Raj & DK reveal dark alternate ending of Shor in the City, how they almost cast Ethan Hawke: ‘He might have been dead’

Time has only been kinder to Shor in the City. Fifteen years on, Raj and DK, in an exclusive conversation with SCREEN, return to where it all began: the uncertain first steps, the casting stories, and the ending that might have been.

Edited excerpts for clarity and brevity 

When did you rewatch it, and how has it aged for you?

DK: I don’t think I’ve actually rewatched it recently. I come across it in fragments now and then, someone forwards a scene, or I stumble upon a clip, but I haven’t sat down to watch the whole film again.

Raj: Having said that, it’s a small film we’re very proud of. What we attempted with it still feels quite significant to us.

How did the idea come about?

Raj: We had just come back from the U.S., and I think it was our first proper visit to Mumbai. We weren’t from here, we hadn’t really experienced the city before. So, when I arrived, it hit me in so many different ways. I found myself constantly taking pictures, writing notes. I’d buy six or seven newspapers every day and just absorb everything I could. I remember having a big box full of news clippings. Around that time, we were trying to figure out how to capture the chaos of a place like this. We were writing 99 on one side, Shor in the City on another, and even Go Goa Gone in a more nascent form. We were playing with different genres simultaneously, and all of it was taking shape parallely.

One image, in particular, stayed with me. We were sitting in an auto at a traffic light. On one side, there was a couple on a bike in the middle of an intense argument, completely consumed by it. On the other hand, a man sat inside a sleek car, calm and insulated. You could almost feel the air conditioning, the comfort, just by looking at him. And there we were, in the auto, somewhere in between. In that single frame, it felt like we were looking at three different layers of the city, each sealed in its own reality. That moment said something. The couple on the bike became the cricketer and his girlfriend, the man in the car evolved into Sendhil’s character, and in our place came the story of the three boys.

The story is set over the period of Ganesh Chaturthi. Why that choice?

DK: The first things that strike you about this city are its sounds and its smells, everything is crowded, everything is loud. That, in many ways, is the mood of Mumbai. So we thought, if we’re telling stories about what defines this city, why not set it during its noisiest, most alive stretch? Those ten-eleven days of Ganesh Chaturthi felt like the perfect frame.

How tough was it to secure funding for a film like this back then?

Raj: It was an offbeat film for its time, so it wasn’t easy to pitch. Also, we weren’t particularly good at narrating scripts back then. At some point, we just felt it might be simpler to make it ourselves. So we pooled whatever money we could and decided to begin. We even started shooting on our own.

DK: We actually made a short film called Shor, which was like a 10–15 minute slice of what the larger film could be. That got us thinking, maybe we could make the entire film in that spirit, just sneak in and shoot it guerrilla-style. We were almost ready to go, in fact. We had already shot for a few days.

Raj: And then, around that time, someone from Balaji Motion Pictures reached out and said they’d be interested in producing a film with us as they had loved 99. 

Raj & DK revealed that some people initially opposed the inclusion of the song Saibo in the film.

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How did you go about casting the film? 

DK: In the beginning, the idea was that an American comes to India to set up a business. So we pitched it to actors like Ethan Hawke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. People who weren’t massive stars then, but were doing a lot of interesting indie work. We even had a couple of meetings with their agents. But they’re used to functioning within a certain kind of system, there’s usually some studio backing, even if it’s a small one in Los Angeles. We didn’t have any of that. And here we were, saying, “We’re indie filmmakers, we used to live in the U.S., now we’re in India making this film.” There was a clear mismatch. Once union rules and logistics came into the picture, it became obvious it wouldn’t work.

Raj: After that, things shifted in an interesting way. We reworked a key character, rather than an outsider, we made him Indian, which felt more organic to the story. That’s when we met Sendhil Ramamurthy, and he immediately connected with it. From there, we began casting locally. Atul Mongia was working with us, and he brought in a lot of exciting, unconventional talent. Many of them were relatively new, we didn’t really know Radhika Apte at the time, for instance. With Amit Mistry, it was different. We had worked with him on 99, so he was always an automatic choice. In fact, for any film we made, he was the first person we’d call. We still miss him a lot. Even now, when we’re writing something, he comes to mind. Just the other day, we found ourselves saying, “I wish Amit was here for this.”

The song “Saibo” became instantly popular and continues to endure. Any memories from making it?

Raj: It was our first collaboration with Sachin–Jigar. Back then, they were working out of a tiny, cramped studio, wires everywhere, barely any space to sit. I remember we had to find a cushion just to settle in. But when we made the song, we instantly felt something special about it. What’s funny is that not everyone agreed. There were people who didn’t like it, who didn’t think it should be part of the film or even the album. But we were quite firm about it, we believed in it and really wanted it in the film.

One of the most striking aspects of Shor in the City is how differently the arcs of Sendhil’s character and Tusshar Kapoor’s character unfold. While one seems to move toward a kind of moral awakening, the other gradually slips into violence.

Raj: That’s a great observation.

DK: We spent a lot of time thinking through those details. From the start, we knew we were dealing with three narrative strands, and we wanted each of them to inhabit a morally ambiguous space. Take Sundeep Kishan’s character, the cricketer. He’s not entirely comfortable, but he’s still willing to consider bribery as a way forward. And that’s the point. It reflects a reality where small compromises become part of everyday life. Nobody pauses to question it in a dramatic way. It’s never, “How could you do that?” It’s more matter-of-fact. “Yeah, I had to.” That’s the rhythm people fall into. A little bending of rules, a little ethical compromise, it becomes normalised, almost absorbed into the fabric of living in a place like Mumbai.

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But by the end of the film, it seems to hint at a kind of moral order being restored?

Raj: Interestingly, when we first sent Shor in the City to festivals, this ending didn’t exist at all. There were no end credits the way you see them now. The film simply ended at that point, with Ganesh Visarjan, and a super that said “come again next year.” That was it. And it worked. Those screenings brought us some of our first awards and a wave of appreciation on the festival circuit.

But here there was another kind of feedback. People kept saying, “You need an ending, you can’t just leave it like this.” We resisted for a while; there was quite a bit of back and forth. Eventually, we decided to shoot something additional. The original ending was far more ambiguous. There was a possibility that Tusshar Kapoor’s character might actually be dead, and what he’s experiencing, the visions, even the presence of Ganesha, could be something like a post-death state. We wanted to leave that open to interpretation. But with all the suggestions coming in, we reworked it slightly and added the end-credits sequence, giving it a more defined sense of closure.

Raj and DK opened about the alternate ending of the film.

My reading was that Tusshar Kapoor’s character, and, in a way, the others too, arrive at a kind of rebirth by the end. Almost like a new beginning for everyone.

Raj: Yeah, that’s certainly a possible reading. We always wanted the film to remain open-ended.

DK: What I like, though, with the end credits sequence, is how Tusshar’s character comes full circle. He begins by kidnapping an author, and in the final frame, he’s the one sitting and reading a book. In fact, for the writer they kidnap in the opening scene, we wanted somebody who resembled Chetan Bhagat. I think he even tweeted about it at some point, though I don’t quite remember now, it’s been a while.

Raj: We had actually thought of approaching him for that part. At the time, he was the most widely read author around. But, oh, well, there are so many little stories like that from Shor in the City. 

Watch the full episode of Cult Comebacks on 99 with Raj & DK here:

It’s been 15 years, and the city has changed so much. Have you thought about revisiting these characters, maybe a sequel, seeing where they might be now?

Raj: Revisiting the film now with you, it does feel like it could be exciting to explore a sequel, almost like reimagining it for the present day, because the city itself has changed, and so have its concerns. But at the same time, what really excites us is creating new worlds. It takes a lot to go back and build another chapter out of something that already exists.