I had discussed Atul's past film before I gave him the rights. However, he is a non-egoistic person who had a very good idea of why his first film bombed. First, he had scripted it when he isn't much of a writer. Second, he had chosen to make what he thought will work with the trade rather than what genuinely moved him. I did several gruelling interviews with him and told him that under no circumstances can I embarrass my readers. He answered each and every question. He is well educated - from Sydenham college and he has trained under Mahesh Bhatt as an asst. director for five years. In fact, he never planned to be an actor - he just had a chance casting in ‘Sir’. He read the book twenty five times and knew it better than me. He wanted me to be fully involved at every stage and write the entire script, screenplay and dialogues. Finally, he told me "If Shyam, who is a loser in your book, can come back and achieve his full potential and deserves a second chance, why can't I?" The fire in his eyes at that point told me the film belonged to him.

In the West, it's quite common for films to be made on popular books / novels. This trend has not been seen so often in Bollywood. Why so??

Because Bollywood is still evolving. There was a relatively set formula in earlier years of making a film work which wasn't so dependent on the script. Today, the script is critical and the money at stake is huge. To avoid creating time bombs, it is a lot better to invest in a tested story than special effects. Hollywood knows this, and Bollywood is learning its lesson the hard way. Of course, the other issue is Indian literature tended to be extremely high brow and not popular, so making popular films with such books was out of question.

... contd.