EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW! Kunal Khemu on Madgaon Express: ‘Train is the hero’ | Not Just Bollywood

Debutant director Kunal Khemu shares with Firstpost, his experience of making Madgaon Express and why train journeys hold a special place in his heart. Packed with a full dose of humour which seems to be vanishing from our lives, this film by him is definitely a must watch.

He has proved that the story is the main hero. The plot is simple with no complications, but very relevant. No twists and turns in the beginning of the story when three friends dream together to make an all-boys fun trip to Goa with booze, bikinis and bombshells.  But their dreams remain unfulfilled. Finally, one day out of the blue, they meet virtually again and plan on going on a holiday to Goa. The trip is not what they expected it to be.

Edited excerpts from the interview: 

I really liked _Madgaon Express_, it’s a nice and fun watch. How did the idea come to you and how did you make it work?

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I just had this story in my head for a long time. It was just the germ of the idea. What I wanted to do was to tell a story of three friends and their friendship journey. Expectation meets reality kind of a thing with them. They often say that things that you imagine to be great when you actually conceptualise it are different and they may not turn out the way you thought about it.

I just wanted to amplify that with these 3 friends, and Goa was something I wanted to do, because I wanted to keep it very relatable, and I remember the first time that I went to Goa, and I went by Madgaon Express and there is bit of charm about friends and train journey which I wanted to show. Then I had this wicked idea of what if these guys ended up in a room where they spend the night and they just find this cocaine in the bed, and then everything goes wrong from there with that idea.

I wanted to call it Madgaon Express, because I like the whole idea of. I wanted to place the climax of the film on the train. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I wanted to keep the train like an important aspect of the film. That was just the basic idea. And then eventually, when I started writing it, what was most important was to first find these 3 friends, and what they were all about, and what their friendship was all about and how they came back they picked up from right where they left. That’s something that I borrowed from my own life also. And then, just once, I found these friends that I went on this journey with, and then I found characters like Mandoza, Kanchan Komdi along the way, and then wanted to have some fun with the story telling.

Train is one of the heroes in the film. How much do you like train journeys and any fond memories which helped you while working on the story?

As much as I used to sometimes dread going by trains because they get really loud, and I would have a problem like trying to sleep in them at night. But I also remember that I used to love so many things about it.

I used to love the fact that you would get to buy comics, because you know the one thing that we would do first when you enter the train was magazines and comics for us, and then you would also kind of look forward to who are going to be your co-passengers? Because, you know, you would often share food with those people, and you would always like, look forward to those conversations. And then, if you made friends, you would play Antakshri with those guys, depending on how long the journey was. I used to look forward to getting that phoonk waala pillow that you could use. The unpleasant memory was going to the train while it was moving.

Did you expect that your movie will be so much loved and appreciated by the critics and audiences?

I definitely hoped for it. I mean the intent of doing anything in life is for it to be accepted and appreciated. But I just feel that like I said, every time you do something you wish for it, but not always does it come true. I just feel at this time it did come true. Maybe it is because of social media, and how the information can reach you faster now. I know some people who watched it like thrice in the first week of the release itself. And I am happy that these three characters helped me kind of build up the story and this whole experience with our characters that even people like to call them their friends.

While directing, did you feel you could have been one of the boys?

I think honestly that that would have happened before I knew that I was directing it. I’d obviously romanticize playing Dodo, or even Pinku, for that matter. But once I knew that I was going direct, I was pretty clear that I just wanted to do that job to the best of my ability. I was anyways for the first time writing a whole film with screenplay story dialogues. And then to be a director on a film is a very big thing, so I didn’t want to kind of mix that with this. I didn’t want to do anything half-heartedly or under pressure. I didn’t want to divert my attention from the making of the film. I was very happy being a director and enjoyed seeing these guys do what they were doing.