At six in the morning, when her phone wouldn’t stop ringing, screenwriter Utkarshini Vashishtha didn’t imagine that the calls were to congratulate her on the National Award wins for Gangubai Kathiawadi. “My first thought when I saw the phone ringing was, ‘Why am I getting a call from sir [Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s] office?’ The second thought I had was, ‘It’s National Award, and maybe I have won?’ Even then, I could only predict one, and honestly, I would’ve been more than happy with it, but two National Awards is beyond my dreams,” she beams as she speaks to us from her US home.

Alia Bhatt in Gangubai Kathiawadi