‘Storytelling is an art that has an infinite audience’

NAGPUR: On Saturday night in Mumbai, at the glittering Filmfare awards night, city lad Abhijit Kokate picked up the award for best editing for the film Queen. Back home in Nagpur, Abhijit’s father Suresh heaved a sigh of relief. His only son had finally arrived professionally.
“I think it’s all destiny that steers your life,” Suresh told TOI. “I took an early retirement, studied law and set up a practice to ensure that my son gets a good professional start as a lawyer,” says Kokate, who even picked up an education loan to send his son to UK for a master’s degree in law.“I was very disappointed when, on his return, he told me that he wanted to try his luck in the Hindi film industry. He begged for a last chance and said that if he failed, he would return.” The indulgent father allowed him to go and prayed that his son would not return as a failure. “My wife and I were so happy when he received this award,” he says.
For Abhijit, the time spent in London also gave him a new perspective on Hindi cinema. “When I observed the manner in which Pakistanis, the Arabs or even Europeans watched Hindi films, I realized that storytelling is an art that has an infinite audience,” he says, and adds that it was there that he decided to be a part of filmmaking. “When I told my father that I wanted to go to Mumbai, his response was the stereotypical, ‘To become a hero’?” He was even more disappointed when I told him that I wanted to learn the craft of filmmaking.”
A commerce and law graduate from GS College and Law College, Abhijeet says that he could not clear the interviews at FTII and other institutes. “They thought that with my education, I would not be serious with the course.” He rues the fact that had he decided earlier to take up filmmaking probably he would have been a FTII graduate. “In India, for parents, a successful kid is one who studies medicine or engineering. I maybe earning Rs 2 lakh a month, but I am still a struggler and not settled in life for my parents,” he says.
Thirty-two-year-old Abhijit has decided to move on from editing to make his own films. “People from small towns bring their own special humour and sensitivities with which people connect. I am ready to narrate my own stories in the way I want to from start to finish.”
Attributing his fine work to his clear heartedness, Abhijit’s school friend Upesh Bhattad, a lawyer, says that he was very sensitive. “His mother runs a beauty parlour and father was a cop. But I have seen the manner in which he roughed out in Mumbai. He has a short temper which I think works for him. He gets focused and is determined to get what he wants.”
Another friend Tushar Jaiswal, a liquor trader, describes him as very uninhibited. “He played cricket very well is a very good dancer and a diehard Shah Rukh Khan fan. He will be making an ad film with SRK and is ecstatic about it,” says Jaiswal.