Ram Gopal Var­ma is a great Bol­ly­wood sto­ry­teller. I am a great fan of him. But my admi­ra­tion towards him has least to do with his screen­play. I hard­ly watched his films.

I admire him because he is a bru­tal­ly hon­est and has a great atti­tude. He looks at world in a total­ly dif­fer­ent way that is incon­ve­nient for most peo­ple who wish and live in fan­ta­sy. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he is hat­ed by many for sound­ing arro­gant by speak­ing his heart pub­licly in media, twit­ter and ear­li­er, on his unfor­tu­nate­ly died blog, RGVZoomin.com.

He wrote a few awe­some posts and used to write a great col­umn called “Reac­tions to reac­tions” in which he used to respond to absurd crit­i­cism with amus­ing one lin­ers (or two in few cas­es). I could­n’t explain more how much enlight­ened I became by read­ing his blog.

How­ev­er his blog has died for some rea­son tak­ing offline, some invalu­able insights along with it. But thank­ful­ly I saved his post on Rework which I try to read every now and then to keep myself moti­vat­ed and keep my com­mon­sense intact. Until now I saved this post offline but today I felt like repro­duc­ing so that it will ben­e­fit any­one who gets to read it. Hope­ful­ly he will be okay and feels good if ever this post is priv­i­leged enough to come to his atten­tion.

Thank­ful­ly he still tweets as @rgvzoomin on Twit­ter. Go fol­low him.

Rework

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Many com­ment­ed on whether I would speak or behave like this if I was not suc­cess­ful. The word suc­cess itself is high­ly rel­a­tive. Peo­ple con­stant­ly live in either a fear of los­ing or in a hope of gain­ing. There’s no such thing as an absolute state of suc­cess. I have always been suc­cess­ful and that’s noth­ing to do with my film career. Suc­cess is some­thing I define as to be able to get up in the morn­ing and do what you want to do till you sleep. That does not mean that you should want to fly or rule empires. It could be any­thing which your capa­bil­i­ty per­mits and your intel­li­gence submits.Yes, you have your fam­i­ly, rela­tion­ships, oblig­a­tions etc. But if you want to take care of them and stand by them, you are doing what you want to do. In real­i­ty most peo­ple act and do things out of com­pul­sion by oth­ers or with­in them­selves rather than real­ly want­i­ng to do so.

I nev­er claimed that I became suc­cess­ful because of this atti­tude of mine. All I had said was that I had the courage to bear the con­se­quences of the deci­sions I took. Many of my deci­sions went wrong, in fact most of them. But what can­not be tak­en away from me is the plea­sure moments I expe­ri­enced in that process. By the time the result of a cer­tain deci­sion came about I was already into the plea­sure of moments of oth­er deci­sions and this has been the cir­cle all my life.

If you are on a dry beach and you want to reach a beau­ti­ful look­ing island in the dis­tance, you can make a deci­sion to swim across or go in a boat on maybe take a plane or just fan­ta­size that you are there on that island or psy­che your­self that you are bet­ter off on the dry beach itself. But what most peo­ple will do is to con­stant­ly wor­ry about whether there might be sharks in the sea or the boat might sink or the plane tick­et is too expen­sive or what if there is a sud­den storm, and there­by remain bit­ter, frus­trat­ed and fear­ful all their lives.

I weigh the con­se­quences and think of the logis­tics and plunge in even if I don’t know swim­ming. I will either learn to swim or sink in the process but what I will not do at any cost is to stay put. After 2 big flops Antham and Govin­da Govin­da I packed my bags to Mum­bai and made Rangeela. But Rangeela could have turned into a flop too. When I made so many flops how would I real­ly know how to make a hit? Flops and hits hap­pen by them­selves where­as the only thing I can real­ly make hap­pen is to make a deci­sion to make a film. For instance after all the effort and courage if I man­age to reach that beau­ti­ful island, as soon as I step on it I could be killed by a lion there whose exis­tence I don’t even know about. Not once am I say­ing that I know every­thing about what will hap­pen. I just want to do things that I want to hap­pen.

Once while we were trav­el­ling in a car, a guy very con­cerned­ly gave me a the­o­ry that 50 years from now we are going to have water wars in the world where every­one will die. I told him that at the next turn on the road we might be hit by a truck and die, and frankly I am not con­cerned about what hap­pens to the world one sec­ond after I die. But if you tru­ly wor­ry about the water wars instead of sit­ting here and wor­ry­ing why don’t you go and do some sci­en­tif­ic research to solve the water prob­lem. If you don’t know sci­ence then at least work as a tea boy to the sci­en­tist and con­tribute. But I know you would not do that as then you won’t have time to do your umpteen oth­er activ­i­ties like going to the dis­cotheque, cin­e­ma and indulge in bitch­ing ses­sions. And on the oth­er hand if you tru­ly con­stant­ly wor­ry about the world being fin­ished in 50 years, what if a smart sci­en­tist comes up with a solu­tion in the 49th year and then you would be the biggest fool for wast­ing 49 years of your life wor­ry­ing off.

Most peo­ple can’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wor­ry­ing and think­ing, Wor­ry­ing is neg­a­tive ener­gy and makes your mind run in cir­cles breed­ing depres­sion and frus­tra­tion where­as think­ing makes you reach a deci­sion and the deci­sion you reach will result in work and if the work does not result in what you want­ed from it, all you have to do is Re-work.

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