Himanshu Sharma, who wrote Raanjhanaa, is attempting to popularise the storytelling tradition. He will be narrating a few chapters of The Jungle Book at DlF Saket on Sunday. He spoke to Iknoor Kaur
Those who had the pleasure of growing up with grandparents would agree that nothing was more awaited in a day than the time spent in grandma or pa’s lap, listening to mythological stories and folk tales. We often felt like the prince or princess in the story and narrated them to our best friends in school, to make them jealous. In present times, only a few fortuniate kids who enjoy this luxury. For the rest there are people like Himanshu Sharma.
The screenwriter who last wrote Anand l Rai’s Raanjhana is trying to revive the storytelling tradition. He will be narrating a few chapters from The Jungle Book at DlF Saket tomorrow. It is in collaboration with Jungle Book Jive — a show that will take place in August at Siri Fort Auditorium.
Sharma shared, “I have lovely memories of Gulzar’s chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai on Doordarshan. My parents introducing me to the tales of Mowgli. I think that contributed in helping me imagining a story and writing it. My writing is heavily dependent on my memories.”
The writer was brought up in lucknow and he shared that Mowgli’s character inspired him. “The story encourages us to stand on our own feet,” he added.
The writer said that most of his writings are inspired from his own experiences. “Both Tanu weds Manu and Raanjhanaa have some part of my memories,” he said.
The writer added, “After Tanu weds Manu I wanted to work on something emotionally overwhelming. I feel that when you are in a certain mood you should write that kind of a story and maintain honesty in your work,” he commented.
Elaborating on how Raanjhanaa came about, he continued, “I only had a boy in my head and I started developing it. I wanted the boy to have different shades in him. He had his own temper, problems and ego and was completely in love. For me characters are extremely important.”
Himanshu feels that he puts himself into the script too. “I put a part of myself into it. The script took a lot from me and I’m feeling empty after it is over. Sometimes what you write is so overpowering that you don’t know what to do after it is done.”
He confessed that he took a long time to write Raanjhanaa. “I took really long to put this script down. I was writing while we were shooting. I couldn’t lie to myself. I had to be honest so I needed to write at my pace. I was done with the first half when they started shooting and wrote the rest on the sets.”
Hard-pressed for time as they were, Himanshu managed to give his director goosebumps. “There were times when we weren’t sure whether a particular location would need to be shot at again because the script wasn’t done, but I think we managed. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” Himanshu said.
At present, Himanshu has three scripts in hand and is confused which one to choose first. He said that all the three scripts are different from what he has done in the past.