My childhood friends have been my inspiration, says Sumit Arora

A still from the film Stree, starring Rajkumar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor

All the while I was writing dialogues for Stree, I was trying not to cross into slapstick zone, and never be spoofy," says writer Sumit Arora, who has been raking in praise ever since the movie released. Stree, starring Rajkumar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor, is set in the small town of Chanderi where the residents believe in the myth of an angry woman ghost. The film, a satire by all means, where the men hide as they are afraid of a "witch" who is making men disappear, has some stellar slice-of-life one-liners by Arora.

"There isn't really a recipe for one-liners. You can't manufacture such things. But the movie had such potent situations, that the dialogues came naturally. It is a satire without being preachy, and I would be stupid not to exploit it for one liners. Not to be spoofy about it, not to be cross slapstick zone. But the characters, who are really simple people, are not really aware they are cracking a joke. This is their life, and it's just amusing to us. They are actually just reacting."

Arora's insight into the mind of the simple small-towner also comes from his upbringing, which was mostly in Meerut where his dad worked as an employee at Bata. He was a big fan of publications like Nandan and Champak, and satirical writers like Sharad Joshi, and was writing satires for Meerut newspapers by the age of 14. It was only in 2005 that he left the city at the age of 18 and arrived in Mumbai, to become a writer.

Sumit Arora

"How do you get a film in the beginning right? So I worked for TV, did many writing jobs, and wrote All is Well as a collaboration with another writer in 2015. I got Stree after all this time," says the 30-year-old. He may be a Mumbaikar now, but to write the dialogues for the movie, he found inspiration from the time his dad was posted to a small village called Gadana, just outside Meerut. "I went to a tiny 10-room school with a ganne ka khet nearby. It was my time there and the people I met that were my primary source material for Stree. Everyone is so simple, and they just say these things that are not even funny, just really amusing to people like you and me. For example, the characters of Jana and Bittu who are the hero's friends in Stree, are inspired by people I met there."

When we ask him what his favourite movie for dialogues is, and pat comes the reply. "Andaz Apna Apna. If I can get close to that even a tiny bit, life would be great." And as he enjoys the applause, and works on two shows for Netflix and Amazon and is developing a movie for Dharma productions, he knows that to fuel his talent he needs to keep in touch with his roots. "When I was growing up, we were a gang of three friends. One of them is now an IAS officer, one is a journalist and there is me. We still talk and the essence of our chats are the same. Those conversations are my inspiration, and keep me connected to where I come from."

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