After completing the prerequisite engineering degree, when Harsh Warrdhan left Nagpur for Los Angeles to study filmmaking, he was expected to win awards and recognition. Instead, he came back with life experiences… or so he has been saying.
After graduating from Columbia College, Harsh took up screenwriting as a strategic career move, mostly because it was the cheapest. Of course, no one told him that screenwriting is the least glamorous of them all. On sets, they let security guards eat before the writers. And that’s if you were a good writer.
Thankfully, he took the advice “Don’t let anyone tell you what to do with your life”quite literally and decided to make writing as his career. The wordly exposure, the appreciation of diverse cultures, the eclectic interactions with young dreamers who land in America / Hollywood has only made him a richer writer. And we all know writers without richer experiences are boring. It’s all about perceptions.
And perceptions were stacked against him. They said he has an Indian accent (least attractive, most funny) when in Hollywood. Now that he is back in Bollywood, people complain that he doesn’t have an American accent. You see, in Bollywood, even when you go to an international airport to drop off guests, you are expected to come back with an accent.
But with the strong motivation to prove himself that the decision to leave behind the lucarative engineering career was the right one, Harsh has written and directed an American film, has written screenplays for films & TV, and has also managed to convince a hot fiction writer to marry him. They are awaiting their baby…his next film. Accents be damned, with his first novel ‘When Hari Met his Saali’, Harsh is trying to say ‘ha ha ha’ to them.
Even though currently Harsh is in an eccentric and reclusive writer mode, he can be conveniently found at:
Website: www.harshoo.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/harsh.warrdhan
Books News India by Priyanka Batra Harjai 