Anurag Kashyap, The Karan Johar Of Intelligent Cinema!

With a growing fan base in Europe and the US, is Anurag Kashyap the only truly international film-maker India has at the moment? 

- Arnesh Ghose

There is a framed note in Anurag Kashyap’s office (next to one from Martin Scorsese) which rips Kashyap apart, calling him a phony and wondering if “even a pan is unique” to him. As it does not have a name on it, I ask him who it’s from. “A bunch of kids who really disagreed with me on everything,” he says. “And I thought they would do something for themselves, but they gave up too easily. I like people who have it in them to fight. So I framed it and kept it.” It is very difficult not to warm up to this man. He is naturally charming, with a big, goofy smile that breaks out often between the thin cigarettes he rolls himself. Thankfully, he doesn’t wear sunglasses indoors any more, and you can see gruelling, sleepless nights in his eyes. After the exhausting battle that he, Abhishek Chaubey and his team had to go through for Udta Punjab, Kashyap had to immediately start preparing for the release of Raman Raghav 2.0. I ask him if it’s been a long day. He grunts and smiles weakly.

Anurag Kashyap is not just some Bollywood director or art house film-maker anymore. The man has painstakingly crafted an individual style which, more often than not, is a balance of local realities with a universal, emotional appeal. While I might not have agreed with some of his films, I cannot deny the fact that he has created a language of cinema for himself — an ability to draw out the whimsical from the banal, with raw human emotions and a celebration of the underbelly. Very few film-makers of our generation have been able to achieve this, which is the reason why Kashyap is toasted at Cannes and has a growing fan base in Europe and the US. Like most auteurs, he has created a world of his own.