A Maha Good Director

From writing the detective series Karamchand to directing Mahayagya Anil Chaudhary has travelled quite a distance. But he looks unfazed by his success. He exudes confidence. “Political themes have never clicked on the big or small screen, but when I started Mahayagya, I had a strong intuition that it would catch the viewers fancy even though it would take some time,” says the writer-director. “Across channels there were similar kind of soaps with business conflicts or extra-marital affairs which is not a proper reflection of our society. So, my subject was a welcome change as it was different and has no synthetic characters. Mine were real,” he boasts.

Chaudhary, who began his television career with writing, feels that he is a better writer than a director and that television is a writer’s medium. He believes that the only requirement to make a successful programme is a good script. “A script is the foundation and it has to be strong,” he insists, “My subject is such that every day I get new ideas from the newspapers. I don’t have to think much. The news in the daily papers and with a little imagination my script is ready,” he adds. Along with success, his serial has also brought home problems at times. When he introduced a character called Ram Katori who resembled Rabri Devi, Laloo Yadav’s party men were offended and sent a letter asking for her removal. Chaudhary didn’t give up and Sony supported him. In reality he feels that our country is deteriorating with each passing day and that this is primarily due to the impotence of democracy.

So much for his political views. Chaudhary, who had left his home town Mathura, had never dreamt of making it big in tinsel town and calls it “a fluke” that he landed in the NSD (National School of Drama) in 1973 with a scholarship. For six months he felt like a fish out of pond and did his work quite disinterestedly. But as time rolled by he began to realise that he couldn’t do anything else but direction. So he directed 20 plays while training at NSD. It was at NSD that he met Atiya, his wife who produces Mahayagya. He takes great pride in informing us that Prithvi Theatre was inaugurated in 1976 with his play Udhvasth – Dharmshala with Om Puri as the lead actor. In 1979 he got married though their families had differences because she was an Anglo-Indian, but destiny played its part and in 1981 he shifted to Mumbai, leaving his job of a lecturer at Indian Institute of Mass Communications. In Mumbai he created an institute which trained actors called Actors Workshop where Anupam Kher who was hisjunior in NSD, used to teach acting. Among those who passed out were Shakti Singh, Deep Dhillon, Ravi Rai. “I used to always tell Ravi (Rai) — you can never become an actor” he recalls making it clear that he started the institute not with the idea of making money. And after two and half years he winded it up. “I’ve this in me: whenever something is doing well and reaches its peak I change tracks and pick up something else and people had started thinking that my idea was to make money like Roshan Taneja or Asha Chandra who also run acting classes, which was not the case but I genuinely wanted people to learn and we used to select students who had some potential, not just everyone and anyone,” explains Chaudhary.

After shutting down the institute, Chaudhury was at a loose end. This was the time when Doordarshan started accepting proposals from outside producers and an offer to write Karamchand came his way. “Pankaj (Kapur) used to stay in my house during the days he was struggling and when he was signed up to play the title role in Karamchand, he recommended my name as a writer to the director Pankaj Parashar. That’s how my television career started,” he reveals. Karamchand was followed by some other TV classics: Nukaad, Rajani, Yeh To Hai Zindagi for which he wrote a few episodes on and off because he used to charge a lot of money which the producers couldn’t afford.

Then along with writing he produced and directed the controversial Kabir based on the life and times of Sant Kabir which invited a lot of trouble from some followers of Kabir and he had 5 civil cases and one criminal case against him for defamation. There followed 13 episodes of the comedy Phatichar with Pankaj Kapur.

His sitcom Take It Easy on Zee was pulled off after 20 episodes and he calls it his worst till date. In October 1996, he shot the pilot of Mahayagya. Today he is quite happy and contented with what he has achieved. “I’d have been satisfied even without all this because I’ve never been dissatisfied with life. Basically, I’m a lazy person and the amount of work I’ve done in the last two years from the time Mahayagya started, I must not have done in my whole life,” he says matter-of-factly. “Majboori mein kar raha hoon (I’m doing it out of compulsion),” he quips and breaks into a hearty laugh and after a pause continues quite seriously: “I’m not here to make money. I take four shifts to make one episode while others do it in two. Fortunately, I’ve a non-interfering producer — my wife — who also thinks the way I do and we both believe in quality and not quantity. We’re happy that we’re doing less work but good work”.