Swapna Joshi

Balancing opposites

Captain House was more of a comedy with a little bit of fantasy element but I added thrills, emotions, stunts, special effects and animals. Kids just love it and the serial ranks among the three most popular shows on the Metro Channel.

Even as she is directing the funny tale of a family spooked by a spirit in Captain House, Swapna Joshi is deftly handling the saga of a man in search of his own identity in Main.

The day we met Swapna Joshi at her suburban flat in Mumbai, she had just finished her bath and was lazily combing he not-so-long tresses. We were surprised because it was just two hours away from sunset and she had neither eaten her breakfast nor lunch.

Asking her servant to serve her a plate of Kanda poha, Swapna says she has had a really lazy day. “I slept, slept and slept till the afternoon,” she informs, adding, “because I didn’t want to do anything but sleep.”

It was a much-needed break from her 20-hour a day schedule for Swapna who has been over-stretching herself ever since Main went on air five weeks ago which she is writing and directing. She is also directing Captain House which has completed a run of 52 weeks on DD Metro.

With rock-steady TRPs, Swapna doesn’t have to really work hard on the “cute fantasy-cum-comic thriller” because Captain House commands brand loyalty which is sure to last in its extended second year run. But Main is a bigger challenge for her because she has to make the show climb on the slippery TRP ladder. Thankfully, the good news is that Main... is faring better and is already among the top five popular programmes on STAR Plus.

Till a year ago, Swapna was quite apprehensive about working with Shekhar Suman, who, she had heard, “is a very difficult and temperamental actor to work with.” But the apprehension vanished into thin air when she directed him for an episode of Rishtey. “I found him quite sincere and easiest person to work with,” she remembers. “Since both of us enjoyed working with each other, Shekhar suggested that we should work together on a bigger project. He came up with an idea for a sitcom and I shot it down because I was not ready for a full-fledged comedy. He suggested another idea and again I said no to him. Then I conceived a plot revolving around a superstar who has everything in life, but finds it still empty. He liked the story and Main was born.”

Main is a story of a highly temperamental, arrogant and successful actor who has misused every relationship - whether it is with his mother, wife, girlfriend, producers or co-actresses - in his quest for stardom. Instead of building relationships he has broken them and when he is at the zenith of his career, he is a lonely man. His only confidante is his make-up man, played by Vikram Gokhale.

Tragedy strikes Biran Kumar when he learns that he is suffering from Glioblastoma Multiphome, a form of brain tumour, and he has just one year to live. The ailment which is kept a secret brings a total change in his personality. He mellows down, realises his mistakes, feel repentant and wants to make amends. The story deals with the last year of his life and how he lives it. Says Swapna, “People will first hate him and then sympathise him.”

Try to tell Swapna that the story of Main appears a lot similar to her earlier production Ahankar and she disagrees totally. Ahankar, she says, was different. “Vikram Sareen (the main protagonist of Ahankar) was born with a diamond spoon in his mouth. He was a casanova and his confidence came through his riches. But Biren Kumar comes from a middle class home. He is a self-made man. The characters are poles apart. Probably the common factor between the two is their arrogance. The two serials deal with totally different value systems and therefore the treatment is also different,” explains Swapna, a post-graduate in dramatics, who had a brief stint with Ahmedabad Doordarshan before she wrote, produced and directed, Ahankar nearly five years ago.

The success of Ahankar gave her a lot of confidence and a fair amount of respect and recognition in Tellywood. But she hopes Main will give her a firm footing in the highly competitive telebiz. She is all praise for her two actors - Shekhar Suman and Vikram Gokhale. “Both are very cooperative,” she says. “Though they are very expensive and busy, they have slashed their price for my project. And getting dates from them is also not a problem.”

To Swapna also goes the credit for making Captain House a popular show among kids ever since she took it over from the fifth episode. “It was more of a comedy with a little bit of fantasy element but I added thrills, emotions, stunts, special effects and animals,” she says. “Kids just love it and the serial ranks among the three most popular shows on the Metro Channel.”

While Captain House will go on for one more year and Main will end in 52 episodes “because the story ends there”, Swapna is working on two more serials which are ready at the pilot stage and being marketed.

One is Khushboo which, she says, is a beautiful love story of a rich girl and a middle class boy. The other is a serial about four peppy girls who strive to prove their families that they are something. The third serial which is at the planning stage, is an outright thriller for which she is trying to find a producer.

She is through with writing the script of a film for producer Xavier Marquis, to be directed by Jagdish Mali. An off-beat film which revolves around the life of a warrior, the film will go on the sets in Nov-ember. When asked why she is not directing the film herself, she says, “I have not been given the offer to direct it.”

A.L.C.