Emotionally bound to Ooty
Nostalgia. I think nostalgia is an emotion that fills you with strange sadness at remembering a happy past. I am in Ooty shooting for my 3D horror film Haunted and Ooty fills me with so many memories.
There are times when one can write a thousand page autobiography to chronicle one’s life and still miss the essence of it and then there are times when an old favourite song and your eyes closed are enough to see your life play out in front of you. Ooty is that song for me.
I came here first when I was 17 and in college. My father was shooting for a film called Kaash with Mahesh Bhatt and my best friend Bobby Deol was here with his father who was starring in a film called Loha. We used to make home movies on our video cameras and chat endlessly about how successful we would become one day. Days of hope.
Then I was here for a film called Gunehegar. A director with two flop films trying to make it work in the third. Mithun Chakraborty, Pooja Bhatt and Atul Agnihotri. Endless rain and a shoot that would not go right. Days of intense struggle.
Dissolve to writing Dastak and waiting for Fareb to release. Out of work. Waiting for work. No money. No real reason to stay in Ooty and no reason to go back to Mumbai. In the chasm of nothingness. Days of despair.
Forward to post Ghulam days. Shooting for a television series for my friend Pooja Bhatt called Dhund. High on life with my film a huge hit. They said I had arrived. Days of celebration.
More heights to scale and was here for Raaz. Everyone knows what that did to my career. They were days of real splendour.
After that now. Back here. Still working. Still trying but when I look back, everything that I have done or felt has been saved in the mists of this place. Innocence, Struggle, Hope, Success, Despair, Contentment and more Hope. All here.
Everything in our lives comes down to a few mile markers and you see that life goes around in circles. Through vision gone hazy with age, you see a mile marker that you thought you had crossed years back and you know you are back where you were.
Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed.
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