quot;I have made mistakes

Hard work, he says is the mantra of his success. The producer-director of Aahat and CID shoots 25 days a month, edits on the remaining fi...

Hard work, he says is the mantra of his success. The producer-director of Aahat and CID shoots 25 days a month, edits on the remaining five days and never takes an off. When he is not working on his serials, he is defending them in law courts around India. Doing all this is trying at times. 8220;We are all going crazy,8221; admits B.P. Singh, smiling.

But for the man who has been the most successful in handling the supernatural, the memory of days when there were no takers for his work is still very fresh. The 10 years he spent as a cameraman with Doordarshan, the pilots of CID and Aahat which were not approved, keeps this Film Institute graduate, always on the go. Excerpts from an interview with Anuradha Nagaraj:

How difficult or easy is it to shoot a serial like Aahat?
It is very easy to think bizarre, but very difficult to create it. We are not talking about making a man disappear, which is probably the easiest thing to do. Other special effects not only cost a lot but to make every frame look effective means a lot of hard work.

Aahat started off as a suspense thriller8230;.
The serial was shot in 1994 and at that point of time it was a suspense thriller. When it finally went on air the first 40 odd episodes were still thrillers. However, in between we did one episode on the supernatural and our TRPs soared. Hence the switch.

Your special effects are special.
The equipment for good special effects is available only in a few studios in Mumbai. In a serial like Aahat ordinary visuals don8217;t work. Whenever there is a compromise on cost the effects are tacky and fall flat. In fact, certain episodes of Woh have better effects than my serial because they have the equipment.

How do you counter allegations that serials like yours spread superstition and scare children?
There is a thin line between superstition and the supernatural. I have made mistakes. For example this habit of crushing a nimboo. I thought it was interesting and made an episode where in when a nimboo was crushed, a spirit entered the person. A viewer was very upset. Similarly, there was a script about dolls which was a little weak. To play it up I brought in special effects and immediately got hate mail from parents. I wouldn8217;t do it again.

Are you a X-File addict?
No, in fact I hadn8217;t seen even one episode of X-Files when Aahat was planned. I don8217;t get the time.

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Is your other popular serial CID based on true cases?
No, they are all cooked-up stories. But they are authentic in their depiction and we don8217;t cheat the audience. I have drawn a lot from a popular Marathi serial I made based on real police cases. Also, we check with experts. See, unlike Aahat, this serial has to be logical and in that sense it is more difficult than Aahat.

Anything new in the pipeline?
There are ideas but no time. Right now my hands are full and I have to turn away a lot of people who want me to work with them.