Inside an all-women writers’ room: in conversation with director Sudhanshu Saria

Sudhanshu Saria talks to The Hindu Weekend on Masoom, building Indian female characters and season three of Delhi Crime

The first week of April was an interesting one for filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria. It began with him bagging the National Award for Best Director in the Non-Feature Film category for his short film Knock Knock Knock (2020). Mid-week, he tested positive for Covid-19, and towards the end of the week, there was a kerfuffle over a poster design (the promotional poster for Alt Balaji’s show, His Storyy, bore an uncanny resemblance to that of Saria’s début film, Loev). Saria laughs when this chronology is pointed out to him. “I feel like it was just another step in my journey. I’m just walking my own path, and all of these moments in life teach you a little bit about who you are,” he says. Pre-pandemic, the 37-year-old filmmaker identified as a ‘sociable workaholic’ who enjoyed collaborating with others and writing at buzzing cafés. “I used my work as a defence mechanism. I made myself busier until I could shut out all the noise. Luckily for me, I live in a society that rewards this sort of delusion. We’re not a society that prioritises or rewards you for being in touch with yourself, having clarity of thought.” It’s no surprise then that Saria’s immediate reaction to the lockdown was to immerse himself in work. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Let me do a little more work, a bit more work’. But at some point, he realised that he was spending his weekends only looking forward to Mondays. That’s when he decided that he must reorient his life. “It’s still early days because I’m going after longer lasting change, so it’s okay if it’s incremental and slow.”