It’s not easy to encapsulate late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s lifetime of work in a movie. Equally difficult was finding someone who could bring the much-loved politician’s warmth to the screen. On Vajpayee’s 99th birth anniversary today, writer Rishi Virmani recalls how director Ravi Jadhav and he pitched Main Atal Hoon to Pankaj Tripathi by narrating only the film’s first half-hour. “Main Atal Hoon couldn’t have been a dry political movie. It had to be witty, entertaining and hopeful. In my first meeting with Pankaj sir, I was supposed to give him a narration till the interval point. But since the film was difficult to write, it took me time to [crack the script]. On the day of the meeting, I had only the first 30 minutes of the film. I went to his place, feeling like a student who didn’t do his homework. But by the time we ended the narration, the flavour was spot-on and Pankaj sir was happy,” he grins.

The late Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Rishi Virmani