Anuraadha Tewari talks about her new project Dil Dosti Dilemma, and calls it coming of age-story

Writer-director Anuraadha Tewari, who is out with her brand new show Dil Dosti Dilemma, says that people would be able to relate to her show. She adds that the story is about youngsters and their problems.

“It’s a sweet little coming-of-age story based in Bangalore, adapted from a book by Andaleeb Wajid. While it is essentially a teen drama with its usual ups and downs, the show is really about class differences and coming back to your roots. The set-up just happens to be a Muslim one. In that it cuts across generations as well as cultures as a story to what I believe can be a pan-Indian show,” she says.

She says that she derived inspiration from her surroundings. “I have always been great friends with younger people. Most of my friends are at least 10 years younger. I also make sure I spend time with the children of my friends to know what they are thinking, and where the world is headed next when shaped by them. In general, I also hire youngsters as part of my writers’ rooms and a lot of interns are straight out of college. So, it’s really easy for me to connect with Gen Z. In fact, I feel I have a lot more in common with them in terms of thoughts and goals than people older or even the millennials! So yes, writing their characters was not that tough. It was an extension of what I know and what I see. In essence, I find them a very exciting mix of being tech-savvy and yet grounded in ancient values that they want to rediscover in their style. There is a renaissance happening right there!”

Talking about her transition from TV to OTT, she says, “It was gradual and it came with some resistance initially. You see, films have a certain freedom in a way because they have a 2. 5-hour run and they finish in one go. There is no carryover and the graph you have to follow is at one shot. When you switch to TV, you have to do that 5 times a week, 4 times a month, eternally! The pacing is vastly different. For a lot of people that’s just something they can write on the fly with just drama points inserted here and there but being a bit of a structure nazi, I found it difficult to not follow a narrative structure in every episode and then a weekly one and then a monthly one. Not to mention the quarterly and then yearly ones. But naturally, that became exhausting! So I decided to simply set up TV Shows.”

She adds, “I just did the whole Show Bible and the first 20 episodes to set the tone and used to hand it over. That kept me sane and interested in the medium. From TV to OTT was a smoother journey because in many ways it was an upgrade. TV gives us a lot of discipline as well as mental rigour. You know you are capable of delivering something sensible in just a couple of hours every single day! So when the OTT Platforms gave us the requisite 3-6 months to research and create bibles and then another year ( sometimes two) to write the Show, it almost felt too good to be true! In OTT writing, I find myself expressed best as it has the right length to narrate a Story and the need for Structure to hold it through.”

Ask her what inspires her to make stories such as this one, and she says, “Well I don’t look at it as about ‘Youngsters’ or ‘Oldies’. Most writers don’t. I think we do two kinds of work. One which you create and birth, and the other is what you are hired for and give shape to as a professional writer. So left to myself, I like to create what is bothering me about the world. A comment that I may want to make through a Story. A Healing message or an experience that I may want to share. Now very often all of this can be said in a newer way through a Youngster. Hence the interest. As far as work for hire is concerned, there is a whole genre by itself called YA or Young Adult which is in vogue right now. I’m happy I fit into that seamlessly since that is pretty much what I did during my TV writing phase as well. So I guess the ‘Youngsters’ will keep changing but my lens of looking at their Stories will depend on what I want to say at that point.”