How to write desi blockbusters?

The night before I met screenwriter V Vijayendra Prasad 82 at the International Film Festival of India IFFI Goa hersquod been asked by the emcee at the festivalrsquos opening ceremony to motivate the young by naming his lifersquos inspiration He said ldquoMahatma Gandhirdquomdashfishing out a currency note from his wallet ldquoI mean the Gandhi hererdquoAt the screenwriting masterclass I host for Prasad the following day at IFFI everyone in the hall seems to have heard his Gandhiji joke Theyrsquore also there for a similar reasonmdashto learn how to script moneyspinning movies from the writer whorsquos delivered them backtobackFrom S S Rajamoulirsquos Baahubali 2015 and its sequel 2017mdashbiggest hits by far in Indian cinema historymdashto RRR 2022 thatrsquos floored cult film buffs in mainstream America in ways that no Indian movie hasPrasad also wrote Bajrangi Bhaijaan 2015 biggest draw in Bollywood upon releasemdashbesides about 25 commercial successes in Telugu Including the superb fly vs man idea behind Eega 2012 that made Rajamouli a sensation of sorts outside AndhraTelangana Prasad is Rajamoulirsquos fatherThe effort behind scripting a small or big budget imagination he says is the samemdashof course go for the spectacle the money is more Which is easier said than done yes But while Prasad is a selftaught screenwriter he shares what works for himmdashpatiently drawing a graph on a whiteboard with emotional highs and lows on the Xaxis and the 25 hoursrsquo timeline on the YStills from Baahubali Bajrangi Bhaijaan and RRR PicsTwitterForemost he argues unlike roti kapda makaan movies are not a necessity So you have to firstly generate hunger for it ldquoYou do this with the story casting stars as per their imagehelliprdquo Once the audience is primed up enough they show up in theatres perched on the shoulders of the filmmaker to figure out what hersquos gonna show nowItrsquos imperative that within five minutes the film delivers its first ldquoclapping pointrdquo an emotional payoffmdashsay an atom bomb drops in Bombay The audience satisfied jumps off the shoulder willing to hold the filmmakerrsquos hand as he takes them through Clapping Point A to B to ChellipThere are equal stretches of lows in between the peaksmdashfor the highs will lose all meaning otherwise Scenes seamlessly connected to each othermdashalong the pendulum swinging between clapping pointsmdashis the glue for this storyFrom Simhadri 2003 Amazon Prime VideomdashPrasadrsquos first collaboration with Rajamoulimdashdown to Magadheera 2009 Hotstarmdashthat made Rajamouli Sir the superstardirectormdashyou can watch Prasadrsquos XY graph taking movieshapeSounds like a formulatemplate alright Only that within this structure Prasad has had diverse inspirations based on the brief Which in Baahubalirsquos case was a period film with Prabhas and a few female actorsAlso Rajamouli wanted to attempt Baahubali as netpractice for his eventual dream the Mahabharat Just the budgets kept shooting up during productionThe script began in Prasadrsquos mind with soldier Kattappa telling a Persian trader a long story of a great swordsman in battlemdashhis body eventually covered in blood only that they were his slain rivalsrsquoTrader asks to meet this Baahubali strongman Kattappa tells him about how the bravest can get stabbed in the back The other scene Prasad imagined was of a woman protecting an infant from a stormsea while wading through itPrasad thinks in scenesvisuals They usually drop into his head during walks fresh in the morning He considers SalimJaved his North Star in a sense And Indian mythology the ultimate source to mine from Sholay 1975 and Mayabazar 1957 in Telugu are his moviebiblesGiven a spate of bigbudget Bollywood flops post the pandemic there was an allegation that Hindi cinema way too westernised had given up on its roots only to alienate its core audiences with South Indian films taking over Prasad thinks thatrsquos rubbish ldquoGrass looks greenerhellip You hear of twothree Telugu superhits You donrsquot hear of 90 per cent Telugu films that floppedrdquoBetween Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar Bollywoodrsquos greatest starwriters from the rsquo70s fans have often argued over who did the actual lsquowritingrsquo Fact is neither did They hired an assistant to put words on paper As with Prasad He gets to this lsquoscripting stagersquo once the story is greenlit by a star Until then itrsquos all in his headAamir Khan rejected one such story by Prasad after hearing his lsquonarrationrsquo While he was moved by it Rajamouli too turned down the same story since he was engrossed in the making of Baahubali then This is how through director Kabir Khan Prasad got Salman Khan to hear it and Bajrangi Bhaijaan happenedPrasad was born in 194041 He wouldrsquove been 75 then Indeed his biggest global blockbusters have happened past his mid70s He only got into screenwriting in his late 40smdashhaving failed in multiple businesses from farming to fertiliser What drew him to this trade ldquoHungerrdquo He means that literally Also hersquos certain that his best scriptsworks are ahead of himIn a world of instant gyangivers wersquore usually obsessed with teaching lessons to the youngmdashrdquoto follow Gandhirdquo as Prasad joked Ones Prasad must inspire are actually the old Just that he hates giving advice ldquoI love taking advice insteadmdashwould rather be a sponge than a rock absorbing nothing under the riverrdquoMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper