It was the month of March; he arrived at the Dadar railway station, with very little in his wallet but a head full of ideas and dreams. Filled to the brim with anxiety, fully aware in that moment, those final months will write his story. It was either Bollywood or that one bedroom apartment in Zakir Nagar along with the monotonous call centre job, or even worse; the MBA degree which he’d successfully been dodging for years, awaited him if he failed.
Zeishan Quadri is a dreamer, thinker and doer. He talks about his unusual journey that took him from Wasseypur to Bollywood. His journey, one of hardships and parental pressure, is an inspiration to the youth or anyone who’s listening. Never being the one to conform to rules, he set out to pave his own way. He talks about how as kids, we are encouraged to ask questions, to grow mentally and expand our horizons and somehow, somewhere between being kids and adults, we lose that inquisitiveness. If not lose, we suppress it, afraid we’ll be made fun of or shamed for asking ‘stupid’ questions.
Zeishan Quadri dared to keep that inquisitiveness alive. He dared to take risks and reach out for a job that not only provided him with a cash inflow but contentment too. Having grown up in the streets of Wasseypur, he talks about how he witnessed crime first hand and grew up with the same people over the years. When rebuked by his mother and asked to focus on school, he went far astray from conventional education showing little or no interest in it. Subsequently, the following years had in store for him failed business plans and jobs at call centres.
Being much of a conversationalist, one of those conversations led him to the city of dreams. From haggling between fare money and payment of passport size photographs to then becoming one of the greatest writers of the crime genre in Bollywood, his journey has been nothing short of an uphill battle. When his inexperience pulled him down, his humour and sense of optimism kept him going. He let his work speak for himself, and years later, he’s a writer, director, producer and an actor with an upcoming release of “Gangs of Wasseypur 3”, the franchise he made his debut with.
Discover more stories like Zeishan’s on Josh Talks.