This one is funny, so read on..


I am gonna be the next Mani Rathnam...

That is exactly what was running through my mind while I was boarding the Lufthansa flight LH455 at San Francisco airport after my near 12 year love affair with Uncle Sam that was hot at times and not so hot at others. It was August 2003, I remember and it was raining…yes, raining mixed emotions in my heart…and a few of my friends who had come to see me off were generously joking that I should remember them once I become famous…yeah, sure! Many actually wanted roles in my films, the most sought after one being the one where the guy gets to rape the girl, filmi ishtyle…and the quick thinking writer in me quickly envisioned a scene where a scantily clad girl is running for her dear life, chased by this endless stream of my friends (read horny guys) with their tongues sticking out...

Well, that is not exactly Mani Rathnam! but heck what, put the talent in those beautiful Sahara sand dunes and use some bird-view Akela cranes and who knows it might look like one…Coming back to where I started, this seed, this desire to be the next Mani was sown long before I took the flight back home, the flight with some very pretty flight attendants. It happened around the time when my not so pretty a manager gave me that really unfair appraisal. I wanted to teach him a lesson right away, this is not the way to treat us artists, us Mani wannabes, I said to myself…and enrolled myself in Film School the very same day. The lesson being taught, I started listening to the lessons in the class that is, I mean, whenever I could take my eyes off the cheese adorning some lucky chairs, thank the Lord for those lissome creations. I almost always thought of Bryan Adams and his lovely song, "I wanna be your underwear", only this time it was "I wanna be your chair". They are lovely, not the chairs, but those fair-skinned creations.

While on creations and creativity, what I learnt at the Film School is that Creativity cannot be learnt or even taught at Film School, one has to find it within one's self…and when one finds it, it is worth a millions bucks, literally. So I bought myself a pair of magnifying glasses and kept looking within my own beautiful self and found it…not the million bucks yet …but what seemed like talent and the confidence to put together a couple of short films.

With those 2 short film dvds in one pocket, I pulled out my biggest weapon from the other pocket, my resignation letter and put it on my enemy's desk with my head held high. Bugger off dude! No more telling me what to do, the letter seemed to say but he was a nice man.

Revenge taken, I left his office and soon I was leaving his beautiful country too, the great country that toiled hard in making men out of the many boys who came looking for opportunities. I was easy on her though, for you see I was born a man!

So here I am in India with loads of optimism and talent, knocking on the Telugu Film World's doors', its producers and heroes. It wasn't easy! The biggest struggle here isn't about whether you are talented enough or not but whether the producer thinks your script has enough talent to create moneybags. Forget about the conflict between your lead characters…more often than not, it is the conflict between art and commerce that is going to determine your fate. Setbacks or not, you have to meet these bigwigs and convince them that you know what you are talking about. In general we don't seem to agree on much except in phonetics, what I mean is, I like Mani and they like Money. Some of them even have a few words of wisdom for you once in a while, one of those went like this, "it is not enough for you to think that you have talent, WE should think so". He perhaps was right or perhaps meant it in a positive way. Even if he didn't, I couldn't have let his words intimidate me and so I shrugged him off…one has to be real good at this shrugging off business in this Film Industry…other than keeping you positive minded, it also gives you good rounded shoulders…and it helps with chiks to have rounded shoulders, if you see what I mean! So I kept knocking and shrugging off, knocking and shrugging off and knocking and knocking…
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Damn, it gets pretty tough out here once in a while, rounded shoulders or not, but I was told that even the script of Sekhar Kammula's "Anand" was sitting on the desks of many a Producers for a really long time(like for a couple of years) before Shekhar decided to put his own money where his mouth was, and the rest as they say is History! And of course I should also mention that he put That money and its many many offspring into many many bank accounts later. Some bird also told me that he was really laughing like a mad man on his way to those banks.

So I tell myself, a Sekhar Kammula had to wait for a few years before he could make it, a Puri Jagannadh had to wait for something like 9 years before making it and finally writing on his office walls, "I slogged my butt off for years and then I suddenly became an overnight success". Smoking his favorite GoldFlake lights cigarette in his plush office, Jagan once told me "No one can stop talent". So there you go, if you have talent and perseverance, Mani Rathnam isn't far away. Sure, Mani is a tall order…a tall peak to scale but isn't it Goethe who once said "On all the peaks lies peace"?…so here Mani(or hear Mani), I come! Hey wait a minute…this is a good peak, there is peace even while climbing…this is fun, this ain't working really! And Mark Knopfler, thanks dude for "Money for nothing…(and chiks for free)", for those enlightening words, God be with you, Amen!

linkage: http://idlebrain.com/tickettofame/index.html