Pratik on Bollywood's box-office lull: It is cyclic, will settle down

The Hindi film industry is struggling to rake in the moolah at the box office, and actor Pratik Gandhi, whose recent release, Phule, too faced a similar challenge, sees it as an imminent phase. "Any industry will come to that flashpoint once, where innovation will happen and things will change for good. It will settle down and will again go up to that flash point. So, it's a cyclic thing that will keep happening," he says.

- Anubhav Sinha

Smoking, when I was growing up, generally started at boyhood, when you are struggling to become a man. Cigarette advertising back then used to be associated with 'manhood'. Macho film stars or models with such an appearance would normally feature in cigarette ads. It was presented as a symbol of machismo and style. Of course, there was a statutory warning with it, but that's an age when warnings are read as challenges. The rebel in you is fledgling to break free. Little does one know at that age that nicotine is a highly addictive chemical substance. By the time you crossed over to some wisdom and were at peace with your adulthood, it was late. You were addicted.

Then starts a struggle to quit. But you are deeply addicted to it. Also, you are still at an age where you give an adult damn. You think you are Iron Man. But no one is. What I personally learnt was that cigarette will never forgive you. Never. It will hit back sooner or later. In some form or the other.

By the time I was in my mid-30s, I was smoking a pack of 20 a day. By now other signs of manhood had visibly set in. Now it was a style statement. Which brand do you smoke? The mild one or the strong one? But the sane side of you knew you needed to quit.