Death is better than anonymity
Shaapit, Shaapit and more Shaapit is my life these days. My third in my horror trilogy and let me tell you that scaring people is a scary business because there is a very thin line between funny and scary. Luckily I have managed to stay on this side of the line but it requires patience more than anything else and thus I am even more patient with the people who come to see me.
I was shooting at a club when a gentleman asked me if he could sit beside me and talk to me for a minute. I nodded. He told me that he was a film producer who had started a film in 1975 but it was stalled for some financial reason. It never got made. Now after all these years he was still trying to sell the script of the film. Would I want to listen to it? I was speechless. Thirty-two years and he was still trying to sell a script! He told me that he had sent the script to a lot of producers and directors but never heard from them. I gave him my office address and asked him to send me the script.
He left me with a numb feeling that I slowly began to understand as fear. Why was I overcome with so much dread? Then it came to me. I was afraid of being him. It was my worst nightmare. To carry the feeling through my life that I would make it some day, and never make it. My writer friend came to see me on the set and I narrated the incident to him and told him about my fear. He asked why are you worried? Everyone knows you. You have made a few films have you not? I smiled. Half agreed. The fear did not go away.
I was scared of losing it all. I was scared of getting up in the morning to discover everything was gone. I think it is the fear of all people who aspire for that so called elusive thing called success.
The tragedy is not that we fail but the tragedy is that we almost succeed. To see no success is fine but to touch it and then watch it leave you is killing. To be the guy no one recognises on the street is fine but to be the guy who was once mobbed by the people on the street and then not be recognised anymore is what kills.
What is it about this place that makes people never give up hope? What is it about this place that people are willing to go hungry, willing to be humiliated, willing to bet everything on that one chance that never comes? Is it the famous stories that circulate about nobodies making it or is it the place in the sun that we are all looking for?
I shudder to think about that eventuality. I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend that none of this will happen but the fact is that it might. I know for a fact that famous people die twice. Once when their fame dies and then again when they die. I want to pray that if I achieve the fame I want then God please kill me before You kill my fame. Because anonymity is worse than death for anyone who craves to be known forever.
By Vikram Bhatt
Post new comment