Mrdu Pankaj: Connecting Human Souls Through The Act Of Storytelling

By: Mrdu Pankaj, Screenwriter & Creative Director | Tuesday, 21 February 2023

Times are changing for the historically male-dominated Indian entertainment industry as female filmmakers and screenwriters have become a growing voice in the country today; they are breaking stereotypes by creating characters who are emotionally flawed and hence almost tangible. These incredible women are a breath of fresh air or , instead, a wind of change for the industry. Mrdu Pankaj (Screenwriter & Creative Director, Freelance) is one of them.

Mrdu’s love for storytelling and poetry writing grew at a very early age when her mother, a trained classical singer, used to sing songs for her. She turned thirteen, and in response to the chemical & hormonal changes in the brain & body, she wrote a poem and then composed and sang it. This was how the seed that her mother had unknowingly sowed bloomed into a flower which became her first piece of writing. Her work focuses extensively on gendered, political, and social themes. The issues that surfaced among the middle class are touched incredibly in her works. Over the eight years, Mrdu has received significant appreciation as an executive producer for a broadcast corporation, a freelance writer, a Director’s Assistant, and Creative Director for web shows, and a television show. Her stories are based on real-life narratives or her own life experiences through which she connects herself to her audience. Let’s hear it from her.

Throw some light on the various creative projects that you have worked on over the years.

So far, most of the projects that I have done were women-led stories or narratives with a political subtext. During film school, I wrote and directed a seven-minute one-take film about a pregnant Kashmiri woman who is rehabilitated in a foreign land and has PTSD. I was part of the writing team of an Indian television drama series on Sony TV named ‘Story Nine Months Ki’, which was about a young woman who decided to become a single mother through IVF. I recently conceived and directed a docu-fiction short film in which my subjects were women migrant labours who work as house help in Bombay. The faith with which they were holding on to their dreams was my inspiration for this film. I’m also developing a feature film; it’s a coming of age of an expecting mother. My curiosity about bearing a life inside one’s body led to this film.

What is your creative process as a writer and storyteller? What are your primary focus areas while working on a new project?

Stories have a way of finding their tellers. I never followed a chronological pattern of reaching a narrative. An emotion, a thought, or a fellow human would stay in my subconscious; either out of curiosity or awe and then, in a very organic manner, a story weaves around what stayed in the subconscious.

As a Creative Director, I have to work collaboratively with 200 people coming together from different hierarchies. It’s a challenging task to be able to communicate with different people in their language and make them understand their roles. However, I believe this has been my core strength. My role is to gather all the human energy of the people present in the set and channel those energies into creating something that is accepted by the audience.

"An emotion, a thought, or a fellow human would stay in my subconscious; either out of curiosity or awe and then, in a very organic manner, a story is weaved around what stayed in the subconscious"

What are the most critical challenges you face in this industry? How are you overcoming them?

This is a highly unorganized and male-dominated industry. Here, we, as women, face various challenges regarding safety and equality. The women-men ratio on sets I have worked on has been as poor as 1:100. In the television industry, there are neither definite hours of work nor a definite shoot schedule. After the first few months, the deadlines pressure and the need to constantly churn content leads to an inevitable decline in content’s creative parameters and, in the long run, one’s health too. I am gradually trying to meet these uncertainties and irregularities in the industry. I try to work with stable mental health because this is an art form with a constant need for nobility and individualistic lensing.

What are some of the most significant milestones that you have achieved so far?

My first milestone was getting recruited by Star at 19, which brought me to Mumbai. I was the only candidate from a non-media background recruited for Star's Creative Mind Programme 2014. For five years, I kept learning on the job. After that, getting into Prague Film School was the second milestone that helped me grow as a writer; it was here that I discovered that I had a directorial bone too.

What would your advice be to young women who aspire to venture into the Indian entertainment industry?

I would advise aspiring writers to keep themselves motivated and not let their love for storytelling die. They must engage themselves in a lot of reading, especially Indian literature because it is still very unexplored. Also, they must not shy away from conveying their personal stories because that is where they would be the most honest.

Mrdu Pankaj, Screenwriter & Creative Director, Freelance

An Alumnus of Banaras Hindu University, Mrdu has pursued a year of the Filmmaking program at the Prague Film School and has eight years of experience in creating exceptional narratives for multiple platforms. She was involved in a project with Peninsula Pictures from the inception to the execution, overseeing the creation of over 100 episodes.