This is perhaps the post I should have written first, before any of my Dear Maya posts.  This is the post about raising funds. About the money.  It's the single most important ingredient in deciding the shape of your film and something we should be talking a lot more about.

After an insane number of narrations, it was clear to me that I needed to raise funding outside the studio system if there was ever going to be a chance of my making this film. Of course, how does one raise funding? I didn’t have the slightest clue then and am only marginally better now. I started applying to a lot of the international film funds abroad but I soon discovered that the process is very erratic because every fund has a different date for entry and submissions and it was impossible to depend on any of these to happen.

Also individually these funds did not amount to much. So it would really be miraculous to get a whole bunch of these to come together to even get close to the budget that I needed. The other option was to ask high net worth individuals to contribute money, invest in making movies. This is not quite as insane as it sounds because there are quite a few private individuals interested in taking a risky investment on a film or two.

I spent a few months reaching out to almost everyone I could possibly think of. As expected a lot of people show initial interest but 80 percent of them are just curious about the details and typically develop cold feet soon after.Ultimately the producers who put money into my film were connected to the work I had done with Imtiaz as an assistant director. My producer Sandeep Leyzell had been working as Imtiaz Ali’s line producer for years so we had worked before, though in completely different capacities. As fate would have it, we met at a photocopy machine shop and started talking. It turns out he was also very keen to turn individual producer. So the timing was perfect.

Sandeep was able to raise the money to get the film off the ground, sign Manisha and get the film rolling. We agreed on an initial budget, which then dropped by 25 percent because one of our financiers fell off the project. I don’t think I really cared at that point what my budget was, a fact I came soon to regret. After agreeing to the deal I remember feeling like I was walking on air for a while; all that really registered was I was finally going to make my film.

It’s quite something to put up your first film this way as a first time director, with a first time producer and so many other people making their first film together. The pressure to perform at a high level was enormous. Everyone was eager to please, the rewards being so potentially enormous and the punishment for failure so sudden and final. In the subsequent meetings we got the crew together- almost everybody in the crew were people I had worked before with, on Imtiaz’s films. I was truly grateful for their willingness to come on board and their belief in my work and me. Both Sandeep and I were of the opinion that we would turnover the film very fast.

So after Manisha Koirala came onboard, I had the most frantic, madcap and crazy recruiting drive for the rest of the crew. One of my first calls was to Sayak Bhattacharya, who had been the first assistant cameraman for Anil Mehta on Rock star. I remember speaking to him very excitedly, telling him how big a break this was going to be for our careers!

I then called Aarti Bajaj, the most incredible editor there is in the film industry, and someone I’m lucky enough to call a mentor. She did big fancy movies and so I remember praying that the script I sent her would move her enough for her to want to be a part of it. It did!

My next call was to Shohini Dutta, the outstanding choreographer who led Ashley Lobo’s Danceworx company in Delhi. She doubled up as so many things on this film, that calling her a choreographer is really limiting her contribution. Generally, I filled up the crew with as many loyalists or ‘my people’ as I possibly could- people I knew who would always have my back no matter what.

I also met a few new people like Tushar Seth, who came on initially as second ad, before becoming the first AD during the second schedule and more importantly a life long friend. He never said he would do something and then didn’t do it. I could depend on him always to have the films best interests at heart. He truly had my back in the making of this film and I’m so grateful for him.

In the subsequent weeks of prep, research, recce leading up to shoot- I gained a lot of weight because I was stress eating all the time. Maggi and coca cola became my ridiculous stable diet. I remember working seventeen hours a day, seven days a week, surrounded by friends who went above and beyond to do everything they possibly could to make the vision come alive. There was a lot of stress on shoot; austerity was running high as money was running low…  The first schedule of the film was shot with limited pressure of funding, but as the second schedule started the pressure mounted.  I remember there was a three month delay between the first and  the second schedule where it felt like we would never finish the film. The funding got delayed.  Morale had plummeted. Inexperience reared it's ugly head.

In those moments I knew two things to be absolutely true: one, things were not going well. Two, no matter what, I would have to hold the project together.

I was wrong on the second front. I will never forget the kindness of my crew members, Aarti Bajaj in particular who edited the film out of her home because we no longer had an office space. I also leaned on her emotionally, and she was an incredible friend to me who went above and beyond. Then of course, there was Dileep Subramanian and Manik Batra who managed the sound post for me, accommodating my schedules as the only remaining crew on Dear Maya! In those days I found myself operating at a level I never knew existed. An independent film hustle is quite something else and in retrospect the odds are always, always against you.  It's not just about funding the film, as I learnt the hard way. Funds also decide how well your film will be marketed; how many shows you will get, what shows you will get, who will review your film etc (ridiculous, but true). Having said all that, would I make a film independently again? Maybe. But after my first film, I knew that I had to get a studio onboard for the next.