THE GAG GANG

Let’s start at the beginning.
Vinay: I first met Rajat at Ketan Mehta’s office in 1995, when I had just come to Mumbai, then I met Ranvir in 1997, then Ranvir met Rajat and then I met both of them and it’s been happily ever after since.
Rajat: Those days none of us had work; only my wife Meenal did a bit of work.
Ranvir: I had a job.
Rajat: But we didn’t know him then, so it didn’t really benefit us.
Vinay: We had a lot of time together, so we decided to cook at Rajat’s suburban Mumbai pad.
Rajat: It was really like communal living. One friend would be doing good work and everybody would pile on…. Somebody taking pictures, another tipping him on acting. So everybody kind of supported each other. Vinay had a guest appearance in Raghu Romeo (2003). His first substantial role with us happened with Mixed Doubles.
Vinay: But much before that, we did the play C for Clowns together in 1999, which Ranvir joined later making it our first real working collaboration.
Rajat: Now, of course, we are so busy that we work together to be together.  

So what has kept you going?
Vinay: As if we had any other choice. What would I do? Would I end my life or keep pursuing the CA career I was already in? But no! One had to do this, there was no that.
Rajat: He’s right. Acting is like a terminal illness. It’s not as if you have a choice. If you want to make films you just can’t stop wanting to make films, you have to make them.

Humour or satire is common in all of your productions—Mixed Doubles (2006), Bheja Fry (2007), Mithya (2008)…. Wouldn’t you ever attempt any other genre?
Ranvir: Having spent close to a decade with these two gentlemen, I think humour is something inherent in us.
Rajat: Ranvir has extraordinary talent as a stand-up comic. The way Vinay can just talk funny for hours is astounding. Humour is definitely a part of me too; so whatever scripts I write I can’t keep it down, even in a tragedy like Mithya. I am not fond of mushiness or sentimentality, I run away from that. One way of running away is to go to humour.
Vinay: Also it’s a way of looking at things. I mean even in one of the most dramatic, serious mainstream films, Mughal-e-Azam, we can find places to really crack up, which today’s audiences will as well. For instance, whatever happens in the introduction scene of Ajit’s character Durjan Singh is like comic grammar. The girl, Suraiya approaches him coquettishly and the way he screams ‘Badbakht ladki…’ thrice is hysterical and it was played and treated in a comic way.
Rajat: So the point is that Mughal-e-Azam is actually a comedy, only we never saw it like that.
Ranvir: You just have to have a sense of humour. Actually humour lies in the eyes of the beholder.

... contd.