Amar Dies Today

Satisfied with the life he’s lived so far and worried that it’s only downhill from here, a middle aged man decides to kill himself. But unfortunately for him, a disparate group of uninvited guests want to have a say in the matter.

“Having grown up watching the movies of Bollywood directors such as Rajkumar Hirani, Farah Khan and Rohit Shetty, my link to Hindi movies was only bolstered by my time away in the UK as a boarding school child since the age of ten. My life at home was watching movies with my mother, and my life away from home was informed by the movies that she was collecting on VHS waiting to watch with me when I’d return home for the holidays. I maintain that today, as an adult, a large part of my personality is still informed by the Hindi movies I watched as a child, and by the stories whose desire to tell took birth in a very nascent version of myself. A desire to express the emotions I’ve experienced in the years since has manifested itself in a career as a film writer and director. Do I tell these stories because I love the movies, or do I tell them because it’s the only way I know how to? I do not know. All I know is that I have to tell them. “Amar Aaj Marega” is one of many stories that burst from within me. This particular one deals with the finiteness of life and my nightly quarrels with the concept. The question I pose: how much life is enough, and how much is too much? And above the garb of this almost pseudo-intellectual preoccupation, my intention is to simply tell a funny, entertaining story.”