ANSHUL GUPTA: ROMANCING WITH LIFE by Mihir Srivastava

The charming 40 years old Anshul Gupta has travelled the world and lived in France and the US for more than six years. While learning filmmaking in Paris, he did a host of odd jobs—including painting houses, caretaker of a gymnasium, a librarian assistant, and a model in a painting academy—to support his stay, and explored his being by being open to various stimuli.

A proud Indian, who’s well networked across the globe, he came back a decade ago and runs a one-man industry, which entails partnering with international production houses to facilitate shoots of documentaries and films in India, some under testing conditions. 

A committed bachelor so far, also has been an eligible bachelor for long, Anshul travels to seek a certain stability in life. An explorer by temperament, he’s blessed with the curiosity of a young boy who wants to know things by experiencing, or living it. He soaks in cultures, reads a lot, and forms informed opinions. A photographer in his own right, because 'I'm too lazy to be a painter and there are so many moments to capture,' he explains. He has frozen joyous moments in pictures for eternity.

Way back in 2009, he backpacked for two and half months across 14 countries in Europe, carried with him herbs and spices, and would cook sumptuous Indian meals for his European hosts. He lived like a local with the locals while on the move.

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Anshul never shies away from challenging himself. The passion to learn is not a rarity, but to win over fear is commendable. Anshul takes pride in his Indianness, and actually helps him engage with the denizens of the rest of the world from a position of strength.

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Anshul is open to experiences and experimentation; he’s candid about it. A natural storyteller, he says, ‘I made many lifelong friends during this trip,’ and pauses for a second to add softly, ‘experienced some racism too.’ 

He learned French, a tongue twister of a language, in quick time and now he speaks it with a flair of a native; even started dreaming in French. ‘Like John Nash would see numbers in his dreams,’ he quips and then asserts, ‘I’m a trilingual.’ Needless to add, the other two languages are Hindi and English.

Anshul has the uncanny knack of working seamlessly with a vibrant tapestry of personalities and in varied cultures. He travelled to nearly twenty countries to organize shoots as a line producer–would manage the budget, logistics, hiring crew, and was a link between the director and the production team. He talks with a sparkle in his eyes about making short films on Hip-hop, a popular street dance of the genre of fusion style.

Things happened fast and thick to him, fairly experientially rich his stay, and he took it all in, and was living a dream, at some point in time, though, it started to turn into an existential nightmare. While Paris became integral to him, he felt an outsider. He was lonely in the crowd and was missing home, which James Baldwin had so succinctly described as ‘an irrevocable condition’.

When Anshul came back to Delhi after being away for so long, his hometown felt different. He did what Mahatma Gandhi did on his return to India after spending two decades in South Africa–he travelled to reconnect with the motherland.

Anshul, like a vagabond for the next six months, did a road journey across northern India from Orissa to Maharashtra. His travelmate was a 50-year-old sadhu, Satchit Anand was his name, and their mode of transport was a 100cc motorcycle.  

It was a spiritual sojourn, encountering the occult to get a real sense of life, experientially it can’t be more different from his life in Paris. They’d go from one village to another, stayed in temples, performed Kar Seva or the selfless service, slept on the floor, meditated in the open under a tree. But never indulged in any psychotropic substance to experience the divine, he clarified, when I pointedly asked him about it.

The idea was to experience the real India that lives in villages. Anshul carried just one change of clothing; wore one set and washed the other, and wrapped the wet clothes around his head to beat the heat. He didn’t see his face in the mirror for these six months and didn’t miss much. Instead, "I saw my image in people's eyes, their reaction to our presence, what it did to them. They opened their doors and hearts for us," Anshul describes thoughtfully. The lesson learned was that the more we get fixated on our own being–read obsession–we lose touch with nature. And nature is healing, almost a panacea. 

Sometimes they journeyed on ramshackle buses, packed with sweaty working-class youth, hopeful, moving places in search of menial jobs. Poverty was earthly and welcoming. It was a humbling experience for Anshul and, finally, he felt at home with them. To witness people in the village existing as a strong community was a relief for Anshul, and an escape from materialistic existence fuelled by unbridled individualism—a Western way of life.

He made up his mind that he will not go back to Europe. Ever since, Anshul has lived with his joint family in Delhi. Three generations stay together, despite, or perhaps because they feel obliged to freely express their views, differences—creates some cohesion between them.

When his mother is travelling, he babysits his grandmother. He wears a gold ring studded with four multi-coloured stones on his wedding finger. It’s a family ring for generations, keeps him connected to things he identifies with—his roots. 

As you would have already made out, Anshul never shies away from challenging himself. He’s a good swimmer, but was afraid of deep, big water bodies. That was a good reason to learn surfing in Sri Lanka. The passion to learn is not a rarity, but to win over fear is commendable. Currently, he’s taking dancing ​classes during weekends and spends evenings practicing badminton to play like a pro.

Anshul takes pride in his Indianness, and actually helps him engage with the denizens of the rest of the world from a position of strength. He has time and again refused to work if clients get racist, even in the middle of a project. It’s part of the contract: racism in any form is a deal breaker. 

He’s open to life and its influences, however, paradoxically, it seems his core remains an enduring enigma to even those who are close to him. Of dozens of books in my home library, Anshul picked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. 'I love the title of the book,' he said.