"Me and my bachchu. My fantastic writer, collaborator and pain in the a**," director Anurag Kashyap wrote for Nihit Bhave in an appreciation post on Instagram a few weeks before Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai started streaming on Netflix.

Nihit, who penned Choked, says that though many interpret it as a film on demonetisation, the subject wasn't his main focus. "It has always been about a couple and the issues that money brings into their marriage," he says.

In an exclusive conversation with IndiaToday.in, Nihit talked about the film, why it took 6 years to make, it's much-debated ending, and more.

How is quarantine going for you?

It's going well. It doesn't matter if your film comes out, you still have to do jhadu-pocha and I have been doing that for a while. I am going to Twitter, reading all the reviews, and then going back to my kitchen sink and doing all the bartan. That's my life right now. It's all the same, nothing has changed.

Were you sure your life would change after the release of Choked?

No, I don't mean my life would change, but I would have ideally taken three-four days to soak it all in, congratulatory messages from the family and friends, and all. I wouldn't have probably done house chores, which I have to do now. I haven't really gotten the time to sit and chill for a while.

Choked has demonetisation at its centre. When did you decide to write this film?

I don't think the film is about demonetisation. I never wanted to write a film about demonetisation. I wrote the film in 2013 when there was no demonetisation, and from then to now, it has always been about a couple and the issues that money brings into their marriage.

I have always been fascinated with the things that can influence a relationship. Very often we see that the issue is the third person or a human element that affects a relationship. But here, I thought it would be interesting to write about how money affects a relationship. That was the central idea, and then demonetisation happened and you can't ignore something that big when you are writing a film on money. So, that sort of seeped into the story and it became a film about this couple and why they aren't working out. Demonetisation is the issue in the background that is hindering their relationship.

Do you think people are relating it more to demonetisation rather than the couple because Anurag directed it?

He has been very vocal about India's politics and that's a great thing. I don't think anyone should be apolitical. To come to your question, yes, I think people are seeing it as a demonetisation film probably because Anurag directed it. But I don't think the film sounds like he sounds in his personal life. I am happy that he dealt with it in a neutral way. There are obviously things he has added in the dialogues or the screenplay. If you catch it, you catch, otherwise, for a layperson, it can come across not as a comment on demonetisation but more like a documentation of it.

How did Anurag come into the picture?

So, I told him about the film in 2015 and from that point, he always kept saying, "Ye film 70-80 per cent tak hai, I really like it and would want to make it but woh 10-20 per cent missing hai." And then we would go back and forth on what that 10-20 per cent could be and then, while the discussions were going on, demonetisation was announced on November 8, 2016.

We met the same month and decided that this was going to be the last 20 per cent that we needed to bring the film together. I did like three or four drafts after that. It was a gradual process through the course of five or six years.

My next question would have been 'why the film took five or six years to make'. But I guess that is the answer.

And a lot of reasons contributed to that. First and foremost being that when Anurag Kashyap tells you that he wants to direct your film, you end up waiting for as long as you have to because that's the sort of break everybody is looking for. I did crib about it to my family and friends but yeah, it was worth the wait.

The characters of Sarita (Saiyami Kher) and Sharvari Tai (Amruta Subhash) are most talked about. Did you write them from your personal experience?

Yeah, I think every time a writer writes a character, it has to be somebody from their own life. I don't think we can make up people. What we can do is, we can give qualities to them or take qualities away from them. That's the most we can do. And I am from a middle-class Maharashtrian family, I know a lot of women who are exactly like Sharvari Tai and Sarita. I have noticed very strong survival instincts in Maharashtrian women, who just go out and do their own thing, come back home and manage it too and they aren't dependent on their husband. That's how the ball started rolling for Sarita and the whole film.

Demonetisation had some major implications on the country's economy and the people. In the film, it is dealt with lightly. Was that a deliberate decision?

What is dark and what is light is a subjective matter. For me, a bank cashier telling an old lady to basically f*** off, is extremely dark. She doesn't have even that much empathy left in her, she doesn't care about anybody at this point in the film. So, the commentary on demonetisation is always about how it affects the family and not how it affects the nation, because that would have been a completely different film. We were just concerned about the effect that demonetisation had on the mental health of a woman, who is trying to keep it all together.

The film's ending is quite debated. Did you purposefully give it a happy ending?

The essence of the ending remains what we always wanted to say. The mechanics of it changed a lot. In the last 15 minutes of the film, Anurag sir wanted to bring in energy and talk about corruption, greed. I, on the other hand, wanted to bring in a certain level of emotion. So, we both wrote multiple drafts of the ending and we both exchanged them. We both took from each other's drafts. What was shown in the film was the middle ground we both agreed on.

What's next for you?

I don't really know. There were plans to do a lot of things but now, because of the lockdown, we don't know when pre-production will start and when will people be ready to put money in movies again. So, as far as I go, I am writing a short film, I will direct it too. I want to take a shot and see how that works out.