact because something is charming about them that has gone through. I am not saying that writing is the only thing. Of course, the director and all the technicians who work on a film have their expertise and calibre, and I’m not putting any of that down. But I do think that the number one is the script. The best director, the best DOP (Director of Photography), and the best technical crew can’t fix a bad script.

Mihir Chitre works as an independent creative director in advertising and has written two books on poetry in addition to the latest volume. He has also written and directed the short film Hello Brick Road.

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