I live with a bunch of engineering students, but I will be damned if engineering made their lives dull. The house is always buzzing with interesting characters. It's a source of endless surprise to me how my flatmates can fall into easy camaraderie with rank strangers. Mumbai is a new city to them - all of them hail from small towns like Solapur and Kolhapur. But they are no country bumpkins. Barely 20 and living independently for the first time, they are having a wild go at it.
The most curious thing about this large circle of friends is that it contains a fair number of "strugglers", Mumbai slang for people trying their luck in Bollywood. We have aspiring singers and abs-tastic (Urban Dictionary defines this as someone with fantastic abs. Go figure!) models sashaying in the house. How my flatmates met these beautiful people I have no idea. The only viable explanation is that we stay in Andheri, a "struggler" hub. In Mumbai, at any rate, it's difficult to throw a stone without it landing on a film junkie's head.
When my roommate went on vacation, he let out his portion to a Bengali young man whose current assignment is as an assistant director (AD) on a Marathi film. Dibyaditya moved to Mumbai from Kolkata three years ago and, in this time, has worked on reality shows, shot a few corporate films, and collaborated on scripts. He hopes to someday launch his own production house and become an ace director. For the moment, he is making do with more humdrum work.
Oh, it's a drill. The Marathi project has to be wrapped in 60 days non-stop. As First AD, Dibyaditya is expected to manage everything from camera angles to the lead actor's diet. Most nights he doesn't return home. When he does, he leaves before anyone else wakes up. We joke that he is like a dream, only visiting in the wee hours. Generous quantities of fish that are served as part of the common meals are his only consolation.
Dibyaditya might be a creative type but he also has a canny business head. He has tapped his contacts to strike a deal with a major sports channel to do their post-production work (editing, VFX, graphics) for a three-year period. The channel, which is Australia-headquartered, had been looking for a long-term vendor that could establish a post-production unit on its premises.
Dibyaditya made some quick calculations. The equipment will cost Rs 1 crore. The channel will pay him a monthly rent of Rs 6 lakh for the equipment. Since the work will take place on their premises, his only other cost will be an engineer to manage the equipment. At Rs 2.16 crore for the three-year period, it certainly does not look like a bad investment.
"My family is okay with my decision to work in films - we are Bengalis after all," laughs Dibyaditya. "But I come from a family of finance people. My father worked in a bank and my sister is studying to be a finance MBA. As much as I might like to be the suffering artist, I cannot overlook finances and get carried away by the creativity bug. I want to be more Satyajit Ray than Ritwik Ghatak." (This conversation was interspersed with Ray's initial financial difficulties in getting Pather Panchali off the ground.)
There's more. Dibyaditya has a cousin in Kolkata who is a financial consultant. After working in advertising for a few years he decided to switch careers and opted for an MBA. He now works as a "loan consultant" - that is, he arranges loans in excess of Rs 100 crore for high-net-worth individuals looking to invest in manufacturing, real estate etc. As commission, he charges 1-2 per cent of the loan amount which, in most cases, lands him a cool Rs 4-Rs 5 crore.
The only problem with the business model is inconsistency of revenue. With Kolkata anything but investment-friendly, the cousin doesn't get much business. He wants Dibyaditya to help him expand in Mumbai - the cousin has been "bugging me" to start a small office with a skeletal staff and spread the good word among his friends and associates. Dibyaditya, with dreams of his own studio dangling enticingly before him, is caught between launching his brother's idea or sticking to his guns and keep "struggling".
"It's not like I don't see the potential. If I can get my brother business from here, he will easily pay me 30-40 per cent of the cut. That translates into big bucks. But that's a trap after all, right? He is also looking at acquiring hotels in Goa on a lease basis. The next thing you know, I will be assisting him with that too. I don't know if I should even take the first steps since I am sure to lose out on my film work if I start a loan office. I need money, yes, but what's the point in earning if it leads me away from my ultimate goal?"
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
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