I would not manipulate my viewers, says screen writer Ritesh Shah of I Want to Talk fame

In a country where cinema thrives on dialogue baazi, where dialogues often have longer shelf life than movies, making silence speak is a challenging job. Yet, noted and acclaimed screen writer Ritesh Shah’s latest film I Want to Talk talks more through cinematic language than dialogues. He says, “What is expected of me as a writer in a Shoojit Sircar film is to delve into a character’s inner journey and the lyricism in such melancholic moments.”

To convey the same is easier said than done. Some clues, he shares, came from Arjun Sen’s biography on which the Abhishek Bachchan- starrer film is based. He elucidates, “Take the scene where after learning of his life threatening ailment, the simple act of eating pizza out of a box and wiping his fingers on his shirt conveys his state of mind.”

Of course, writing on real life people poses yet another kind of challenge. Shah, the writer of films like Sardar Udham, Batla House and now I Want to Talk, laughs and recalls how there was a point in life when he begged the makers, “Give me anything but a fact-based film.” He reasons, “So much monkey balancing has to be done with real life stories. If there is a man of Sardar Udham Singh’s magnitude, you have to be conscious of his stature without turning it into a hagiography. Then if it’s a Batla House, eight days before the release someone would file a court case. And for a living person like Arjun Sen you have to factor in other constraints.” Comparatively pure fiction works better for him but also, “it taxes your imagination as the source material does not exist.”

Shah, of course, is not an either/or person or genre specific or even one director’s writer. If he can word paint an eloquent picture minimalistic-ally in Sircar’s films, he is equally adept with dramatic flair in say a Nikkhil Advani project. Since cinema is a director’s medium, he feels that it is very important to have a convinced director on the sets. “I completely surrender to director’s vision. I am conscious of what section of audiences he is appealing to.” Writers, he believes, anyway have multiple personalities ‘not as in disorder,’ that’s why “we can write negative characters too.”

How did this student of English literature end up writing films in Hindi? Well, he owes his closer brush with Hindi to five years of theatre with Act One group. It was this association which made him browse through works of luminaries in Hindi galaxy. If in theatre, audiences are the most significant others, in cinema too their value can’t be undermined. Indeed, writers are not immune to box office pressure, especially in big budget films like say an Airlift or a Raid. But more importantly, he observes, “It’s so heartening to have audience whose heart and mind is in sync with yours as is happening with I Want to Talk. People are reacting at exactly the same points we expected them to.” He also insists, “It’s wrong to say we don’t write for audiences. Only I would not be dishonest or manipulate my viewers. Had I been asked to put an item number in Pink I would have walked away.”

Among the many memorable films he has given us, Pink, Sardar Udham, Airlift, Madari and now I Want to Talk are closest to his heart. However, he opines, “Cinema at the end of the day is not one man’s voice but a collective vision of so many. There are invaluable contributions of 40 to hundred people of the crew before it becomes what you see on the screen.”

At some stage in life he might wield the directorial baton. “Only if there is a compelling story that doesn’t find a parent shall I adopt it.”

Till his dream ventures become a reality, you can watch his pen work wonders in upcoming films like Tehraan, Azaad and Diplomat.

Pride, he might profess is not a sin most writers suffer from, but he has enough body of work for which he deserves more than kudos. If lines like ‘no means no,’ ‘koi zinda hai’, ‘pehle wohi apni thi phir sab apne ho gaye’ and ‘let the world know I was a revolutionary’ continue to echo in your mind, you can tip your hat to the man whose writing goes way beyond jumlebaazi.

Quote; “All classic screen-writing is about being as visual as possible and resorting to dialogues only when all crutches fail.”