Sahni appears to have begun on that journey at least. ‘‘I see writing as the R&D arm of filmmaking,’’ he says. And he hasn’t scrimped on research. For Bunty Aur Babli, for example, Sahni drew on his experience as an IT consultant—in his first job at NIIT in Delhi that lasted one year, his territory was western UP—to create the sleepy Fursatganj. ‘‘Everywhere you go now, everyone watches 300-odd channels. So their aspirations are bound to be the same. The film was a bridge between Shining India and an India waiting to shine,’’ says Sahni.

How did this former adman with the IT-consultant look find his way into Bollywood? After six ‘‘very good years’’ in ad firm Contract in Delhi, he felt ‘‘meetings and the regular stuff’’ were restricting his self-expression. He decided to quit in filmi style — in his resignation letter, he complained …‘‘do takiya di naukri mein mera lakhon ka sawan jaye,” a snatch from a song of the 1970s film Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan—and work independently. In the late 90s, he chanced upon John Briley’s screenplay of Gandhi in a Delhi bookshop. ‘‘I was hooked. I read it and thought: it’s almost like a computer programme. Now I know it’s much more difficult.’’ He began teaching himself the art of scriptwriting. “I would access sites of universities abroad that ran scriptwriting courses and tried reading up whatever I could on the Internet,’’ says Sahni. Around this time Ram Gopal Varma was looking for a writer for Jungle and someone recommended Sahni’s name. Varma let him give it a shot.

... contd.