How I got a chance to work with Satish Kaushik

A page from the personal diary of Aniruddh Dave Every TV actor dreams of doing movies and so I too wanted to try my hand in the Hindi film industry. I knew Satish Kaushik since I had done theatre in Delhi. I always wished to assist him. So when I met him one day in his office he was working on Teree Sang. Since I was keen to learn direction I asked him if I could assist him. Luckily, he knew that I was an actor too so he asked me to audition for a part. So I could both act and assist. I played the character of Mushtaq, one of Ruslaan Mumtaz’s friends. It was great working with him and Sheena Shahabadi. I realized how television and film are completely two different media. Technically, there is a lot of difference between the two so when I would see those high-end cameras I would be zapped. Satishji also shared his experience of the days when he was anchoring a show called Top Ten on small screen. There is one particular scene in the film where we are partying and I improved myself a lot in that particular scene and also did some improvisation in the script as well the other scene which is very close to me is called the Kebab scene; I have named that scene Kebab because we friends are sitting at an advocate’s place and behaving cheaply and were staring at the girls outside his office. It was fun as we were behaving like some cheap guys and we all enjoyed thoroughly. It was a unique experience shooting in Himachal Pradesh. I saw how people love us as celebrities and it was good to see them so influenced by Bollywood. There was a crowd who was enjoying the shoots. A few of them were drunk and they began reciting film lines, it was funny but we enjoyed it. I am lucky I got an opportunity to work with veterans like Neena Gupta, Rajat Kapoor and Anupam Kher. I got to know them closely. I’m thankful to Satishji for giving me this great opportunity and am looking forward to working with him again.