I don’t write A-for-Apple kind of stuff: 'Piku' writer Juhi Chaturvedi

It’s a calm mid-morning in Juhi Chaturvedi’s household. Her daughter is at school and husband at work, this is the time that she has all to herself. Juhi, who created the world of Piku, sits down to talk about not just the movie that’s become the success story of the year, she also gives a glimpse into her life. This is her story...

The childhood years
I was born and raised in Lucknow. Life there is very easy-going and pretty secure. Everyone knows everyone there. As a student, I was into drawing completely.. Art was my space. I wanted to be an artist. My father (Dhirendra) ensured that I participated in all the art competitions in the city. Luckily, I would win everywhere. That was a big confidence-building exercise. My mother (Mridula) was a housewife. Life at home was a little tough because of my mother’s bad health, but it made me emotionally strong. In spite of that, I had a beautiful childhood. We had lots of trees in the house. There was a huge kitchen garden. Lot of hours spent in my childhood were just spent with nature, with myself. It wasn’t like today, where you sit in front of the TV and switch it on. You had to entertain yourself, nobody is going to play blocks with you. I used to water plants, climb trees. I have an elder brother, so his friends, my friends...we had this big gang in our mohalla. We really didn’t need anyone or anything. Times were different, it wasn’t as unsafe.
 
Losing mom
I was in Class 2 or 3 when mom had a haemorrhage, she survived that. Then there was kidney faliure and transplant, cancer.... I almost grew up in hospitals and around doctors. It was like hum hi aadhe doctor khud ban gaye the. I was checking blood pressure when I was in class six. I guess if I wasn’t in this profession, I would’ve ended up being a doctor. She passed away after 30 years of suffering, just before Vicky Donor released, but we managed to show it to her at home.
 
Ad-mad world
I did a five-degree course in arts. I wanted to be a proper painter and all. But my professor told me to get into advertising. He said ‘You’ll get a salary and you can always paint’. I joined Ogilvy in Delhi in 1996. Ogilvy is the Mecca of advertising. You have to be there to know what creative energies can do to you. Everybody is passionate. The time, deadlines are very tight. You are smoking, you are drinking, you are cracking ads. There’s frenzy all around. The computers had just come in. We would do all our work by hand. As an art person, that was a part of your grooming. In the office, only the studio people could use the computers, so you would sit and beg them to do your work. It was lovely. There was a place called Some Place Else, which had an advertisers and bankers night every Friday, so after a week of work we would party.
 
Yeh Dilli hai mere yaar
In Lucknow, I hadn’t seen any women smoke or drink or abuse, I didn’t even see them wearing any make-up. I remember I was going to for a client meeting when my senior called me to her cabin and said, ‘I know you are good at your job, you work is perfect, but maybe a little bit of make-up wouldn’t hurt’. I couldn’t understand why I needed make-up. Back home, only a certain kind of girl put kaajal and you didn’t dress to catch attention at all... all those demarcations were in my mind. My first set of make-up was bought my boss. When I would see women abusing openly, I would wonder ‘Where have I landed!’ At that time, print advertising was big. Only your bosses and their bosses cracked TV ads. My print ad for Duracell was nominated and won the One Show Award, which judges ad campaigns from across the world.
 
Moving to Mumbai
In 1999, I moved to Mumbai with my husband (Asheesh Malhotra). And around that time, advertising changed. It was no longer creatively driven, you had to show numbers. Earlier there were no hard feelings between two groups in an organisation, but that started happening. That was because everything was getting judged. By the time I left Delhi, I was in a decent place. But then I came to Mumbai, the head office. I could feel everyone thinking that she has come from Delhi, has won an award, now let’s see how good she is. I would keep telling them that I am not from Delhi, I am from Lucknow. People didn’t know much about Lucknow or even Delhi. I would be asked things like ‘It gets really cold in Delhi na, does it snow there?’ I would be stumped. When you come from up North, you learn things differently. We have studied all states in so much depth. But that’s not the case here. And I realise now after living here for 15 years, why it is so. There is nothing beyond Mumbai... I mean why would you care about anything when you are in Mumbai? What you would probably care is about a New York or London or Singapore. There is no rest of the country, but at that time I wouldn’t understand that. I would keep telling people around me you should visit Delhi, you should see the capital of your country. I would even volunteer to plan their trip, but no one listened to me.
Initially, when I came here, I wanted to run away. I would fight with my husband every morning. My speed was just not matching with the speed of the city. The hours required, the commute...it was just not working out for me. The first year was terrible. Here spending time with friends meant go out and have a drink...maybe that was because of the profession I was in. In Delhi, you would go to each other’s house, your relationship was more personal. Here it would be finish your work, drink and then go home. And if you don’t drink, you just go home after work. It took me a year to adjust. We worked together briefly and then he decided to shift out.
 
Picking the pen
Around 2002-2003, I was working with a writer on an ad, but for some reason we were not clicking. So my boss said, ‘Why don’t you give it a shot’ so I began writing 20-30 second ads. They were liked. Then I wrote a Sprite ad. That was the turning point. After that, I shifted to Bengaluru briefly with my husband in 2004. There were big businesses there like Titan and Bru, Red Label, Taj Mahal, Brooke Bond, but there was nobody to write ads. So I was asked to write. I was still doing art, but I also started doing this, too. I didn’t mind the change. But all this happened with huge support from Piyush Pandey. He would evaluate my writing. During this time, I worked on all the Aamir Khan Titan ads.

Writing for Big B
In 2006, I came back to Mumbai. By that time, Shoojit Sircar had already made Yahaan. Around 2007, he was doing Shoebite. He asked me to write dialogues for it. My TVCs were detailed. Aamir was known to change everything. Even in the ad world, they were surprised that he hadn’t changed anything I had written. It was like a feather in my cap. Shoojit said, ‘Tu itne lambe lambe ads likhti hai, dialogues likhna start kar’. That was the first movie I wrote. I went to the shoot too because Mr Bachchan wanted the writer to be there. It was on the sets of Shoebite that I realised the scale and difference between ads and films.  The liberty that film-writing can give you is amazing. You get to have someone say what you want them to say... in this case, it was Mr Bachchan. I thought to myself, ‘Shit, Yeh bhi ho sakta hai!’.
 
Snubbing Bollywood
There’s a certain snobbery in the ad world when it comes to Bollywood. They looked down on Bollywood. I was a part of that brigade, too. Firstly, I had not seen many movies. And also, most of the movies that came out in the 90s were pathetic. There were some good movies like Bandit Queen, but such films were few. I didn’t tell anyone other than my family members and close friends about writing for films. I didn’t want to talk about it unless it actually happened. I knew I wanted to write films after working on Shoebite, but I also thought, ‘What if I am not able to do it?’ I just decided to keep quiet. I would have to take holidays and my boss would be a bit irked. In 2008, I left Ogilvy and joined McCann where Prasoon Joshi is the head. Somehow, the high wasn’t there. Around 2009-10, I quit and started writing Vicky Donor.
 
Hello, Vicky
One night, I called Shoojit at 10.30 pm with the idea for Vicky Donor. I decided to write it just as a story first before developing a screenplay. The only screenplay that I had read before was Shoebite. And I am glad I didn’t know the way things are supposed to be done. I am happy that my content consumption is limited. While writing, I didn’t know where it was going. Advertising trained me to recognise whether the idea is clutter-breaking or not. I would think which of my advertising friends would come see it and how would they react. During Vicky, both Shoojit and I were clear that it will not be a gag-filled film, it will not have any cheap content. It was about a sperm donor, but the crux is the desire to have a child. It’s just about childless couples. If you write with that in mind, it couldn’t be cheap. I identified with Vicky. Like he was a guy who has got himself into something that he has no clue about, I had gotten myself into writing something that sounded quirky, but I had no clue how I was going to get it done. It took literally a year. We shot the seventh draft.
 
Writer on set?
I was present for the shoot of Vicky Donor as well as Piku. I think it’s a must for a writer to be present when the movie is being shot. I don’t think anybody understands a film the way the writer does. With Shoojit, he reads the draft so many times that he knows it thoroughly, but not every director does that. You know the mood of the scene, you know which scene is connected to which scene ahead. I don’t write A-for-Apple kind of stuff. I don’t make my screenplays audience proof ke sab kuch bata do because there are so many layers. Something is getting answered because of some doubt or some thought that’s in the previous scene. You have to be around to see what you have written,  sometimes suffered for nights to write a particular scene, is done correctly. So the producers and directors must make sure that the writer is involved through the making of the film.
 
Setting aside the formula
I have come at the time when everyone is willing to keep the formula on the side and give more space and respect to films with good stories. These are no more “niche” or small-budget films... They are commercial films. Piku is an absolute commercial film when it has Mr Bachchan and Deepika Padukone...it’s as commercial as it gets. The good thing is that there is space for stories now. It’s no more ke kiske baad ek gaana aa jayega, iske baad ek fight sequence aa jayega. People are looking for and welcoming stories with open arms. I don’t know how many of them are going to be doing justice to those stories. There are those who say that let us get the story, then we’ll make something out of it, as opposed to those who say that this is the story, this is what we will make. There are few directors who do that. I have run away from those meetings where I hear this scary line. Or filmmakers say ek baar sign karlo, then we’ll make them do what we want. That doesn’t work. You make what I write.
 
Working with Shoojit
With Shoojit, there’s a trust that has only strengthened over time. I don’t have to worry about why he is not getting my point. Even if the solution is different from what I am suggesting, I have the patience and maturity to wait it out and believe in it. Because I know that he won’t do something just for the heck of it. He doesn’t owe me an explanation. Of course, he tells me why he is doing what he is doing because he treats me like his writing partner. But frankly, writers are not that valued in the industry. I got to know Shoojit only because we would make ads together. There’s this comfort of me writing, him directing and me intruding in every aspect of filmmaking and him letting me be a part of it.
 
The process of writing
For me, the story comes first. Then I think about the backdrop. I think of things, like: Can my character be born in the city? Who did he interact with? Which part of the city did he grow up in? What were the limitations? Why didn’t he live in Defence Colony, why did he live in Lajpat Nagar? All of it has to fall into place. I think a lot of it comes from living in Lucknow, it’s society driven by a certain class having certain traits. I don’t need to explain all these things to the world, but I know that I have explained and reasoned it out in my head. In Vicky Donor, Vicky Arora’s ancestors were refugees, so their house has a certain energy. If you think about a generation in advance, then your main characters seem authentic. For me, coming to a name like Vicky Arora or Bhashkor Bannerjee is extremely critical. That is a process and I like to follow that. Because from where else can I draw these references? Fortunately, those hours of doing nothing in Lucknow translated into these observations.
 
Money matter!
Writers are definitely not paid well. Some time ago, I was talking to a person from the industry who told me your market price is X amount and I was like ‘Oh really!’ because I had absolutely no clue. The process of writing is so lengthy that what you get in parts is really not sufficient. A film might not even take off. Most writers think that just write a draft so that they can get the signing amount because you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Writers also have to run their houses, right? Even if you give three per cent of the profit to the writer that would be great if you are asking me to commit to a film for an entire year. The makers may say that we don’t ask you to do that, but that’s not how it works. As a writer, the commitment is much more.
 
Pressure point
There was no pressure with Vicky Donor as nobody knew who I was or what I was writing. Second time around, there was pressure initially. It took some time before Piku happened. It came to a point where people said, ‘God knows what she is doing!’ But I knew I wasn’t going to succumb to that pressure. The only thing on my mind was that whatever I write, it has to do justice to my thinking. I had to figure out if I have done the right thing by quitting advertising and letting go of so many things because I am writing... am I really writer material? For me, that was the pressure. It was never about whether people will like what I write, because after 17 years in advertising, you develop a thick skin. It’s a selfish agenda when I am writing. I am not writing to please anyone... I have done that for 17 years for a salary. I have been through that grind.
 
No preaching
My stories are not about giving a message, but they have a purpose. There has to be something that you take home. I am asking you to commit your two hours to watch something and not watch something else. If you are going to spend `2000 if four people are coming together, then why should you be doing that? That needs to be answered for my own self. I know the story is leading to something. It doesn’t have to have a social message. I don’t know how moralistic Piku is, but it is the truth of today’s generation, who is struggling to keep pace with their social life and the responsibilities of the parents. They’re not burdened by these responsibilities, but are dealing with them. It’s not even fair to expect your spouse to take care of your parents for you because he/she has their own parents to look after.
 
Writer’s block
Whenever I face writer’s block, I take a break. It’s not just about writer’s block, but it’s important to detach yourself from what you’ve written to get a fresh perspective. After writing the scene of Piku’s father Bhashkor’s death, I was in tears...it was extremely disturbing. I remember it was around 2.30 am when I finished writing that scene, then I went of to sleep. The next day, too, I was very disturbed. So, for one week, I did not touch anything. I didn’t even know that now that he has died, what happens next. Probably my reaction was exactly like the ones I saw on people’s face when they were watching the movie. Now that Bhashkor has died, they don’t know what will happen next. Now what? That was my state exactly. It was like recovering from someone’s death. 
 
Sounding board
I discuss my ideas with my husband Asheesh, but we end up arguing more often (laughs). But I know whatever his inputs are, he is brutal about it. So only when I am in the mood to hear all the brutal stuff, I talk to him. I don’t make him read anything till a draft is ready. He didn’t read Vicky Donor. He saw the movie only on the day it was premiered. Piku also he read after the draft was read by Shoojit. I follow that rule. Apart from him, I discuss my ideas with Shoojit.
 
What’s next?
I am working on my next and hopefully, it will won’t be as long a break as it was between Vicky Donor and Piku. I need my time when I am writing a movie. If I had said yes to the number of offers that I got after Vicky Donor, I would been flooded with movie releases. Apart from writing in a hurry, I also didn’t want to commit myself to other people’s stories, their thoughts and their ideas.