I got my first vehicle, a bicycle, when I was in middle school. It was a maroon BSA SLR, and I got it not because I did well in school or anything like that. My father made a present of it to me. I loved running errands for anyone in my hometown in Jamshedpur, as long as I could ride my bike. When I graduated to the BSA Mach 2, my brother, Arif, got my SLR.
I like to drive, but you cannot really drive in Mumbai, which is more a start-and-stop kind of experience. I am not a very safe driver, my mind wanders, and I don’t know where I am, so I have a driver in the city. I am a BMW kind of guy. I now have a BMW and a Honda City. Both are dark, matte-coloured. Give me mountains any day to plains. The smell of the mountains is something else. Rudyard Kipling describes them so beautifully in his stories.
Journeys are important, no matter what your vehicle, because I can be anything I want to be. I need not be what you want me to be. Without a reference, I can reinvent myself any way I choose. I am too old to discover myself through a journey and find myself at the end of a trip, though! Travel as a motif in my films just happened. Of the two stories I am working on, one features a journey while the other does not — which just proves my point.
— As told to
Mini Anthikad Chhibber
