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In the shadows

After famous sons and daughter, siblings of film celebs make their debut in the industry, Sajid Ali, Imtiaz Ali’s younger brother who will debut as a director with Banana talks about the pros and cons...

Mumbai | July 4, 2014 01:00 AM IST

3 min read

Sajid Ali, Director

Like everything else in the world, a sibling making his debut in the film industry also has two sides. One of the obvious pros is that if you are interested, you get to meet a lot of people. However, some take you seriouslyn a while, there are others who have pre-conceived notions. The general perception in the industry is that if a person enters through some ‘connection’, he won’t be that ‘bright’.
Frankly, even if I were to meet someone who is connected to someone, at the back of my mind, there would always be this thought, “achha jugaad laga kar aa raha hai?” That’s natural I assume.
The fact that I am Imtiaz’s brother helps me in certain situations, but it also shuts doors on me many times. One of the major issues that we siblings grapple with are the comparisons. Sometimes the comparisons can be fair, but most of the time they are very unfair.
Two people, though belonging to the same family, can be completely different. In my initial days in the industry, I was called by a lot of people to write scripts similar to what Imtiaz wrote. They were actually expecting a cheaper prototype. The truth, however, is that I may or may not be as good as my brother. Eventually, I guess that most of these people realised that I was not that ‘bright’.
All this affected me a lot in the beginning and I would get disturbed by what people were saying. I also wanted everyone to talk good about Imtiaz. But in the long run, you get used to all this.
Since we have grown up in a small town like Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Imtiaz’s achievements were looked up as spectacular. He was a trendsetter for us. When you come into an industry where your elder sibling has struggled to reach a particular position, you don’t want people to compare you with him or talk anything ill about him.
Moreover, if you want to settle down in the same industry, you have to prove yourself at every point, especially because you come from an association. And when you do prove yourself, people say you could do it just because of your successful sibling. But the audience will not go and see your film or see you perform because you are a person’s relative. Having said that, I would also not shy away from saying that it is because of my brother’s years of hard work in the industry that I have been able to save five-seven years of my life struggling here.
I have also had those moments when I have bragged about my brother being a part of the industry, his talent and his connections.

As told to Priyanka Bhadani