by Subhash K Jha

Screenwriter Sujit Sen, who died unsung in 2005, is the subject of a new biopic "Staying Alive" by actor-director Anant Mahadevan.

"It's the story of a journalist, played by me, who has had three heart attacks and is back in hospital where he encounters a gangster, played by Sourabh Shukla, in the next bed. These are incidents that actually happened in Sujit's life," Anant told IANS.

"It's sad that he's gone before 'Staying Alive' could be released. As a dear friend, I'd have liked to have it released before his death... Sujit Sen was like a father figure, brilliant but broken by the blitzkrieg of callousness in Bollywood."

Apparently, the man who wrote Mahesh Bhatt's best films, including "Arth" and "Saraansh", never quite survived the break with the filmmaker.

Anant shrugs off the Bhatt factor in the late screenwriter's life. "I came close to him after his Bhatt phase. He wrote all my films in the last seven-eight years, including my directorial debut 'Dil Vil Pyar Vyar' and my unreleased 'Aksar'.

"He was a chartered accountant in Kolkata and came to Mumbai during the Naxalite movement in West Bengal. He eventually formed a creative coterie of screenwriters with Javed Siddiqui, Aakash Khurana and Robin Bhatt. Sujit Sen always wrote in English. He'd joke he was a Bengali who wrote in English for Hindi cinema.

"It was very difficult to adapt his lucid lines. The Hindi translations always appeared weak in comparison. He was very well read and had written several Bengali novels. The way he wrote his screenplays, they were almost like a book.

"He always spoke about the dirty dawn, the way a patient feels when he wakes up in hospital. He had lost hope at one time. He felt when I came into his life he started writing again. I don't know whether I motivated him. I just believed in him again when he was abandoned by his friends. He often said he wouldn't work just for money."

Anant talks fondly of another almost forgotten stalwart. "Hrishikesh Mukherjee once called me out of the blue and invited me to assist him. I ran to his home with Sujit Sen. Hrishida wanted to adapt a short story 'The Dressing Room', written by music composer Salil Chowdhary.

"Suddenly Hrishida came out of his bedroom into the living room. Sujit wanted to write a screenplay about a man who was motivated to make that walk all over again. This was the way he thought. He captured real-life feelings on paper.

"As a tribute to him, I intend to direct four or five of his scripts. Sujit Sen was very touched by my little tribute to him in 'Staying Alive'. Let me tell you, Sujit wasn't an easy character to play. I had to take pointers from him, for example, what happens when one gets a heart attack. No one clutches the heart, as shown in films. The feeling is as though someone is trying to strangle you. I brought in such details without making the film dull or pedantic."

Sighs Anant, "When Mukesh died Raj Kapoor said he lost voice. With Sujit Sen's demise, I've lost my pen. He was a father figure. His creativity and optimism always served as an antidote to the excesses of Bollywood. He was very encouraging.

"When the producers of my film 'Dil Maange More' stepped in to bring another writer, Sujit didn't mind at all. We used to meet at least three times a week. Frankly, there're no writers of his stature. He was arguably the best screenwriter we had. His generation of writers brought so much substance and values to writing. Today, technique has taken over screenwriting. There's such a drought of writers, I don't know where to look."

Anant sounds disheartened to the core. "Do people even know the kind of writing Sujit Sen did? In Broadway and Hollywood. the death of a writer is front page news. He changed my life and way of thinking. Hopefully my film 'Staying Alive' will keep his memory alive. This film is a homage to Sujit Sen."