Director Anurag Kashyap had a tough time when he arrived in Mumbai in 1993. Sometimes he found accommodation at fellow director Imtiaz Ali’s college (St. Xavier’s, Mumbai), other times he had to sleep on the footpath. Speaking about his struggle on Mashable India’s The Bombay Journey, Anurag also talked about the ‘downside’ that happened after repeated career setbacks.
The director said when he arrived in Mumbai, he had no place to stay. He reached Prithvi Theatre and was given ‘special permission’ to keep his luggage there. He said in Hindi, “There was a garden in the middle of the Juhu circle back then a roundabout without any signals. We used to sleep here, but sometimes they’d kick us out. Then we’d go to the Versova link road, where there was a big footpath. But you had to pay `6 to sleep there.”
Talking about an extremely low phase in his life he said, “I locked myself in a room, and that’s when the drinking began... I was unceremoniously thrown out of projects I had written and was a part of...” Anurag, however, pushed back eventually and made acclaimed films like Gulal, Gangs of Wasseypur and Manmarziyaan.