77. People Review : Nishadh Chandra : The man who is always by my side

Where do I start to describe this man? I don't exactly know from where so I will start from any random point. 

He is one of the few clean hearted people I have ever met in my life. I first met him in 2011 when he was doing music for a director I was assisting back then. We never had a close one to one chat back then. four years later, in the second half of 2015, he messaged me out-of-blue on facebook that he was making a music video and whether I was interested in directing it. It was a free gig and he was also doing it as a favor to one of his friend. I don’t normally do free shoots anymore in Mumbai but somehow I said yes because frankly, I wanted to meet him. He has always been extra nice to me and had once helped me in the background music of one of my short films.

We met and we gelled instantly. To know about his background, he is the son of Legendary singer Poornima, who started her career with R.D. Burman. His mother was a big name during 90s bollywood era and she sang songs like “sona kitna sona hai”, “barsaat main jab aayega sawan ka mahina” and many more. His father was a big shot of music industry once but has retired lately and he was one of those key persons who helped grow Tips company to where it is today. But the good thing about him is that you will never get to know about him and his family legacy until you poke him to tell you about it. He never boasts or brag. He is really down to earth and his whole family is like that. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable at his house, only because they really try to make it too comfortable for me. The doors of his house are always open for me and he has been there in every high and low in my life in last two years. we may not talk often, but when we do, it never feels like we are talking after a long time. Interesting Fact: during our phone conversations, both of us refer to each other as "Babuji" and no one knows who started it first. 

Nishad is never jealous of anyone and he is never competing with anyone. He has developed this tendency over time to be completely content with himself. When I first met him, I bragged my bookish knowledge in front of him which I do in front of every person I meet, it is my thing. I was astonished to know that he was also a really well read person and any book that I named he had already read them. it was embarrassing and astonishing for me at the same time. He is quite intelligent and the most important personality trait about him is that he is very understanding. He will never get angry with you and feel bad if you don’t call him for a long time. Whenever I call him I find him at the same place of excitement and enthusiasm where I had left him.

For last three years I am going through this phase where no matter what project I start it never materializes. Nishadh is that one constant strong pillar who has stood by my side and had been motivating me to keep planning. He even forcing me sometime like an elder brother to go ahead and do my thing, make my own movie. He makes me meet financiers, he arranges equipment’s for me, I can ask him for money if I am running out of it and he never ask me back that when I will be returning it back to him. Though I do return back the money, I am not a cheap creep.  I still have an arrear balance of 5000 Rs. which I have to pay him soon which he donated to me for my short film which unfortunately I didn't get made.

Nishadh has not been like this always. He was a different person sometimes back. Born in a rich well known celebrity family, he was a pampered child and he had always lived his life on his own terms. Sometimes back a personal tragedy made him go into depression and a long retrospection of his life. He took a sabbatical of three years where he didn’t work, avoided social contacts and secluded himself from everyone. He just sat at his home trying to beat his depression, but all that time of seclusion and retrospection, instead of destroying him, made him a much stronger man. As Nietzsche said, something that doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. He emerged stronger than ever and he came back with a bang. When I met him two years back, he was struggling financially because he hadn’t worked for so long but it was amazing to see how he recuperated and grown to become one of the finest and highest paid music arrangers in the film industry. He has done so many projects recently at Yashraj and his latest work was ShahRukh film "Raees".

Nishadh has always guided me in the right direction and has always put a faith and trust in me that I will do great one day. He trusts me as a director, as a writer and also as a cinematographer. Sometimes I feel that he has more trust in my abilities than I myself do. But it feels good when someone places this much trust in you in this strange city where no one really cares for you and if you are not rich and successful, you do not matter. I am neither rich nor successful by any means, and in no way I can help Nishadh anywhere, neither personally nor professionally, but still he cares and there is a bonding that exists between us that I cannot explain. 

No matter what I do in my life, Nishadh will always be a part of it, no matter what his role will be in that project or whether he will be physically present there or not, he will be nonetheless part of it. I know when he is there next to me he will protect me from all kinds of problems. He literally tries to solve all my problems all the times. I discuss my problems with him as a brother and as a friend, but he has this tendency to become knight in shining armor to come and help me. It's not just with me, but he does this with everyone else. He helps everyone. One more important thing that I want to discuss about him is that he never bad mouths about anyone. I really appreciate this trait of his personality. I do that and I accept it. I am a gossip queen and I love talking shit all the time. But he never does that. He is always positive and if a project that he has started in partnership with others fails he never starts blaming other people for it or try to find scapegoat for its failure. He won’t even discuss the failure anymore which sometimes irritates me because I like to retrospect on what went wrong from our side which leads to the failure; instead, he would just smile and ask me to "Move On". He is a team player and he would gracefully accept the blame for the project’s failure even though he has played no part in its fate.

One thing that recently impressed me about him and elevated his respect in my eyes twofold is his strong will power. He was asking me to do a music video shoot for a long time but I didn’t want to shoot anything for low budget as I had ambitions for getting into advertising and one wrong move could jeopardize my chances there. I didn’t mind not getting paid and with Nishadh that is never the matter, but I kept on making excuses for not doing it. Finally, I said to him that I won’t do it. I thought he would feel hurt by that but he completely respected my decision. He never forces anyone beyond a limit. I am always his first choice as a director for any shoot. But when I refused, he didn’t stop there. He called another friend of his who were first timers and he decided to shoot with them. He couldn’t arrange for an actor as that would have elevated the budget of the music video, he decided to act in it himself, though he has never acted before and trust me, he is really terrified of acting. I know that because I have tried to force him into acting many times and he never did it. But desperate time calls for desperate measures, he decided to act in it. They shot it and when he shared the video on facebook I was flabbergasted. It was so good that it didn’t feel like it was an amateuirish job and not for a moment it felt like Nishadh didn’t know anything about acting. He was so good in it. And even after me declining to do his video he never kept any malice towards me. I was one of the few people ( I guess so) to whom he had first send the teaser of his video to get the opinion. I was impressed, not just by the video but his perseverance to do what he sets his mind to. He has been an example for me and also for other people who take temporary failures as permanent setbacks. I know he has gone through a lot in his life, both mentally and physically, and he always came back stronger than before.

But if you meet Nishadh someday, I will promise you that you will never be able to judge his exact age. He looks like a kid and to make it worse, he behaves like a kid too. He is one my that friend whom I want to be next to me when I will become super successful because without him and his support, first it would not be possible without him by my side and second, it would be meaningless. This time next year we both will be celebrating out successful lives either at his house or at mine.