In the mid-nineties, he started
penning stories out of financial need. Now, within weeks of each other, two of
his films have made more than $100 million.
K V Vijayendra Prasad is the
72-year-old scriptwriter of Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Baahubali—two of the biggest
blockbusters ever made in India. He is a
grandfather. Prasad has a son and a daughter—and three grandchildren.
Prasad—who started his career in
Tollywood, the Telugu film industry—is from Kovvur, in Andhra Pradesh, but
spent most of his life working as a farmer in Karnataka. However, he wasn’t
able to make enough money to look after his family. In the mid-eighties, he
moved to Chennai to try his luck in regional films. “That’s how I entered
films,” Prasad said. “It was out of a struggle for existence. I didn’t have any
livelihood then.”
After a decade of odd jobs and an
unsuccessful attempt at directing a film, Prasad took to writing in 1994.
Besides these two back-to-back successes this year, he has contributed to
Indian cinema with more than 15 hits.
“That’s because I have a flair
for telling lies. A story is nothing but a series of lies. And I can lie very
beautifully,” he said. And ladies and gentlemen our lives are our stories.
So what’s the lesson I learnt
reading this story and many like his including that of JK Rowling – which he
failed and then succeeded. He drifted, and then he sailed. He failed and then
he succeeded, and he did it all on his own.
Was it by design or destiny or was his destiny a design of a greater power. It’s a question that has
haunted me and must haunt u too.
My story is different from yours, as is
everyone’s from everyone else’s – each
of us has a unique flavor, and the emotions that go through me as I narrate it
will be different from the emotions that
go through you as u hear it! I want to touch upon a few important things that
have led me to some philosophical conclusions, which Ill come to in the end.
As Julie Andrews said, Let me start at the
very beginning a very good place to start. Let me start with life itself.
I was born second, and as I
realized later, I was the last of the Fernandes family. Not the second last as
they say in colloquial English. I didn’t know it then, obviously, but was told
later, but was born in Southwell hospital Ahmadi, an American run hospital in
Kuwait and when the news was conveyed by a nurse to my father, his reaction
was, and I know this will cheer all the girls here, “Oh hell, another
boy”. He’ed always wanted a girl, and I
landed up not being his favorite child! That was my first tryst with destiny!
As I grew up, I was a paradox –
not brilliant, but reasonably studious, personable but not overly handsome, not
hardworking but not unduly lazy, not athletic, plump, but enjoyed playing both
indoor and outdoor games and played them reasonably. I had flair for reading
novels and writing poetry, and while not unsociable, was not an extrovert. . I
always had my superego competing with my ego,
and my unlimited inhibitions fighting with my limited talent
With such a paradoxical
personality, my school life, as u can
imagine was uneventful. It’s when I reached those interesting teenage years
that sparks began to fly… My voice changed and so did I. I sported a beard,
which made me look older to match my voice, played truant from class, formed a group of
friends with similar thought processes and worked on the principle of enjoy with responsibility, with a twist –
Responsibility was as we defined it not our parents and generally enjoyed
life. Money was not hard to come by, as
my friends played in a band, while I emceed functions professionally. It was as
easily spent on variety entertainment, but all in good taste.
It is with these friends of mine
that I had my second and third tryst and possibly the gravest ones with
destiny.
I live midway down a lane that
slopes steeply to end in a wall that acts as a barrier to a drain that runs
about 8 to 10 feet below. Its now been encroached and covered. I used to travel by cycle in those days and
one occasion my cycle had a puncture and I had to leave it at home. A friend,
rather on the plump side offered to drop me home on his cycle and I sat and on the bar. As we neared my place, the
brakes failed and like Humpty Dumpty and his side kick we down the lane gathering speed and
screaming obscenities that I cant repeat, due to TM rules. We hit the wall, at
pretty good speed and went over landing on our backs with miraculously nary an
injury except for a minor fracture of my left hand. He was unhurt but the cycle
was a wreck. A second tryst with destiny.
Once I had learned to cycle, the
world was my oyster. I would cycle all over town, via the back roads up the
hills and down the valleys and then egged on by my friends and my own laziness,
I would hold the hand of a friend riding the bike – he was the only friend in
my group who had bike then, the age old precious yezdi, and would
circumnavigate the town, often at speeds exceeding 50 kms an hour. One fine day a pot hole almost broke me I
left his and jammed both the brakes. The cycle stopped in its tracks but I
didn’t – I tasted the atmospheric pressure and the quality of the asphalt all
in one fell swoop. Luckily for me I didn’t break any bones. A third tryst with
destiny.
Still on the set of the movie,
where bikes were a star. I was sitting pillion with another friend and he was
driving. It was a java then. I was relaxed, reading the headlines on the
newspaper. We were on the way to a friends place. Near the tandoor bar and
restaurant, at Shadi gudda, oh and by
the way we had not stopped there on the way from my place. My friend, the
rider, was a vigilant rider, rather fast, but always vigilant, he saw an
electric cable (not charged fortunately) angled across the road loosely tied
opposite. He ducked. I was still reading the headlines when it glided across my
neck across my chin and we were through. Suddenly my neck was bleeding and
burning, but I could swallow, and breathe – both my pipes were intact. We
carried on to my friends place and found the cut was not very deep, except at
one place and I was very very lucky. It healed in due course. A fourth tryst
with destiny.
Which brings me to my hypothesis
– I am designed by my destiny, programmed accordingly and let loose in the
world. I don’t and cannot design my
destiny. Even self made men or women,
successful men or women, outstanding toastmasters are all designed by their
destinies. They act and pursue that destiny accordingly – Take JK Rowling and
Stephen Hawking for instance or our very own ND Modi.
The other question that needs to
be answered then is who does this architecture… Well the answer to that question,
might be the subject of a future blog, but until then…
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