After Avgat it's city sunshine for Sharma

chandigarh: he's back in the city precisely after a year and though he's released his first directorial bollywood film, avgat, in the interim, it's a pity director mohan sharma can't exult in the glory in his own city, since the movie didn't open in the north. "it was based on the underworld and had a very mumbai base but we had included a punjabi song, lakh hile hile, however, the distributors didn't want it to open here so punjab, haryana, himachal pradesh and j&k missed the film.but it had a good recovery in the rest of india and in delhi -opened in regal and plaza - ran for two weeks." the movie starred nethra raghuraman, ajinkya de, rohini hattangadi, shivaji shinde of shool and sudesh berry. defending his ground, sharma adds, "even satya didn't open in the north, only vaastav did." anyway, sharma says he's been well accepted in the industry ("farhaan akhtar of dil chahta hai had some nice things to say to me"), and is already working on three projects. one of them is a movie tentatively titled aadhar (the producer sunil thakur was also the producer of avgat and is repeating sharma as director). stars being considered are aditya pancholi, sushmita sen, om puri and bikram saluja. based on kashmir terrorism, it will be shot near rohtang pass and in the kulu valley. "we will probably start work by february-end and march and will shoot large chunks in one shot itself, in a 25-30 day schedule." in fact, this trip to chandigarh (his annual sabbatical from the madness of mumbai) was intended as a location-scouting trip, but now sharma will visit himachal pradesh in mid-december to do the same. "the movie needs to be shot in total snow and has been written by m salim and the lyrics are by mirak mirza," informs sharma. the second project will probably star akshay kumar or bobby deol and is being produced by subhash aggarwal (shooting will start around september 2002). the third movie is a love story being produced by prakash ticholkar. but for now, sharma, a product of arts college, sector 10, is relaxing in the city, which he feels has a "farmhouse" ambience. "i'm enjoying the sunlight," he says, rather symbolically, far away from the usual underworld themes he normally deals in. geetika_bhandari@indiatimes.com