Newsmaker: Shoojit Sircar, director of Bollywood hit Piku

Last week, social media was inundated with pictures from Deepika Padukone's success bash for Piku, attended by the who's who of Bollywood. Made on a budget of Rs 32 crore, Piku has already grossed Rs 63 crore in India, and $4.3 million overseas, becoming the biggest Indian hit abroad so far this year. The film's surprisingly good run has pumped some life into Bollywood's fledgling first quarter, and put the spotlight on its free-spirited and somewhat of an outlier director, Shoojit Sircar, who has made a name for himself by directing unconventional films in an industry often undone by its cliches.

Having grown up in Barrackpore in north Kolkata, where his father was in the Air Force, Sircar did half his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya in Andrews Ganj, New Delhi. "I'm a sportsman, a footballer, I had nothing to do with art and cinema while growing up," he says. But it was when he was studying at Delhi University that his tryst with theatre began. He started a theatre group called Act One with NK Sharma, which is still active today. Advertising happened by chance, and he got the opportunity to work with Pradeep Sarkar, the director of Mardaani, and quiz show host Siddhartha Basu. He found instant success by directing popular music videos (Shubha Mudgal's Mann ke Manjeere) and advertisements (for Dettol and Liril). His first film was Shoebite, which didn't get released, but Sircar says there are plans to revive it in the future. Next up was the Jimmy Shergill-Minissha Lamba starrer Yahaan (2005), a war-romance drama set in Kashmir that was praised for its warmth but failed to set the box-office on fire.

In 2007, he set up a media production house, Rising Sun Films, with Ronnie Lahiri, a long-time friend and collaborator of Sircar who has produced most of his films since then. For Lahiri, Sircar is a fine technician, and that's what sets him apart from other directors. "He knows exactly what to shoot, and how to shoot it, so he makes it very clear to his crew." According to him, a lot of directors shoot extra scenes and want to see it on the edit table and then make the final call on what goes into the film, but in Sircar's case, everyone from the costume designer to the art director to the spot boy knows what they have to do. "So it is a boon for any producer, to have such a clear-headed director at the helm of things, because there are no surprises on the way," says Lahiri.

But is it tough to find studios and producers to back films revolving around unorthodox and even unsavoury ideas such as sperm donation and bowel movements? "Vicky Donor has done the job for me, it achieved this cult-like status in the industry," says Sircar about the 2012 film about a sperm donor that became a sleeper hit through rave reviews and positive word-of-mouth. Even while charting the unconventional path in Bollywood, Sircar does admit that there have been apprehensions from studios at every step. "In Madras Cafe, there were no song or dance sequences, no romance as such, the hero was a loser at the end of the film, and it was definitely an issue. But I have always stood by what I believe in, in the kind of cinematic ideal I have followed, whether it is Satyajit Ray or Oliver Stone," says Sircar.

With Piku though, Sircar had no such problems, all the stars came on board without fuss. "They had blind faith in me, which I appreciate because I believe a film is a director's vision at the end of the day, "he says.

Currently, Sircar is basking in Piku's success and, as he puts it, "chilling out". Next up for him is Agra ka Daabra, pairing Sircar with Vicky Donor star Ayushmann Khurrana again. "Shoojit da breaks the stereotypes, he experiments, and he doesn't ever stick to a safe genre - he is a textbook of film-making," says Khurrana of his director's success.