'Industry' creator Navjot Gulati on outsider’s guide to make it in Bollywood

Writerdirector Navjot Gulatirsquos story is a Bollywood film waiting to be told Not because itrsquos never heard before Because itrsquos spoken in every nook and corner of the industry The story of fall rise and a hundred tries The story of everyone in the movies whether they make it big or notNot sure if Bollywood would ever wake up to it Gulati has gone ahead and told his side with Amazon miniTVrsquos latest series Industry a dramedy chronicling the struggles as well as the perseverance of a Bollywood writer named Aayush Varma played by Gagan Arora ldquoI am not the only Aayush in Aaram Nagarrdquo begins Gulati who has created cowritten and directed the fiveepisode seriesA 15yearlong career and several misses later Gulati has finally scored a win with Industry that has earned both critical acclaim and audiencersquos praise for its unassuming peek into the behindthescenes working of Bollywood from a writerrsquos perspective ldquoI have people sending me pictures of their first cheques and contracts I am not used to all this The show is about chronicles of my life fictionalised for dramatic effects But the victory of the story is that everyone feels itrsquos their storyrdquoBut whatrsquos unique to Gulati in the sea of people rounding up daily in the lanes of Aaram Nagar a tiny neighbourhood next to Versova in Andheri and home to casting agencies and production houses is that he is also described as the lsquooriginal hustler of Versovarsquo ldquoSomen Mishra Creative development head Dharma Productions coined the term hustler for me A lot of people thought he was insulting me but I took it as a compliment Even my Youtube channel and production company are called Versova Hustlerrdquo Mishra didnrsquot exaggerate In fact he could use this moment in Gulatirsquos childhood to substantiate his claimHum Aapke Hain Koun was running housefull at Bareillyrsquos singlescreen theatre Prabha It had already been twice that sixyearold Gulati and his family had failed to get the tickets In their third try the youngest family member took it upon himself to make sure their visit didnrsquot go in vain ldquoI lost it the third time I somehow managed to get inside the theatre to the managerrsquos cabin and demanded that he gave us tickets I told him that it wasnrsquot cool that this was a film about family and a family wasnrsquot able to watch it The guy actually bought my nonsense and gave us the ticketsrdquo he recalls Then for the next three months Gulati was the bestowed person to make everyone in the family watch Hum Aapke Hai Kounhellip ldquoIt was said lsquoYeh ticket laadega He will bring you the tickets The love affair with the movies started at that agerdquoWhat was also discovered was Gulatirsquos ability to get things done which is also in desi exchange referred to as jugaad And it continues to date ldquoI donrsquot believe in the concept of giving up If I want to get something made I will not stop till it happensrdquoHustling has been his lifersquos theme even becoming the primary emotion of the first story he ever wrote ldquoIt was about a guy I knew who wanted to work at an international call centre He was a Bihari His English was impeccable but had a heavy mother tongue influence So he was unable to get a job for the longest time but he never gave up He would apply four times a week and get rejected Somewhere I was enamoured by this guyrsquos tenacity to not give up and keep wanting the same thing One day he finally got a job at an international call centre and I was really happy But came another hurdle These call centres had a rule that they would only hire you if you live in the area where they provide cabs And the office wasnrsquot sending the cab to his place So he took a month and changed his entire address By that time that company shut down And he never got a job I donrsquot know what happened to him But he gave me an idea which was that what if Lallan Kumar Chaubey changed his name to Larry Bose and became a cab driver and started observing these people going to call centres in order to improve his English to crack a call centre jobrdquo Gulati narratesPerseverance is often the only companion of an outsider especially in Gulatirsquos case who by his own admission had nothing but only love for movies as his refuge ldquoThere was a time in our life when we were financially broken as a family My father was going through a tough time and my mother was running a boutique and my brother was doing a job in a call centre And I was this 1617 year old trying to figure out life I hated studying The only refuge I had in life was movies We didnrsquot even have enough money to buy a film ticket My mama maternal uncle used to sponsor our tickets and we could watch a film only when he would go to a theatre So the desire was to get rich enough to afford a film ticket Everything else followedrdquoAlso marked by striking selfawareness Gulati dropped out of school after class eleven ldquoFor almost five years from then I did multiple things in Delhi I had a consultancy for BPOs I used to do embroidery work I had a factory and I also worked at a call centre I also worked as a sales manager at a bank So I learnt life I wanted to enter movies but didnrsquot have the courage to follow throughrdquoCourage followed him via a reality show ldquoBoman Irani hosted this Bollywood quiz show Bollywood Ka Boss The only entrance exam I ever passed was for this show They had selected around 100 people out of 10000 applicants for 10 episodesrdquo True to his journey marked by several falls Gulati didnrsquot win the show Ironically failures have always pushed him ahead ldquoDuring my elimination in the second round itself I asked Boman Irani on air lsquoSir I am a writer I want to come to Mumbai and tell stories What do you think should I do nextrsquo He said lsquoIf you have a good story people will find you even from as far as Alaskarsquo As per my lack of understanding of life I thought he was inviting me to Mumbai when he was actually giving me a warning that lsquoBoss donrsquot come If itrsquos in your destiny they will get you from AlaskarsquordquoIn 2009 the 22yearold aspiring writer packed his bags to Mumbai but not without his homework ldquoEven before coming to Mumbai I knew the city better than other people because I was a film nut I had Filmfare Mayapuri on my desk more than my course books I was so interested in all things films that I knew the business beforehand I knew Andheri West is the place of opportunitiesrdquoThe plan was simple Find a job to sustain a living and stories to sell ldquoI worked in a call centre for three months While working there I managed to score a job at Cinevistaas In the initial years wherever I would go I would find a story make friends and try to have a good time while hating the jobs I was a creative writer at Cinevistaas I was in the development of shows but they didnrsquot get made So I made no contribution there just got paid For another year I worked for TV and realised it wouldnt pay my bills There was also no gratification I realised I donrsquot have the talent for TVrdquo The years didnrsquot go to waste though as Gulati continued to write not dwelling on rejectionldquoI am never scared of people judging me because I already believe I have written a bad script So everything else is a bonus I can write a script in 4 days but I am not a brilliant writer I have written 72 scripts till daterdquoIn 2012 came his first writing break as he got hired for Running Shaadi which was to star Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh But destiny had a long wait planned for him ldquoWe started writing in 2012 shot it in 2013 and it released in 2017 It was a frustrating time because I didnrsquot know how good or bad I was I couldnrsquot sit at home waiting for it to get released So I made a short film in the meantimerdquo Vikrant Massey and Kritika Kamra united for Gulatirsquos directorial debut Best Girlfriend It could have been called lsquoMy best friendsrsquo as well given his leads big television stars then didnrsquot charge him a penny ldquoThey had been my friends from before I am gifted with people skills When people talk to me they fall in love with merdquo he remarksIt would be amusing if his confession wasnrsquot backed by visual proof His latest work is marked by easily more than 20 cameos from industry insiders Hansal Mehta Abhishek Banerjee Tarun Dudeja Sumit Roy Sumit Arora and Hardik Mehta to name a few In all these years when the writerdirector struggled for a breakthrough he made blockbuster friendships bursting the myth that in Bollywood relationships favour the winner ldquoIf these people werenrsquot part of the show it wouldnrsquot have felt half as real as it does I donrsquot have friends outside Bombay They all feel happy and sad for me They also correct me In the show industry itself there are many inputs that have come from people like Suhail Nayyar Tarun Dudeja Naveen Kasturia and Parijat Joshi I have the ability and talent to write but my actual writing is done by my friends the ones who read my scripts and give me feedback and inputsrdquoInterestingly many of these friendships began as Gulatirsquos work dates Thatrsquos another aspect of the filmmaker to marvel at Quite early on in his journey he realised work without network would not cut it in an industry which hands out no invites You have to gatecrash ldquoI learnt a lot from Vikram Jai Singhrdquo Gulati refers to Farhan Akhtarrsquos character from Luck By Chance which the filmmaker shares was his guide to the film industry ldquoThat film was my window into how people work here A part of the credit of why I am here goes to Zoya Akhtar She told an outsider how things work in the industry I knew from the beginning that nobody is is going to call me I have to call them I have to create ways of breaking into the system because I was up against something which is unprofessional and random I had to be inventiverdquoSo Gulatirsquos formula was message and meet ldquoItrsquos like dating My dating used to be with directors producers writers I must have done not less than 5000 meetings Meet five people every day Which means 30 people in a week 120 people in a month If you do that consistently you will get work I have met everyone as a struggling writer I would text them lsquoHi I know you have worked on so and so You will become a director in the future and you will need a script for it This is where I come in I can writersquo I have also written to people saying rsquoYou have made a terrible film But now I am in your life I will make it betterrsquo Then I meet them and become friends with them This became a means of knowing peoplerdquoNetwork might have brought work to him but the latter was yet to become friend with him Gulati directed a short a music video and an episode of a series post Running Shaadi all missable In 2020 came his feature directorial debut Jai Mummy Di also his second film as a writer It flopped ldquoIt was a terrible filmrdquoThe box office failure brought in muchneeded introspection About what he wanted to make and how to make it better ldquoI am a really bad writer but I am aware how to make it better Thatrsquos why I am able to write so much I spent five years of my life trying to make a bad film So I definitely know if I make something good how it is My entire learning from my career till pandemic is that if I have to tell a story it has to be so rich that itrsquos worth dying otherwise I donrsquot want to tellrdquoIn this resolve has been born what Gulati calls his trilogy of sorts Of which Industry is the first part ldquoI know I havenrsquot made a Mirzapur or Aspirants or Panchayat that people swear by But I believe I have made something that will be remembered in cluster of people for a long timerdquoThe next two are courtroom drama Pooja Meri Jaan with Mrunal Thakur and Huma Qureshi and family comedy Badtameez Gill starring Vaani Kapoor and Aparshakti Khurrana ldquoBadtameez Gill was first supposed to be a story of two brothers but no one wanted to make it I changed it to brothersister and set in London because I wanted to travel to the city And I couldnrsquot travel without purposerdquo he grinsWhat makes this new chapter even more special for Gulati is that while one project had most of his friends gueststarring in it Pooja Meri Jaan has another close friend backing it ldquoAmar Kaushik is a very old friend I remember I had written a simple text to Amar Kaushik even before Stree happened lsquoWriter hun Milan chahta hun I am a writer I want to meet yoursquo He was an AD then He made a film for me after Jai Mummy Di because I had taken a promise from him saying lsquoMy film Jai Mummy Di is going to flop You have to make my nextrsquo He fulfilled the promise and made Pooja Meri Jaan Because I have always been honest and helpful a lot of people wanted to be around I have helped without expecting anything in return All the hit directors in the last 10 years are my friends Itrsquos for a reason I have nurtured them and they are far more successful than merdquoThe sixyearold boy in him smiles ear to ear He who wanted to afford a ticket to watch a film is rich enough to make films happen For himself and others ldquoThe other day I met a big director who is an old friend and he loves the show and he wanted to meet me ldquoThe meeting ended with me getting him a meeting with a big producer who was looking for a directorrdquo