What’s the first thing you ever wrote in life?
Well, that was a really long time ago! I grew up around the Hindi language. Even at home, we used to speak a lot of Hindi. In my early days, I used to think that anything that rhymes is poetry. And I used to write something that combined poetry and prose. It was mostly stuff full of what I thought was wrong with the world. I used to write pollution-population-save-nature kind of stuff. Then college started. By mistake, I am a science graduate. In our college magazine, I wrote a piece called Nasoor (Cancer). It was the first time I saw my name in print and it felt amazing. I read that piece over and over again. However, I didn’t keep writing regularly after that. I lurked around backstage during college plays, sometime wrote lines about sun-moon, flowers and stuff but nothing serious.
How did you then foray into writing as a career?
After college, I did some odd jobs at Citi Bank, then at a teak wood plantation company. I was just going with whatever was happening to me. I wasn’t really myself in a marketing company, wearing a tie, selling Diner’s Cards, Master Cards, etc. This spoilt my mood. Somehow, one day, a loose contact I made at my job, who had played character roles in some films, recommended that I go to Prithvi Theatre after I told him about my interest in acting and theatre. At that time, I didn’t even know what Prithvi Theatre was! Then, one day in 1993, all alone, I went to Juhu beach, threw my tie and the sales brochures I used to carry into the sea and then just showed up at Prithvi, which is a walk away from the beach. As soon as I entered the premises, I saw a slightly dejected guy, who had just had an earful from a director, sitting there. When he saw me, he said, “Hi, I am Anurag Singh Kashyap.” I said, “Hi, I am Vijay Maurya.” He asked me what I do. I said, “Currently, nothing.” Then we got talking. He told me that workshops were conducted at Prithvi every Monday and that…