Anurag Kashyap recalls when ex-wife kicked him out because of his drinking, reveals he used to pay Rs 6 to sleep on footpath as struggler

Anurag said that sometimes, he’d find accommodation at Imtiaz Ali’s college, and he was given ‘special permission’ to keep his suitcase at Prithvi theatre in Juhu. He was also allowed to use the washroom there in the mornings. But he had to fend for himself at night. He said in Hindi, “There was a garden in the middle of the Juhu circle back then; it used to be a roundabout without any signals. We used to sleep here, but sometimes they’d kick us out. Then we’d go to the Versova link road, where there was a big footpath. People used to sleep there in a line. But you had to pay Rs 6 to sleep there.”

The filmmaker broke out after co-writing Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya. But he ran into trouble after embarking on a directorial career, when his first film, Paanch, was stalled. His second film, Black Friday, also ran into trouble just a day prior to release. He said, “I locked myself in a room, and that’s when the drinking began. It was over. I used to drink heavily for a year-and-a-half. Aarti (Bajaj, ex-wife) kicked me out of the house. My daughter was only four years old then. That was a difficult phase. I was depressed. Paanch had stalled, Black Friday had stalled, Allwyn Kalicharan was shelved, another film that nobody knows about was shelved, I was kicked out of Tere Naam and Kaante… I was drinking and I was fighting all these battles, and I was unceremoniously thrown out of projects I had written and I was a part of. That was a very bad phase, and it accumulated into an anger, with the industry, with the system.”

But Anurag bounced back, and reached greater heights with the two-part Gangs of Wasseypur. He is also responsible for introducing some of Bollywood’s most prominent actors in his films, and co-directed India’s first Netflix series, Sacred Games. His new film, Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, will be released in theatres this Friday.