Was declared dead on arrival till ‘Arth’ happened: Mahesh Bhatt on early failures

Mumbai: Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt says he still considers himself as a "stumbling-fumbling" person who delivered back-to-back failures when he joined the film industry.

Bhatt worked as an assistant director to the late Raj Khosla before making his directorial debut in 1974 with "Manzilein Aur Bhi Hain” but the Kabir Bedi and Prema Narayan-starrer did not work at the box office. He followed it with “Vishwasghaat”, “Naya Daur”, “Lahu Ke Do Rang”, movies that didn’t leave much impact on audiences.

He found his niche in direction with semi-autobiographical dramas like “Arth”, “Janam”, “Zakhm”, and many others later.

"My 20s were disastrous. I had three to four films, back-to-back failures. I was declared stillborn, dead-on arrival, till ‘Arth’ happened to me. I stumbled into my autobiographical medium.

"I'm just a struggling, stumbling, fumbling person. Some movies I made would happen to be good. It was because of the collective vibe on the set, the contribution of my co-travellers. Many were mediocre, ranked bad.

“So, if you look at my journey, I say that you can't make as many movies as I have made, which have flopped," the veteran filmmaker told PTI in an interview.

Bhatt, son of director-producer Nanabhai Bhatt, said he never saw himself as a filmmaker since he had joined the industry merely to make a living.

"At the age of 15, my mother said, ‘Your father is going through a trying time, we need money. Your sister has started working as an aerospace engineer. You are sitting down here and eating in front of me. I don't like the sight of you eating’.

"I remember putting the food down, wiping my hands and going to my friend Asghar Ali and shouting out to him: ‘Get me a job’. I started as a turner and a fitter in Killick Nixon, which was there in Powai. My first paycheck, after a week, was Rs 58... I gave it to my mother. I worked to put food on the table." The 76-year-old director said he was not a good student and dropped out of college but what he knew was to "bulls***" his way through life by telling stories.

"I had a childhood which was perhaps a little scarred by the standards of normal, so-called normal home. I used stories to kind of cushion myself. So, the stories and storytelling skills were born in my infancy. Even then, when I started I stumbled and fell. I keep telling them, ‘I failed my way to success’.

"If you're frightened of failure, don't come into this business. Here, failure is a constant and success is a fluke. If you have the courage to take it on the chin, fail publicly, be savage publicly, then come here. Otherwise, get up, get out of here." Asked about his personal and professional life often intersecting into movies that he made, whether it was "Arth", "Zakhm" or "Woh Lamhe", Bhatt said it was easy for him to do those stories because cinema was his medium of telling stories.

"But I did have the naysayers who called me, 'An exhibitionist person, who washes his dirty linen in public’, to which I said, ‘There's no special charm in washing it in your backyard’... But those were within the matrix of what is called bearable and palatable truths.”

The mid-90s marked a downturn in his directorial ventures, with films such as “Dastak”, “Chaahat”, and “Duplicate” and few others struggling to resonate with audiences. It was with “Kartoos” in 1999 that he decided to step away from the director’s chair.

The decision stemmed from Bhatt’s personal and professional ethos: the importance of authenticity in artistic expression.

"I was born with a personality trait, which is either I do things wholeheartedly or I don't do it, states the filmmaker. Either I was completely there or I was not there at all. When I stopped being there, I said, ‘Whom are you kidding? It's not right to pretend to be there and shortchange your audience'." he said.

Bhatt, who has mentored actors and directors like Emraan Hashmi, Mallika Sherawat, Vikram Bhatt and Mohit Suri over the years, is now promoting musical-romance film, “Tu Meri Poori Kahani”, on which he serves as a creator.

The film marks the directorial debut of Suhrita Das and introduces a fresh on-screen pair of actors Hirranya Ojha and Arhaan Pateel.

He has left direction but Bhatt said as he got older, he started to have more faith in younger people as he realised that he was not as fierce as he was at the beginning of his journey.

"You are an expression of a time frame. When you were making your dent on the consciousness of the nation and the people, it was because you were a byproduct of those times and you had the burning fire in you to express yourself passionately. Then it withers with time, like everything that is born, dies...

"I just felt that when you tap into new people with genuine thirst to make a mark, you add it to the garden that you want to nurture, and fanning people's potential is far more gratifying than just making a film with your name above the title."