Every day I wait to meet that guy who ragged me so that I can beat him up, says Bejoy Nambiar. He is an engineering college drop-out but memories of the two years spent at DY Patil College of Engineering and Technology,Navi Mumbai are still vivid in his mind,especially that of the colleges festival. Most of those reminiscences make up a large part of Nambiars television show on MTV,titled Rush. Even though my mother looks back at those days with sadness because she wanted me to be an engineer,I always cherish the time spent at DY Patil. I always wanted to do something around college festivals. So I heavily borrowed from that phase in terms of characters,mood and moments, says the director. His experiences at a management school in Bangalore and University of Wales,UK,also add colour to the script. Best known for his 2011-film Shaitan,Nambiars TV debut was unplanned but welcome. With two months in between the shooting schedule for his next feature David,the director decided to take up the offer made by former model Milind Somans production house,Face Entertainment. MTV was venturing into fiction and Milind approached me with a script that he wanted me to direct. I did not like it much. Instead,I discussed with them a film script that I had written four years ago, he recounts. Nambiar asked for a weeks time and collaborated with his friend,theatre actor and director Akarsh Khurana,to convert the film script into a 13-part television series. Rush,the shows title,is named after the fictional college festival around which it revolves. With 12 central characters,each one-hour episode focusses on one characters 48 hourthe duration of the college festivalthat changes their whole lives. Each episode is woven around a different situationthe brutal experience of a young girl when trusts her lying boyfriend with whats most precious to her; a drug peddler who scours the festival for fresh clients; a b-boy who wants a chance to prove himself; and a guitarist who finds her lost love for music in an ethereal epiphany. They explore different genres,drama,comedy action and so on, Nambiar explains. These stories sometimes overlap and at the end converge. The show is being looked at as a possible game-changer for television,with visual treatment that is unique and experimental. Since Nambiar and Khurana have treated each one-hour episode as a short film,they also got on board four other directorsad filmmakers Aman Sachdev and Navzar Eranee; Jiji Philip who directed My Wifes Murder; considered one of the most competent assistant directors in the industry,Gul Dharmani; and Lijo Pellissery,prominent screenwriter in the South with films such as Nayakan on his resume. This,Nambiar believes,lends a different flavour to the show. The directors consider it an opportunity to change the trend on television. Dharmiani says,Since these are one-hour episodes,it was easy to make time. Often several of us directors would be on sets at the same time,which made it a collaborative effort. For Rush,Nambiars collaboration extends beyond directors and includes several artistes such Anirudh Ravichander (music director of Kolaveri Di) who designed the shows theme,theatre actor Pankaj Tripathi and model Tamara Moss. I have received offers to act in the past but I did not find them interesting. In Rush,I play an independent,determined student who is coming to terms with what life entails, says Moss. Several others such as Monica Dogra,Shruti Haasan,Isha Shervani,Shahana Goswami and Prateik Babbar in special appearances. Rush has something for everyoneit is a complete movie experience with drama,action,songs,comedy and characters most people will be able to relate to, assures Nambiar.
