Bareilly Ki Diary

A story is a bridge. It starts, unseen, from a place where it touches only you, where it’s tangible for you and engages you…and then crosses over to a public square, and helps you across too. Nil Battey Sannata was that bridge for me. It was a small film but had a huge heart, and helped me cross over as a story-teller. And now people actually expect different kinds of cinema—something real about characters, the ingredients of their life, something to associate with. If it resonates with them, it spurs on the story-teller. After NBS, I naturally wanted to challenge myself with different kinds of stories. Hence Bareilly Ki Barfi, which is more in the “fun, quirky, slice-of-life” territory. Yet there are threads that join them. NBS had multiple themes, but ultimately it was about a mother-daughter relationship. That does not change with Bareilly: the way I try to look at...