After casting Manisha, casting the two girls for the parts of the naughty fifteen-year-old school girls in Shimla was where the conventional casting process and auditioning really began. Let me step back for a minute to some of the blog pieces I wrote in the ‘finding your way’ section. Knowing what kind of director you are plays out in nearly every decision you take, right from the choice of producer to the casting etc..By this time it was evident that I was making a small budget, independent film, which would always have to be made in a controlled way. It’s important here to note that I could have made it another way too.

When I had been pitching the script, one of the producers of the script had told me that the reason the script is not working is because the ‘ages’ of the girls are all wrong. If the girls were twenty-years-old then they could cast someone like Sonam Kapoor or Aalia Bhatt and thereby make the script more commercially viable. But what twenty-year-old girl would write love letters to their neighbours? It seemed illogical to me and so I refused to do that. These decisions come down to what is more important to you- do you want to be true to the story or is the final marketing of the product the more important thing? There is no wrong answer it is just a function of what is more important to you as a storyteller.

So by choosing an indie film, with a small budget, I had already committed to having two new girls in the film. Both were found over the next two-three months in completely different ways. Around 2-3 days into casting I was scouting for a young, innocent, studious girl to play Anna, I saw this video of this very charming MTV VJ. She was glorious, fun, cute, charming and did not look more than fifteen. I was instantly drawn to her and found her name to be Madiha Imam. My casting director came back to me and told me- she’s an MTV VJ from Pakistan. I was shocked!!! Did not see that coming. However, since I had got her completely locked in my mind we got on a zoom call, I broadly took her through the story and she totally loved it.

I had to convince my producers about hiring a girl from Pakistan and they were gracious enough to be convinced. They also saw what I saw in Madiha, and after a flurry of communications across two countries; Madiha came to India for a trip, sat with me, read the script, met the producers and the deal was done. Finding Ira, the naughty, outgoing one proved to be much more challenging. We went through hundreds of girls, several of whom I continue to bump into and remind me we met during auditions. But at that time I was really out of my mind. There were several cute girls, but most of them had a very small range of acting abilities and I wanted a performer for the part.

In those days I lived in Mukesh Chhabra’s office. He really couldn’t believe how much time he spent there! I remember him telling me behave like a director, go home!! But I did not know what I would possibly do at home. This is also where I met Mandar and Anuja, two members of Mukesh’s team but who became an extension of my film and a core part of my team irrespective of their official jobs. They went out of their way to get the absolute best cast for the film, going far above and beyond all that they had to do. Mandy joined me as an assistant director. Smalls film rarely happen without the love from a team who go above and beyond to make it special and Dear Maya is no exception.

Anyway so days turned into months and there was no Ira yet. By this time I think I had seen every girl in their early twenties who wanted to be an actor. We already had a scheduled date for shooting to begin, it was almost 6 weeks away and still no Ira. I was starting to feel really sick in my stomach that I would have to compromise and choose someone who did not quite fit.

And that’s when Anuja stepped in. She had some girls who she had auditioned several times for other parts and knew their potential beyond their pictures. She had called Shreya Chaudhry for the audition and when I saw her audition, I was blown away by it. Where had she been hiding all these months? Apparently I had seen some pictures early on, and had thought she didn’t fit. But when Shreya came onscreen, she was a natural! I couldn’t believe my luck. I shared her video audition with our cinematographer, Sayak Bhattacharya and our costume designer Dolly Ahluwalia. Both immediately confirmed what I saw.

I have to mention that not having a large budget liberates you to choose the actors, purely on performance alone. My core team like Sayak like Dollyji, like Anuja and Mandar… all of them kept me grounded during casting; they often bluntly told me when a girl was nothing more than her looks and I am grateful for those inputs. Both Shreya and Madiha were the best Ira and Anna I could possibly dream of. They were absolutely committed and since they were new, we spent over a month doing rehearsals together. We did every single scene in the film that they had together. We shot the entire film together on our phones as a rehearsal.

I cannot tell you how useful this exercise was, because when we got to set, there were so many unexpected challenges that I found myself being stretched in different directions. Shreya and Madiha kept me centered through this process, no matter what happened, they always came to my room before sleeping and we would focus on the next day’s scene.Often in the shooting of the scene, if I forgot some little nuance that I had mentioned while in rehearsals, Shreya and Madiha would remind me of what I had said. They would often give me my own words back to me about how a certain scene was meant to be played out. They each took charge of their own characters in a way that made my job so ridiculously easy and I am forever grateful for the sisterhood that they formed with me.

I am often asked what is the best thing about being on set. And it is definitely directing the actors. It almost feels like you are part of a secret society, which only a few people hold the magic codes for.  It feels like magic, to watch the instant transformation of a story play out in front of you. It feels like the purest form of pleasure I have ever known. All your senses are alive, alert to the magic. When people read about films they read stories about their favourite heroes, the great stories of collaboration and bonding, but what is often let out of the narrative is how hard it is to direct a good film, that the scenes are shot together meticulously over and over again in a series of takes that can be challenging and exhausting for the actors, directors and the crew. There were moments of real irony and wonder on set. It's hard to put in words, but I'm trying my best to expose some of the feelings I felt during the early years in the wilderness as a director