In Bollywood, you’ve to fight your own battles: Bhandarkar
Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar is well aware of the ways of the film industry, and one of them is that the business remembers you as long as you’re proving hits. He recounts, “In 2001, I was nominated at an awards for Chandni Bar. I saw a veteran filmmaker made to sit almost 15 rows behind. I was shocked, and asked ‘Sir aap yahaan baithe ho?’. He said ‘Yahaan bithaya hai’.If his son would have been an actor, he’d have been in the front row. That pained me.”
The 51-year-old adds, “I’m a person who felt this is my future, if it has happened to this veteran. I said ‘Sir, aap mere saath aao’, and he sat with me. I got a strong perspective, this is life, and it’s so sad. I meet veterans, they tell me ‘Humein koi phone nahi karta’, and are in tears. I’ve seen that very much.”
Bhandarkar got to learn that it all depends on your commercial viability early in his career after his debut directorial, Trishakti (1999) flopped at the box office.
“I’m practical, and learnt that ‘success has a lot of fathers, failure is an orphan. That’s why I kept away from camps. I kept my sanity. It’s very important to have that intact. If you remain mesmerised with the glamour, and suddenly success isn’t there, you realise mere liye success hai nahi,” he tells us.
Bhandarkar adds that he doesn’t have any friends in the industry, and had no support when he needed it. “I don’t have a single friend in the film industry, but I know some nice people, and they’re limited in number. During the time of Indu Sarkar’s (2017) release… I was the guy who stood up for films of other people, because I believe freedom of expression should be maintained. But when my film got targeted, nobody wanted to come (forward). You’ve to fight your own battles here.”