Umesh Shukla, 46, is a family man, who is emotional and sensitive with a great sense of humour. He may not be a party person, but he has the ability to take people within and outside his family along with him. He has an extremely rational mind but is flexible to accepting the beliefs of others, even though they are not in line with his. He is honest, positive, easily trusts people and takes good care of his parents. He may not be superstitious and do puja, but there is never a single day when he has left his house without touching the feet of his parents to take their blessings. Over an hour-long conversation, ahead of his upcoming family entertainer All Is Well, he talks to Bombay Times about his life as a pujari's son, his embarrassing question for Sathya Sai Baba and why there's no problem cutting nails post sunset. Excerpts:

When did you first realise that you wanted to become a filmmaker?
I come from a conservative Brahmin Gujarati family from Bhuleshwar. We were surrounded by 45 temples in just a two kilometre area. We lived in a chawl- styled building and in my building itself, there were two temples. So I used to get up with the sounds of aarti and also sleep with the sounds of the same aarti. Our chawl, like other chawls, had a common toilet for the building. We had a joint family, where nine of us including my parents, two siblings, my grandparents, my chacha, chachi and their kid lived together in a one room chawl. There was a big room in which we had demarcated space for a kitchen. Our family profession was puja paath, so I too like my father was taught all kinds of pujas that I could perform in Sanskrit. I went to a Gujarati medium school and being a pandit's son, I would carry two bags with me, one being my school bag and the other an empty bag to bring back anaaj. In the recess time, the custom was to go to someone's house and bring anaaj (aloo, ghee etc) back for our house. That anaaj was used to cook food at our home. I was just seven when once, while I was passing the phool gali close to our house, I found a reel lying there on the floor. I picked it up, came back to my chawl and announced to all the kids that I would show them a film if they gave me 25 paise each. It was difficult for so many of us in our family to sleep in one room, so we had this loft within the room, where you could climb up with a ladder and one family slept on the top bed and one at the bottom. The top bed was such that you could not stand, you could only sleep on it as it did not have enough height.


For me, not cheating people and working honestly is my puja: Umesh Shukla

So anyways, every kid asked their parents for the 25 paise, I took `200 from my father to buy a low quality projector with which I could show that reel, I put up a sort of screen using the dhoti of my grandfather on the loft and showed my friends the reel as I had promised. I had found that reel just outside the chawl, where I had been told at some point Sanjeev Kumar lived, so somehow in my head the reel would be a Sanjeev Kumar film and that is what I had told my friends. But when I got the projector and showed the film to my friends, it turned out to be some shaadi footage of some random person. Irrespective, since I managed to show a film as promised, that too in our chawl, all the kids started clapping and that triggered something in me.

Your film OMG-Oh My God became a big hit. How did that happen?
I was fond of reading and writing and had even read James Hadley Chase in Gujarati. I told my grandmother that I wanted to write a thriller story as a novel. Everybody used to laugh at me except her. I had acted for the first time in a Marathi play in school in Class X and then joined Mithibai College. Our principal at Mithibai gave a lot of importance to drama which is why you will find so many students from there who came into films, be it Paresh Rawal, Aamir Khan, Ajay Devgn, Deepak Tijori, Vipul Shah, Ashutosh Gowariker, Neeraj Vora and so many more. I started a lot of theatre there, which is when in one of the plays Paresh bhai (Paresh Rawal) saw me and offered me to manage the backstage of his plays. I then started assisting him on one of his plays to acting in one of his plays to then co-acting with him to finally directing him in both the play and filmOMG-Oh My God.I had assisted Neeraj Vora on writing many films before I started writing for films myself and then directed my first filmDhoondte Reh Jaogethat did not do well. I was replaced in two films as a director after that, which is when I directed the playOh My Godwith Paresh bhai. Many filmmakers would come and see the play and ask us for the rights, which is when we decided to make it into a film and were looking for a star to play the role of Krishna. Akshay Kumar saw the play and not just decided to play Krishna but also produce it.