Writer-director Anuraadha Tewari’s new project, Dil Dosti Dilemma, is streaming on Amazon Prime. The series is an adaptation of Andaleeb Wajid’s book Asmara’s Summer. Anuraadha has written the screen adaptation of the book and says it differs from the book because of many factors, including language, timing, etc.
She said, “Adaptation is a whole art by itself. That is why, in awards, there is also a special category for it. The first thing about book adaptations is that books have a different language and a different craft. What is one page in a book? Maybe a few seconds on screen. So you have to essentially take what’s in the book and first convert it into ‘cinema language’. For that, often books provide you with a story idea—a premise, a world, and characters. You have to then create a screen story. Then comes the screenplay and dialogue. So in essence, you have to take the book as a starting point and expand a lot but not lose its flavour.”
“It’s an expensive job, and it’s a delicate job. It’s really all craft, since you have to know what to keep, what to throw, what to add, and eventually whether your product must match the personality of the book or be a whole new being by itself,” she added.
The series is based in Bangalore, and Anuraadha mentioned that since she was not from the city, she had to do a lot of research. Speaking of what kind of research she was involved in, she said, “One of my writers, Mohammed Adil, was the only one from Bangalore in my team. In fact, he was also from the locality that the fictitious Tibri Road is based on. It is also a culture and a milieu completely alien to me, so I wanted to understand it deeply before writing even a single line. The book and Andaleeb, the author, gave us insights, of course, but I wanted to go much deeper.”
“Apart from the basic world, we also wanted to create the other upmarket parts of Bangalore that the book barely touches upon. Those were the parts our story extended into. For these, my own Bangalore friends and trips were helpful. Lastly, I also wanted to get the Gen Z mind and tonality right. For that, we hired a young intern for a while and did hang out with many young nieces and read online chats to get my insights. I just wanted to be sure of everything we were creating,” she added.
Dil Dosti Dilemma features Anushka Sen, Kush Jotwani, Tanvi Azmi, Suhasini Mulay, and Shishir Sharma in lead roles. Anuraadha is all praise for their performance and said, “Not only do they justify, but they take the writing several notches above, In fact, Tanvi Azmi was my choice for Naani from the beginning. She just has that perfect mix of grace, sass, and gravitas. Suhasini Mulay was the surprise, but the moment I heard the name, I knew it was perfect.”
“Shishir Sharma makes such a delightful, sarcastic, nasty, yet lovable Nana. They are all absolutely amazing and provide the perfect foil for the youngsters,” she concluded.
