Allow yourself to go deep, don’t churn out writing: Juhi Chaturvedi

MUMBAI: “Piku” writer Juhi Chaturvedi says she devotes a lot of time thinking about her characters rather than treating the material as something that needs to be “churned out” on demand.

Chaturvedi, who has also written the script of acclaimed movies such as “October” and “Vicky Donor”, says her advertising career taught her that she should live with an idea for a while before committing it to paper.

“You could spend days just thinking. Just because you’ve got one though doesn’t mean you pick up your laptop and start writing your story, draft or synopsis. Everything needs to be cooked, writing definitely slow.

“You can’t churn out stuff. The beauty of cinema is that it’s all so transparent, it’s so visible on the screen. Did you take enough time to think everything you’re that speaking on screen?,” she said during a session of ‘Reel Talkies’ by The Red Sparrow.

Writers Alankrita Shrivastava, Ritesh Shah and Sudip Sharma were also present at the session.
Chaturvedi said one can easily make out that a line has been written “just because someone told you to write it” in films.

“So many times you just write a reaction ‘ha’. People will tell you, why did you just write ‘ha’ here, you could’ve said something else also. Yes, anything can be written but there’s a reason. After six months, I feel only ‘ha’ is appropriate.

“Everybody can say everything. But is your character going to say everything? That you’ll know only if you’ve spent enough time with your character, thought or story.” Giving the example of Deepika Padukone starrer “Piku”, Chaturvedi said somewhere the idea that parents don’t stay alive on their own, they’ve to be kept alive came to her.

“On a day-to-day basis, you don’t think like this. It’s only when you put yourself in a dark hole, go deep, is when something comes out. It’s important to allow yourself to go that deep within yourself. Because there’s a possibility that something very beautiful can come out of you which can connect with so many people and make sense for everyone.”

In her writing process, she said her constant companion, apart from tea and lots of Parle G, has always been solitude. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s consistent other than the curtains that are drawn in the room and it’s dark and there is a lamp because I don’t want to know what time of the day it is… I don’t want to know when the day turns into night and night into day.”

This process, however, happens in a house buzzing with activities: from constant doorbells of vegetable and courier delivery to immediate family members. “Something is constantly going on at my house. I feel I can’t write without that anymore. That’s my silence. I live in that chaos,” she added. PTI