GAURAV SOLANKI speaks with SHALINI SAKSENA about what inspired him to write Tandav and things he keeps in mind while scripting a story

How did you get your first break?

Anurag Kashyap asked me to write songs for his film Ugly. This happened in 2012. I had been trying to work with him for a long time.

What is Tandav about?

About politics and human beings. I have tried to go beyond the obvious chess-like game of politics and talk about human behaviour and human condition.

How did you get inspiration to write the story for it?

Inspirations keep changing every day, sometimes some reality pushes you, another day a friend triggers a detail in some character. Sometimes music inspires you, sometimes the setting sun.

What are the things you keep in mind while writing a script?

I keep asking myself constantly why I am writing this particular script. There should be a purpose. There would be some thoughts you want to communicate, and a story you need to tell and characters you want to know more closely. There should be an interesting mix of all these for me to keep writing. Sometimes characters decide their own stories, sometimes stories invent characters to tell themselves.

What was the inspiration behind Article 15?

There was a lot of anger against this inhuman hierarchy of human beings. That anger fueled everything else.

You graduated from IIT Roorkee. How did you end up in Bollywood?

I wanted to come in films even when I was a kid. I often ask myself how I ended up studying engineering.

Writer, poet, screenwriter and lyricist. What role suits you best?

It keeps changing. I don’t think all these forms of writing are as different as they are presented. Poetry has often contributed in my screenplay writing and stories quite often seep into my poetry.

What next?

I have written a film Freedom with Dibakar Banerjee that he is directing. Apart from that, I am writing another series and a feature film that I have to direct.