Kaizad Gustad wears his attitude like a badge of honour. But then this "not-yet-30" director of the film Bombay Boys needs all the spunk he can dredge up. He has blazed on to the Mumbai film scene, roped in names like Naseeruddin Shah, Roshan Seth and Naveen Andrews (after the success of The English Patient) and hasn't had a moment of doubt.

Rather, as if to tempt the gods, he says, again and again, "I have no fears." Not of the dark, and definitely not of the unknown which he seems to embrace with a vigour that would sap most people.

A Bombay boy himself, Kaizad studied in Mumbai, Darjeeling, Sydney and then in the school of hard knocks. At 18, he decided "to start living" and took off with a handful of change and his arrogance to see the world. From Bali to New York to Hong Kong to Europe, he combed the map. And to keep moving, he became several different people bartender, sweeper, carpenter, light boy, journalist Kaizad proudly announces that he has dabbled in 62 different professions. "I like going to places I know nothing about, where I don't speak the local language. I watch people and watch local cinema," says he. And from that looking and learning, comes a book, Of No Fixed Address, that will be published by Harper Collins, at the end of the year. A collection of short stories, Kaizad insists it is not a Pico Iyer-sort of travelogue, but then he believes that everything about him is different. Right from his appearance (dreadlocks hanging halfway down his back, "This is from not washing my hair for a long time," he says) to his film, to himself. Kaizad takes being Kaizad Gustad very seriously. But if you ask him who he really is, he says, "One big lousy miserable joke," or "Full-time bum and part-time writer." Dropping cynicisms like that are very much a part of him. He is clever, too clever by half and rather self conscious about it. From spelling out names of his favourite director (Martin Scorcese, who he has actually worked with "I hung around him, worked as a tea boy,") to saying things like "I love violence, it's the most honest form of self expression", Kaizad is aware that this is his moment in the sun. His world-weary attitude is at odds with the childlike enjoyment he takes in all the media attention he has been receiving of late. Almost casually, he'll let it slip that he's being featured among the Men who Matter in Mumbai. And then, he'll contradict himself by muttering an angst-heavy statement like, "We didn't ask to be born but you are forced out all the same. No one asks you when it's time to go, either." But he isn't all pout and posturing. He does have talent talent enough to sell his first script Hong Kong Blues at the age of 19; to get into film school in New York by sending a show reel and a script; and to draw some of the biggest names for his first feature film. Apparently, the reeling in was as simple as sending Seth, Andrews and Shah a copy of the script of Bombay Boys and they were hooked. "It was a combination of charm, chutzpah and my casting director ("Uma Vellankar is brilliant")," he says. As apparently was most of his production team. Bombay Boys was wrapped up in eight weeks and within budget because that's as long as Kaizad would give it. The film is about three Bombay boys who come home after living abroad all their lives. They come with the usual excess baggage, misconceptions and stereotypes and are assaulted by the city's loudness, vastness and peculiar progressiveness. "I wanted to paint on a very big canvas, tell a funny violent tragic comedy. I wanted to tell it in a cinema verite style, with brashness and arrogance. It's a loud film but it doesn't indulge in soap-box politics," he says.

But most of all Bombay Boys is about Kaizad. "I started writing the film in September 1995. Every time I came to India I didn't know whether I belonged here or not." And to discover whether the shoe fits, the movie was born. "I'm half-Parsi and half-Iranian. The Parsi side says produce the film and the Iranian side says direct," he says. In the process, Kaizad wore too many hats. "It was by chance, not choice," says Kaizad. Being a writer, he is rather conscious of being quotable. But a little bit of honesty comes through when he says, "Making film is like going to war. Everyone gets hurt. I started the film screaming and ended it screaming. My temper is very short and I wear people down." That is a fact. His assistant director quit halfway through the film and Kaizad puts the head count down to 10.

He lights up cigarette after cigarette, gazes moodily into his coffee mug and proclaims, "I have no regrets". But with 1998 promising the release of his movie and his book, he can afford to make grandiose statements. And he does all the time. For example, he says, "I am a director, I make films because I have something to say. Would you go to a painter and say I want a particular landscape on canvas?" Evidently, the alienation he feels ("I feel like an animal in a zoo. I was born in Bombay but I am from nowhere") is self-taught, brash and outre, a little bit like the director himself.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.