Face off

And why Phat Fish?

quot;It8217;s not F-I-S-H actually. P-H-I-S-H is the correct spelling. The V people spell it wrong all the time.quot; Well, okay, we stand corrected from now on. There8217;s no particular reason for the name though. quot;I was sitting with the producers from Sony and they wanted a name for the contract papers. Phat Phish came to my mind at that time. That8217;s it.

We must admit Anand8217;s videos have a fresh, desi and sweet look to them. Was that intentional?

quot;Yeah. The whole idea was to play with an Indianised brand of humour. I wanted to give people something funny, and funny in a way thatevery Indian can relate to. The situations are very Indian, the man in the video is the guy next door. You laugh at his mannerisms and sympathise with him. It8217;s not something larger than life. See, everybody is cashing in on the love angle. So have I, actually, but the treatment is different. I8217;m showing it the way it8217;s supposed to be shown something real, yet funny and fresh.quot;

Okay, so now we know why it8217;s the Indian Phat Phish8217; and not Fat Fish8217;8230;.but how did Anand think about it and be sure it would work?

It goes back to his Channel V days. Anand joined their promo department in the mid-8217;90s when V was undergoing a complete revamp under Shashank Ghosh. quot;I created the earliest Uddham Singh promos. Again, we were all working on this very desi peg to the humour. It worked wonderfully and virtually the entire industry followed afterwards. So I guess it was something I was already into. It was kind of a natural choice to work on the idea in these videos after I left V.quot;

Of theQuickgun Muruggun league?

quot;Yeah you can say that, although I was not involved with that particular campaign. All of us were playing with the same kind of humour. In fact, two others among the current lot of music video directors, whose work has their own distinctive stamp, Shamin Desai director of the Colour Blind8217; video and Ravi Udaywar director of Silk Route8217;s Dooba Dooba8217;, were my contemporaries in Channel V.quot;

But before V, Anand had spent five years studying cinema in New York. Wasn8217;t Uddham Singh kind of strange after that?

quot;Not really.quot; And why should it be? Anand has always been a Bangalore boy born and brought up there, long before he left for New York to study. quot;I studied a little and wasted my time a little. I left the course halfway and came back. I landed in Bombay and V was the most natural choice.quot; And why so natural? quot;At that time, music channels were churning out stuff that was Western and upmarket. I had no problems adapting to the new breed of creators at Vwho believed it was just not possible to reach out to people if they couldn8217;t relate to the humour. It was simple, yet different. That8217;s what my music videos are also all about.quot;

The first break came with Bombay Vikings8230;but was Anand always planning to direct a music video?

quot;Not at all.quot; Sony asked him to come up with a concept for Saamne yeh kaun aaya8217;. Since he was given complete freedom to shape it the way he liked, Anand grabbed the opportunity. quot;I haven8217;t met the Bombay Vikings guys yet, but I know they are a Swedish band. Whatever it is, it8217;s worked out well for everybody. The videos as well as the music have caught on.quot;

They certainly have. The new video seems to be hugely popular. But what is his ultimate ambition? Big screen aspirations?

Anand states he8217;s already a film-maker. He8217;s directed a number of ad films, including the controversial Big F8217; one for Feast ice cream, all produced by his friend and producer March Rodrigues. quot;I can8217;t measure my aspirations as such. I8217;llwork as long as I have the freedom to do what I want to do. I8217;m working on a couple of features too. Let8217;s see how it goes.quot; A few more mavericks like Anand would probably do our music industry a world of good.