For me, music is the key to writing: Sachin Kundalkar

Gandha (2009) director, Sachin Kundalkar has completed two interesting projects this year. One is the book, Nineteen Ninety, and the other, is a film, Pondicherry, shot on a phone. The book is a compilation of his sporadic writings over two decades that were published in various magazines and newspapers. “The articles are impressions of things happening around me. They are a cultural memory of times we have lived. The theme has been constant through. I have always looked at the past era we have lived in the form of analogue to digital. I hate nostalgia. I am intellectually engaged in the idea of the ‘present’,” says Sachin.

The articles have been selected by his friend and editor Pranav Sachdev and then reworked in today’s perspective. He says, “I have looked at each piece from what I feel today. I have seen how my perspectives have changed about them. Articles published in newspaper columns have their own style and a beautiful temporariness to them. Very few of them remain forever. So, I have tried to rework on those and make them relevant for today.”

The Gulabjaam (2018) director’s passion for cooking is evident through his works so far. The writer admits that cooking is something he really enjoys and it is never a burden. It is a medium of communication for him and also forms a huge part of his writing. “Honestly, I am bad with names and I don’t have a good memory. I have always had a strange capacity to retain smell. Incidentally, my mother is the complete opposite,” smiles Sachin.

Apart from cooking, music is something that the director is pretty close to as well. Sachin adds, “For me, music is the key to writing. I listen to a lot of it and from various genres. I read and travel a lot, too. I have a strict working schedule, which is fixed from 6am to 12pm. These six hours cannot be challenged.”

He shares that the process of reading has become very dynamic today and finds it very interesting how people don’t typically read from a book anymore. “Growing up, I was obviously inspired by great classics written in my mother tongue. I studied in a Marathi medium till 16 and English came to me with extreme level of effort. I would read an article in English with the help of a dictionary. English literature brought all other languages to my doorstep,” he concludes.