A PHENOMENON CALLED ANURAG KASHYAP

Anurag Kashyap : A bollywood director, producer, script-writer, actor, mentor, lyricist or beyond all a phenomenon. Entering Mumbai, dream-land of bollywood, almost 20 years back as a totally outsider from Utter-pradesh; constantly fighting all odds has now become probably the most talked about name in broad eyed young the Hindi film industry aspirants. He has been now seen as a messiah for small town, broad eyed young Indian cinema lovers.

Being a outsider to come this far is an achievement in itself. But the point is how far it is justified or true. And is he the only man from the industry who has tried to push the envelope ? Didn't we had films and film-makers like his/him before ? What's special in him to be looked upon onto by the newbies in the B-town ? Didn't he scripted crash movies ?

What brought him here? The biggest and foremost reason is newcomers see him as a fighter who not only fought with the system but with industry stalwarts and just not survived but now does what he constantly preached for , thus changing the rules on his own. The thing that has given him a great fan follower now is his speaking ability. The way he has gone against stalwarts like Salman Khan, Karan Johar etc has given him a revolutionary stature. Does that made it all or there is more into it. Let's go through his rise from the making of Paanch, his 1st movie that is yet to be released.

Paanch(have watched it, thanks to Internet), a crime thriller was stalled due to issues with the sensor board. According to Kashyap the board definition of cinema was healthy entertainment and Paanch didn't had a single positive character(Stereotype hero). I loved the movie(was made in 1999) and somehow or other it had 5 directors connected to it excluding Anurag. Then came his Black Friday which was again banned, this time by the court. After that came the most controversial Kashyap creation "No Smoking" and set the mark towards his journey to the limelight. No smoking had a disastrous performance at the box-office  and the critics gave it a double thumbs down. Then came Anurag's outburst on his own blog "My Diary", taking on celebrated critic Khaled Mohammed and his whole frustration showed through the languages used. It ultimately put him out of the industry.

With a 3 year backlog came his take on Devdas in the modern India named "Dev D", which shook the trade analysts and box office by earning 4 times its budget. It got a thumbs up from most critics. In between this his blogs did had a bomb-blast more often than not. After Dev D's success, he began introducing newcomers like Mahie Gill, Vikramaditya Motwane, Bejoy Nambiar etc either giving them breaks in his movies or producing their movies. Udaan's success at Cannes boost up his credentials. Coming out against Amitabh Bachan for another director gave him a messiah figure. Then came his producing company which gave break to newcomers and his own AKFPL. The writers of his Gulal and GOW were two newbies from the same town, gave young aspirants a source to showcase their scripts. With his dream project "Bombay Velvet" coming with Ranbir in lead may just be the movie that he is looking for(box office-wise).