Ashutosh Gowariker : Making Everest was like climbing Everest for me

Ashutosh Gowariker, 50, is meticulous, patient and perseverant. He started his glamour career with television from where he moved on to becoming a film director.


He will debut as a TV producer with the upcoming fictional show Everest coming soon on Star Plus. His films in the past have always related to History in some way be it Lagaan or Jodhaa Akbar. With Everest, interestingly, he has covered Geography before he moves back to history with his magnum opus, Mohenjo Daro. The story metaphorically: Every individual has a personal Everest (highest point in the Himalayas) to conquer in life for which they are willing to go any distance. A word of caution: The story in no way suggests that every father in India is like that. Ashutosh Gowariker is the producer and writer of Everest. In all his work earlier, he has always refrained from being preachy and likes to communicate his message in a gentle and subtle way. That will remain in this story too, which is centred around the story of this daughter Anjali Singh Rawat with her father whose dream she wants to achieve.

Excerpts from a conversation with Ashutosh Gowariker:

READ: ​Ashutosh Gowariker: 'Everest' is about a girl's ambition

What excited you to produce television?
I started my career with television and my first taste with popularity, as you can call it, was with a serial called Kachchi Dhoop that had me with the actress Bhagyashree. I am now the writer and a producer of this show with Glenn and Ankush as the directors. They have been my assistants on my first two films and have a very good understanding of television. All this time I didn't have a story to tell on the television format that is very different from a film. In a film, you have two halves, you have a first and second half and you have a hook at the end of the first half for the people to come back in the second half, the story is finite and it ends. In television, you need to have a hook at the end of every episode, otherwise the audience will not come back. And that is very tough. It needs immense talent for that kind of story narration. People like a show when they are engaged and that is if it is great writing. For this story, I needed a television format, which a film couldn't have done and decided to make it as my first TV production given that it was a story that I liked and was a space that I wanted to get into. This will be the first-of-its-kind of show with a sports related aspiration, involving an emotional drama.

What made you write a story like Everest? I wanted to tell a story about mountaineering as a sport, but I found it limiting in a particular way, as it is just a sport. You always wonder why does a person climb a mountain? What does he get when he reaches the top? It's just inner satisfaction. How do you portray that inner satisfaction on screen? So, to portray that dramatic high of inner satisfaction, we have combined it with a drama and the story of a girl, who decides to fulfill her father's dream that her father felt only a son could have done. So, how will she fulfill his dream? His dream could have been anything, I made it climbing the Everest. Everest is, thus a metaphor, to say that while you will come across hurdles and obstacles in your life, you need to get past them to achieve what you have to and want to. Somewhere in our lives we all have our own targets and ambitions. They are difficult tasks and therefore we call them Himalayan tasks.

We know that while some fathers may consider a daughter equal to a son and some even more than a son, for many fathers, a daughter is clearly less than a son. Did you write Everest out of any personal experience? I haven't experienced this difference in my immediate life, but I know that it exists. It is a completely fictional story and I have not based it on any one at all. I somewhere felt the need to gently hit upon this topic as I know it will touch a chord. But I didn't want to tell them, I just want my audience to experience it and hence the journey of this girl wanting to achieve this Himalayan task for her father. There are different kinds of writers. Some borrow from the tragedies of their life to sell them to people, some have the ability to take it from the lives and situations they see and create characters out of that. I'm the latter.

Are you interested in mountaineering yourself as a sport? I am a sportsperson, though not interested in mountaineering. Making Everest helped me understand mountaineering too. We shot the snow scenes 12000 feet at a temperature of minus 6 degrees above Uttarkashi at the Dokrani Glacier. The only way to reach there was for the entire crew to trek up for five days on foot.

What's the kind of preparation you needed to do to shoot outdoors in such difficult conditions? The entire crew needed to go through altitude and health tests, so that we could test the physical strength required by them for shooting in such conditions. This show had to be completely written and shot within the snow period. We all stayed in tents, obviously without any heaters, permanently at minus 6 degrees temperature for 30 days. The crew consisted of about 100 people, none of whom had aspirations of mountaineering. They were doing just their regular production jobs, be it of makeup or costumes or whatever else. When I am putting them through this kind of ordeal, I needed to give them some kind of comfort by way of tents, good sleeping conditions, a proper toilet, etc. It was like building a complex in the glacier. We took cooks from here and had about 100 sherpas (porters), who would transport food and other stuff to us there from Uttarakhand. We had doctors and a medical tent on set and you had to be well-clad all the time.

Has this been the toughest geography you have worked in? Yes, it was very tough and tiring. But since we had a lot of preparation, both mental and physical, no one fell sick, thankfully.

Is there an Everest you want to conquer in your life? I am born and brought up in Bandra. My father was in the police force till the age of 55 when he took retirement to start his own business. I was never inclined towards acting. I had neither any aspirations nor ambitions towards it. I was a very average student getting 70% and was quite content with it till I entered Mithibai College, where I got involved in all kinds of extra-curricular activities, including theatre. I started enjoying acting and got spotted by Ketan Mehta for a role in his film Holi. I then acted on television and then got into film direction. For me, every film of mine has been very challenging and was about me conquering my own Everest. I would say that even making Everest was like climbing Everest for me.

Your films have always had the presence of a very strong woman, be it Gauri who was the first person to support Bhuvan in Lagaan or Geeta in Swades or Jodhaa in Jodhaa Akbar and now Anjali in Everest. Is that by coincidence or there is a presence of a strong woman in your own life? I am most attached to my wife Sunita and my younger sister Aslesha, who are very strong women and strong influencers in my life. Even though Ashlesha is younger to me, she is very protective about me and will make sure that I am making the correct decisions. We have grown up with me drawing from her always. She is the more sensible one between us and I will take her approval for all my decisions. Sunita, because of her complete support to me. I started producing only when she said yes and I rely on her to helm my affairs. She is very strong in her business sense. So, she holds the strings of money be it at home or on a film. So, it's only when she said yes, that we produced our first film Swades. I might want 500 elephants in Jodhaa Akbar, but she may give me 100. She is able to balance my ambition with the right economic backing. They are both strong. While my sister likes my sense of humour, my wife likes my innovativeness. And I do know that both of them like me for my simplicity.

Do you feel a level of anxiety before Everest? Be it before a film or TV, the anxiety is the same. In a film, your anxiety can be that the person will leave the theatre in the intermission. On TV, the fear is that the person could change the channel in 10 minutes. I may be strong and my own emotional anchor but the fear of rejection is always there.

The story of Everest: It's the story of a girl Anjali Singh Rawat (real name: Shamata Anchan) who wants to fulfill the dream of her father, which her father felt could have been fulfilled by his son that he does not have. And hence, he is in complete despair, so, she decides to prove herself worthy of that son that he does not have by fulfilling the dream.

WATCH: Ashutosh Gowarikar's NEW Show 'EVEREST Launched!