Debutante director, Ruchi Narain, is all set to wow the marquee with her multi-layered, fast-paced thriller, Kal: Yesterday And Tomorrow.

I am a bit of a ladaku,” states the young film-maker of Kal: Yesterday And Tomorrow, unabashedly. And that, you think, is a bit of an understatement when you see her getting behind the driver’s wheel in a gigantic Qualis and combating Mumbai’s traffic and potholes, effortlessly.In control, she always has been. Whether it was refusing to attend classes where lecturers dictated notes from textbooks, preferring to do her own research or taking on the head of her Mass Communication’s course by turning down placements in ad agencies and calling up, instead, film-makers’ offices to find her own training ground, or daring to dream of directing an independent feature film without even the sniff of a financier to back her – Ruchi Narain is a fighter all right, her motto being: ‘There’s always a way if you look for it.’

“Luck, too, has played a major role in my career,” she adds. The first call she made landed her a job as assistant to director, Sudhir Mishra, who was making Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin. “He let me sit in on the script sessions, colour correction, editing…the whole works. I learnt the complete process of film-making from this one film.” The novice was also extremely fortunate that Mishra’s wife, the award-winning editor, the late Renu Saluja, allowed her to watch her at work, teaching her the nuances of a craft that Film Institute graduates would have given their right arm for.

The plucky youngster then ventured into scriptwriting, doing ‘the dirty job of typing’ Saurabh Shukla’s script in order to figure out how writers think. Followed three years of intense struggle thereafter “when nothing seemed to be working out”. Finally, the clouds lifted with a TV serial, Talaash, which she wrote and part directed but which very few people saw. This taught her a very valuable lesson. “When I decided to make a feature film, I was very clear that it had to be seen by the audience.”

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