BOLLYWOOD, SHE WROTE
uhi Chaturvedi says she reads dialogues out loud while writing them: “My staff sometimes comes to my room to check if everything is fine.” Shama Zaidi reads big novels non-linearly—“I decide how much I want to read and I read in stages”—and believes a web because she wanted to maintain its quirkiness. Screenplay structure is like a petticoat, says Shibani Bathija. Without it, “you will not get the form you need. The sari will fall right off”. The late Kalpana Lajmi says she finds depictions of romance in the films of Gulzar and Shyam Benegal dry, and that “there is more ras in a woman’s gaze”.
