‘If I die today, you cannot stop shooting the film’: Devashish Makhija recalls battling prostrate cancer, suffering heart attack at 31

Also read –  Joram director Devashish Makhija says film’s failure bankrupted him; he’s ‘begging’ landlord to not evict him: ‘Can’t even afford a bicycle’

He continued, “Only you can ask the right questions of yourself and only you can arrive at the right answers. We end up looking outwards and look inwards only when we hear a scream. By then, it’s too late. Your organs are breaking down, your mind is breaking down, and you’re on the verge of doing something drastic, that’s when you start looking inwards. I realised many times, but I continued to not listen.”

The filmmaker also spoke about the various personal hardships that he has experienced in his life, often while prioritising his work. “I romanticised my martyrdom. Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. And that martyrdom one day gave me a slap on the face. I had a heart attack when I was 31, but I couldn’t afford the Rs 7 lakh for a pacemaker. Five days later, I was back working 18 hours a day, not eating on time. During Ajji, I had prostrate cancer. I was bleeding through my penis every day. My shot breakdown and planning was so solid, the shoot wouldn’t have stopped had I dropped dead. There was a standing instruction to my associate director, ‘If I die today, you cannot stop the film. Give me a posthumous directed by credit’. That’s how Ajji was made. In March 2014, I bought a gun with the intention to kill myself.”

It wasn’t until Bhonsle, his other film with Bajpayee, that Makhija took a pause. It happened because he neglected to meet his father, whom the film was inspired by, for a year. When the movie was done, Makhija realised that his father had slipped into dementia. He died soon afterwards. “A six-foot man was 26 kilos when he died a terrible death. That made me question the point of this fight,” he said.

Joram, starring Manoj Bajpayee, played at numerous film festivals across the world before getting a brief theatrical release. While it’s available to rent and purchase on digital platforms, the film still isn’t available for streaming. Makhija recently won the Best Writing honour for Joram at the Critic’s Choice Awards; the film additionally picked up two honours at the Filmfare Awards.