SCREEN TEST

There couldn’t have been a better impetus for the debut novelist than the Dev.D director’s plans of translating his work on screen soon. “It’s a dream come true. I have been an admirer of Kashyap’s work ever since I saw Black Friday,” says Mathur,who admits to sharing a lot of his protagonist’s ideas. “Pranav is an extreme version of me. Since I am familiar with the environment he lives in,I knew where some fantasies can be played out,” says the banker by day and writer-filmmaker by night. The autobiographical touch to the story is apparent when he talks about creating other characters of the story drawing from the people around him. “I wanted to keep my characters normal. Some of their traits come from real people,” he says.

The story of Pranav and his friends deciding to capture the eyeballs of the nation by taking over a TV station sounds familiar-at least to those who had enjoyed the 2006-release Rang De Basanti. But Mathur says the similarities between their plots are very little. “Unlike the characters in RDB,the Anarchists of Mumbai don’t resort to violent means. Their methods are more unorthodox,like planting a paint-bomb in a train. They have lived with the problems ailing the present society and decide to address it,”he says.

The Delhi-born Mathur has been living in Singapore for nearly eight years now. Yet,he chose to set his story in Mumbai. He has weaved the dynamics of the metropolis into the storyline. “I have never lived in Mumbai,barring a few visits. But the city seemed to be the perfect setting for my story,” says the Singapore-based author.

Apart from writing,this 25-year-old banker also paints and makes films. His first film The Insomniac was premiered at the Sinema Old School,a Singapore-based independent distribution house,earlier this year. Considering this,it’s only obvious that Mathur is keen to start work on the celluloid version of The Diary of an Unreasonable Man. But he is not clear when it can go on the floor since Kashyap has a chock-a-block schedule. Till that happens,Mathur has his next film on the outsiders in Singapore to work on. “It isn’t about immigrants,but about those who don’t fit in the society there,” he lets in.