It's easier to be cool about things, not to take life too seriously, when you haven't been through the grind.

Farhan Akhtar, the enfant terrible of Hindi cinema, has found his metier with contemporary screen plays that gather a whole new generation into their cinematic fold, creating an experience, identifiable with new aspirations. JAYASHREE MENON catches up with a filmmaker who, with just two releases has come of age.

Brazen liar and wild brat…. College dropout and film buff…. Two films old and anointed THE Generation Next director. How do you slot Farhan Akhtar? If the books - including tomes like Making A Good Script Great and From Script To Screen - stacked in his office are any clue; or the fact that his first film, Dil Chahta Hai (DCH), attained cult proportions and that his newest offering, Lakshya, generated tremendous buzz before its release or given that he's the son of Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, then Farhan Akhtar is either the enfant terrible of Hindi cinema or a perfect fusion of genetics and environment. Take your pick.

The beginnings were hardly promising. Such was Akhtar's total commitment to the 'art of aimless living' that not even the combined power-packed writing skills of his parents could have conjured up the twists and turns their progeny's life would take. After all, this was the son who dropped out of college only to throw himself into watching films and nothing else. "Mom has put up with a lot," Akhtar admits. "She's such a jolly person but she often had to discipline me. I've broken lots of things, including the dining table while playing table tennis…and I've got a lot of whacks," he chuckles. "She'd ask Dad to intervene only when things were really getting out of hand. He never hit me, yet I somehow felt that if he'd got involved then it must be really serious! Actually I was only scared of my mother."

The fact that his parents separated when he was barely eight could hardly have helped. "I would be lying if I said I wasn't affected. I give Mom all the credit for minimising the trauma. She dealt with the problem and sheltered us. She played a very important part in ensuring that we continued to meet Dad. What my sister, Zoya, and I learnt over the years is that sometimes it's better to let go in the long run. Though we live with Mom, Dad loves us like crazy and is always there for us. As for Shabana (Azmi), we are very close to her too."

At 30, though Akhtar may have figured out what his lakshya (goal) is, he's clear he's not at all close to it. "I have not reached where I want to reach," he emphasises. "I am moving…hopefully upwards and by upwards, I don't mean I'm climbing up some social ladder!" So was he really a liar? "Of course I was! But, I only lied to get out of trouble. Zoya was the only one who could catch me out.

Lakshya has been written by father, Javed Akhtar, marking his return to full-fledged film writing after more than a decade. Wife, Adhuna, ace hair stylist, has also contributed to the much-talked-about 'look' of the Lakshya cast. Akhtar himself is producing Luck By Chance, Zoya's debut film as writer/director, even as he's busy penning his next script - a period film tentatively titled Voice In the Sky.

This year, cousin Farah Khan too earned her spurs as a writer/director with her debut film, Main Hoon Naa. Akhtar laughs: "Sajid (Farah's brother) also is a thorough entertainer, so at some level it's almost as if this performing entertainment gene has travelled down." His four-year-old daughter Shakya (meaning 'brotherhood' as well as 'branch of a tree') is already smitten by movie mania. "Shakya is such a film buff," the proud papa exclaims. "She loves watching films. She also loves Hrithik," he adds. "She calls him 'Chocolate Uncle' because he gives her a chocolate every time he meets her."

Given that creative juices run through the family veins, there's still the mighty contradiction of father Javed Akhtar creating the angry young man of the '70s (think Bachchan), while the son has changed the very definition of 'cool'. "I think it's just a reflection of the society we live in," he says. "My dad came from a very different background. He went through a very different kind of process before he achieved what he did. There was a lot of anger within him and Salim uncle (Salman Khan's father), a lot of angst towards the system. I never had to go without food for three days or write dialogues for minor films to pay the rent. It's easier to be cool about things, not to take life too seriously, when you haven't been through the grind."

That he hasn't. After dropping out of college and watching movies for two years, he joined Pankuj Parashar's unit for Himalayputra, Akshaye Khanna's debut movie. "I also did a three-year stint with a production house called ScriptShop. It was a great learning experience as I did everything - from production design to anchoring to post production. Adi Pocha of ScriptShop was a very encouraging teacher, which is how I jumped into writing my first film. DCH was a salad that I chopped up and tossed from my friends' traits," Akhtar reminisces.

Simply told, DCH was a story about three pals who meet a girl at a party. "I always wondered what happens to the best friends of the hero after reel number three. Where do they go? For when he needs them the most, they are never there. So DCH became a story about friendship and how individual love stories affect that camaraderie."

Even as the film redefined the clichéd formula on dost and dosti, it also broke free of another staple of Hindi films - heavy, dramatic dialogues. Akhtar laughs. "In most masala movies, the characters don't speak like people normally do in real life. The three guys in my film don't have to tell each other they are best friends. We don't go around saying that to our best friends! I didn't want any of the characters to speak a language I was not familiar with. I wrote in the Hindi I know, which has a lot of English in it. People still congratulate me on the very real dialogue they heard in the film."

DCH, written and directed by Akhtar, was intensely personal - did the young director have the same commitment to Lakshya, written by his father? "Absolutely," he exclaims. "Once I started reading the script it excited me. I immediately told Dad that I wanted to do it. He was shocked. He had merely narrated the idea to me to get my feedback on whether it could be made into a screenplay. I got attracted to Lakshya for many different reasons. I connected with what this guy is going through. It's not that he achieves whatever he set out to achieve in his life. But he finds that it's possible to set goals for himself. That's what achievement is all about - you set a short-term goal, you achieve it and then you set yourself another short-term goal and so on. I also connected with the phase this character was passing through, of not knowing what he wanted to do, of general aimlessness, how this could be a problem and also how this is not something within your control."

Suddenly we're coming to the heart of the matter - aimlessness. "It's like this," Akhtar explains. "You start doing something and then it snowballs and one thing leads to another and you find what you want to do. When people thought I was doing nothing, that's when it was all building up in me. The major part of my experience came from merely watching films of all kinds - Chinese, Japanese, Italian, etc. That was a self-education process."

If DCH had the 'feel good' leitmotif running through its making, subsequent release, Lakshya, though shot in complete secrecy in inaccessible Ladakh, became the sitting target for rumour mongers. "You're telling me!" He clutches his head in mock horror. "Lakshya was plagued by controversy from day one - Mr Bachchan stormed off the sets, Hrithik and I fought, Ritesh (Sidhwani) and I came to blows…. Tell me what's not been said!" He elaborates. "For Lakshya, Ritesh and I had made a conscious decision. As the producers of a film it's our call to decide when and how we want information about our film to be released. People can speculate as much as they want but I didn't want them to know the story or see Hrithik's look one and a half years in advance. So, when people called up wanting to know what was going on, the reply would inevitably be, 'We've been told not to speak about it'. This obviously created some kind of ill will, as people felt they were being locked out."

The Bachchan controversy added fuel to the fire. Akhtar is fed up of the topic but answers gamely. "On the sets, I am the director and he is the actor. Of course, I respect him but, at the end of the day, it's my prerogative that he delivers what is my vision of the scene…of the film…. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, my telling him what was right and wrong on the sets got blown out of proportion. I didn't even know about it till I returned from Ladakh and everyone asked me, 'What happened to Mr Bachchan?' I got really worried that something had happened to him. And then I was told, 'We heard you insulted him'. To top it all, a Mumbai-based daily came up with this headline 'Farhan insults Big B'; not even 'Did Farhan insult Big B?'" He's laughing now. "It became really problematic because everywhere I went that was the only question I was asked."

Truth be told, they had a ball in Ladakh. "Mr Bachchan had this room overlooking the main courtyard of the hotel. He'd brought along a boom box with some really kick-ass music. He'd place the speakers near the windows and play it for the crew. It was great fun."

Karan Shergill of Lakshya took 24 years and 18,000 feet to find himself…Akhtar has found his calling on terra firma itself. "I've realised which path I need to set out on. I'm walking down this path and it's fascinating just being part of this important medium. It's wonderful to be accepted as a filmmaker, but it's also very important not to lose your identity or your voice. It's very important to constantly achieve something new. I just hope I don't stop growing. My drive is to stay ahead of myself." Wise and wonderful words. That too from a guy who once thought that the only goal in life was not to have any goals.