Anurag Kashyap: I paid Rs 6 to sleep on footpath

Director Anurag Kashyap had a tough time when he arrived in Mumbai in 1993. Sometimes he found accommodation at fellow director Imtiaz Ali’s college (St. Xavier’s, Mumbai), other times he had to sleep on the footpath. Speaking about his struggle days on Mashable India’s The Bombay Journey, Anurag also talked about the ‘downside’ that happened after repeated career setbacks.

The Ugly director said that when he arrived in Mumbai, he had no place to stay. He reached Prithvi Theatre and was given ‘special permission’ to keep his luggage there. He was also allowed to use the washroom there in the mornings. He said in Hindi, “There was a garden in the middle of the Juhu circle back then; it used to be a roundabout without any signals. We used to sleep here, but sometimes they’d kick us out. Then we’d go to the Versova link road, where there was a big footpath. People used to sleep there in a line. But you had to pay Rs 6 to sleep there.”

Talking about an extremely low phase in his life when his film Paanch was stalled, Black Friday ran into trouble and Allwyn Kalicharan was shelved, the filmmaker said, “I locked myself in a room, and that’s when the drinking began. It was over. I used to drink heavily for a year and a half. Aarti (Bajaj, ex-wife) kicked me out of the house. My daughter was only four years old then. That was a difficult phase. I was depressed. Paanch had stalled, Black Friday had stalled, Allwyn Kalicharan was shelved, another film that nobody knows about was shelved, I was kicked out of Tere Naam and Kaante… I was drinking and I was fighting all these battles, and I was unceremoniously thrown out of projects I had written and I was a part of. That was a very bad phase, and it accumulated into anger, with the industry, with the system.”

Anurag, however, pushed back eventually and made acclaimed films like Gulal, Gangs of Wasseypur and Manmarziyaan. His next, Almost Pyaar With DJ Mohabbat, hits theatres on February 3. It stars Alya F and Karan Mehta.