Purnendu Shekhar feels that to be a successful writer for television one needs to understand relationships and their complexities, the working and business of channels and the art of interweaving several stories smartly. He tells Divya Kaushik that the audience should also be blamed for the success of low grade content on the small screen
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf must have been speaking on behalf of every writer when she wrote this famous line. Purnendu Shekhar can’t agree more on this. The script writer strongly feels that to weave a beautiful story it is important for a writer to connect with it personally. Each of his stories is born out of his experience and observations. He gives an example and says that the story of famous show Balika Vadhu that made him a household name was partly based on the experiences of his mother, who herself was married at the age of 15 in Rajasthan. “In fact, in the second episode of Balika Vadhu the lead (Anandi), who is a child bride, says a few lines and those lines were actually my mother’s lines which she told us in our childhood. In India, most cases of child marriages are from Rajasthan and since I spent a major part of my life there I can easily understand that. I started writing the story in 1992 and it was always close to my heart. Its success is an example of the fact that the audience connects with stories that are born out of writer’s heart,” says Shekhar.
The television writer who has mostly written stories with strong woman protagonists, introduced the trend of social issue-based shows on the small screen. Saat Phere on Zee TV was the beginning for him, though people might believe that it was Balika Vadhu that did wonders to his career. He says that when the show was launched, it was an experiment and Colors being a new channel then, was the right platform. “Fortunately Colors had no image to follow. Ashwini Yardi, who was my colleague in Zee and is a good friend, was with the channel then. I did Saat Phere with her and she wanted me to do some show for Colors. I asked her if she was keen on something based on child marriage. She agreed. She trusted me immensely and I think it was only because of her trust in me that Balika Vadhu wasn’t polluted like most shows in the beginning,” shares the writer, who has moved on to do different kinds of shows in the last few years and is even producing some. His latest is Satrangi Sasural on Zee TV.
Though Shekhar has been writing since his childhood, it is interesting to note that he came to Mumbai with a dream of being an actor. He shares, “I was always interested in writing and was actively involved in theatre during my school and college days. While training in theatre, you are supposed to write a character’s story. This is a part of theatre training procedure and is very interesting. You are only given a few lines and based on that you have to construct the story of the character. I think that set my foundation. After college I ventured into journalism. For over five years I was the cultural correspondent for one of the leading dailies in Rajasthan. Then I went to Mumbai, definitely not for writing but to try my luck in acting. Satellite television had not made an entry then and Doordarshan was the only channel. The TV industry witnessed a boom with the arrival of satellite television in India and suddenly there were so many channels and so many serials. I never had the personality to be a hero and I soon realised that to get even a small role in the film you need to break your heels and knock at doors. I didn’t know anyone in Mumbai apart from Annu Kapoor since he was in Delhi and my sister’s good friend. When I reached Mumbai I met him and was a part of his theatre group Kutumb. Actors like Alok Nath, Neena Gupta, Pankaj Behri, Rumi Jaffery were associated with it. To make a living in a city like Mumbai I took up whatever came to me. I did some TV serials as an actor. I kept doing some small work till one of my friends, Chadraprakash Dwivedi who made Chanakya, came forward to help me. He later became the president of Zee Network and he wanted to give new direction to TV so he pulled me into television. That was my beginning. After leaving Zee, Astitva Ek Prem Kahani was my first show as a writer.”
Shekhar feels that for any TV writer it is important to understand relationships to come up with stories that will interest the masses. “Television is a family entertainer. I strongly believe in education through entertainment. First you should entertain to make the audience connect with the show and after that whatever you will say in the story, the audience will take interest in it. If one would make a preachy show in the beginning, people will get bored because truth is that none of us wants to listen to a lecture. To write stories for TV one needs to understand relationships, their complications. If one is not in love with his family then he cannot write a TV show. One should believe in family institution. Observation is must for every writer. One has to closely observe characters around. If one does that then stories can be spotted anywhere. Theatre equipped me to understand all these intricacies and as a writer I benefitted a lot from them,” he says.
The writer agrees that stories of TV shows are sometimes dragged to gain from the show’s high ratings. “But a writer should know how to interweave plots and stories, only then the show can be entertaining. There is no story that can continue till five or six years,” he says and adds that he is fortunate that he has never felt the pressure to unnecessarily drag stories. “I have never written anything under pressure. When I feel something is wrong I share it with producers and they take note of it.” He believes that the medium is undergoing massive changes and things are only improving. “I do not agree that most shows are regressive. If there are some bad shows running on TV for years today, the blame goes to the audience as well. There are so many bad shows that are hit because people are watching them. So far only one of my shows could not work on TV and it was Godbharai on Sony. I think it was a wonderful show and was wrapped up after 100 episodes because nobody watched it. I still believe in that story,” he says.
Shekhar is content with the recognition that he has got from TV but he is looking forward to working for films. “When I wrote my initial shows I felt they should have been made into films. But once I got wonderful response from across the country I realised that I could not have told those stories in films. I think in films a writer doesn’t have to limit himself and he gets an opportunity to live his story from beginning to the end, a pleasure that is missing in TV writing. So I will surely like to work for films but I will not leave my TV work for it,” he concludes.