Wading through the narrow streets of Triplicane, I meet Sarjun at his quaint house. He sounds confident about Airaa, releasing tomorrow. Sarjun, though, admits that he still hasn’t mastered the art of writing a horror film. He reminisces his early days as an assistant; the time he caught up with Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Aaranya Kaandam, and how it left him wanting for more. Call it destiny or irony, Sarjun’s Airaa is now releasing alongside Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe. Excerpts from an interview:

Right from your short film days, you seem to have a penchant for scripts that treat women as characters. Where does this sensibility come from?

I think it has to do with my upbringing. It also depends on the kind of films you watch. I watched a lot of Mani Ratnam and Selvaraghavan’s films. Be it Pudhupettai or 7G Rainbow Colony, most women in Selvaraghavan’s films are flawed and real. Perhaps I was subconsciously influenced by all this.

One of the striking images in Lakshmi is the scene where Lakshmi has an intimate moment with her husband. But she is conscious about her child lying next to her. Have you thought about exploring the privacy of the couple?

Yes, I have. Every time, I walk into someone’s tiny house, I’d think: how do they get their own private space? Forget about intimacy, they can’t even hold hands together. This bothered me a lot. Which is why I wrote that scene for Lakshmi.

Treating a woman as a vamp has become ‘powerful’ these days. What, according to you, defines a strong woman character?

We have come to point where casting a female protagonist translates to the film being termed ‘women-centric’. Any film that has meat for performance can qualify as women-centric. It should have a balance in terms of scope. In that sense, the two lead characters in Airaa are powerful in their own way.

Does this ‘meat’ come in during the writing stage?

Yes. Again, I would cite Sneha’s character in Pudhupettai as an example. Is she as powerful as Neelambari of Padaiyappa? Maybe not. But it’s a subtle, submissive character. The scene where she walks away from Dhanush is mind-blowing. At the end, it’s that performance you remember.

Indian filmmakers tend to use black-and-white as an effect. We saw that in your Lakshmi and Kannada film Lucia. Why aren’t we making full-fledged black and white films?

Because we are consumed by fear. When I wanted to use black-and-white for the flashback in Airaa, many advised against it. They asked me to go for sepia. And the biggest irony is that we grew up watching b/w films. I wanted to explore the art side of using black-and-white. The colour tone is so pure that it enhances your character’s performance.

The horror genre usually suffers from a set template, at least in Indian cinema. In such a case, how do you bring newness to the script?

It is a ghostly-horror. But, it’s not too much into The Conjuring or Insidious zone. I have handled the scare minimally because I don’t know how to make a horror film. At the same time, we are not cheating the audience. Right from the third scene, you’ll start guessing that the film is leading to the flashback.

Did you get the conviction when you read the script?

That’s the biggest problem with the genre! Horror is purely visual. And the film takes its shape at the edit table. For example, I’d have shot the ghost scene for eight seconds. But, the editor would have used it as a two-frame and you’ll feel the jump scare.

Directors, too, need to feel the scare, right?

Correct. But to be honest, I didn’t (laughs). When I completed 40-50% of the film, I was able to visualise as to how it would pan out.

You have been associated with your writer Priyanka Ravi for quite some time. How did you operate with respect to Airaa?

We decided the overall structure of Airaa, like, what would happen in the 20-minute, 40-minute points and so on. She gave me reams of paper and I started editing it. I’m usually comfortable writing dialogues. So, I would change some of the dialogues a week before the shoot.

The script of Maa had very little descriptions. When you make a horror film, it needs to have specific details, right?

She (Priyanka) went overboard with her descriptions for Airaa (laughs). I had to tone it down because we didn’t have the luxury of certain things. For example, if a scene normally takes two days to shoot, the details that she gave extended the shoot for five days.

Would you say that it’s better to have a woman writer?

At the scripting level, yes. But I wouldn’t say it’s always better. Then, how did Balachander, Mani Ratnam and Selvaraghavan write powerful female characters? Having said that, it’s difficult to write a wild, edgy female character in the presence of a woman writer. She may not like it. The issue is that people expect political correctness from cinema. If a character is misogynist, he or she should be seen within the confines of the film.

The trailer for Airaa has the presence of a butterfly throughout. Is it safe to assume that it has to do with butterfly effect?

Maybe, maybe not. Butterfly wasn’t there in the script. And it wasn’t there when we shot it. The decision to use butterfly as a character came only during the post.

It’s strange that Nayanthara’s deglamorised look became the talking point.

I haven’t felt that way because I watched her performance. We didn’t write a deglamorised role for Nayanathara. We wrote it and she fit perfectly. Initially, she wasn’t supposed to play Bhavani. But she said ‘yes’... and then everything became bigger.

Airaa is clashing with Super Deluxe. Funnily, the trailer of the latter reminded me of your previous film Echcharikkai’s trailer…

Firstly, I’m a big fan of Thiagarajan Kumararaja and I’m fortunate that my film is releasing alongside his. The Echcharikkai trailer was deliberately done. I was so blown away by Aaranya Kaandam’s trailer that I wanted a similar edit pattern for Echcharikkai as well.