In his much talked about book Urban Naxals, filmaker Vivek Agnihotri has written about an incident that took some time in the late 90s. Vivek was planning to diversify from ad film-making to making television shows in those times, and he got a lucky break when Anupam Kher decided to produce a TV serial titled ‘Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye Hum’ to be directed by him. The pilot episode of the serial was approved by Channel, which was then headed by Karan Thapar.
However, things couldn’t move further after Thapar’s first meeting with Vivek. Thapar apparently liked the serial but didn’t like the casting. He demanded that Pallavi Joshi is dropped, who had acted in many movies and TV shows by then and had even won a national award for acting. “But she is dark. I want someone fair,” Karan Thapar told Vivek Agnihotri, as recounted by Vivek in the book.
Vivek Agnihotri is currently in the US for the book tour. Till now, the book has made stops at Bloomington- Indiana, Silicon Valley- San Fransisco, Yosemite camp- California, Houston- Texas, Dallas, Purdue University,- West Lafayette, Indiana, Ohio State University, Detroit- Chicago, DC and the big apple- New York. As a part of the international leg of the tour, Agnihotri will also make a stopover in the UK before returning to India. The tour mostly features book launches at various renowned institutes preceded by talks and interesting sessions by Vivek and stalwarts from various walks of life.
With his brand of keenly intelligent talks that ranges from history to politics, Vivek has built an extraordinary fan base that transcends age, gender, race and cinema lovers. Honest and hard hitting, Vivek Agnihotri’s Urban Naxals currently ranks 1st under Political Ideologies on Amazon. The book captures the riveting saga of a filmmaker’s struggle and conviction, the behind the scenes story of the making of an award winning film- Buddha in a Traffic Jam. ‘Urban Naxals’- introduces the clandestine underbelly of India’s urban society- the unarmed extremists which work relentlessly to cripple the social fabric of our country. Vivek has not only coined the term “Urban naxals’ but cited many proof points in the book and talked about them in both the national and international legs of his book tour.