Director Anurag Kashyap said that the one misconception about himself that he’d want to change is that he enjoys partaking in marijuana. In an interview recently, the filmmaker said that he is actually allergic to the substance, and recalled a story about having to take an emergency antihistamine when a fan gifted him a box full of joints at a film festival.
Appearing on the Flip the Script with Shubra podcast, Anurag said, “Because I’ve made Gangs of Wasseypur and Raman Raghav, people think I’m a psychopath. People are initially very scared of meeting me. And when they meet me, they get totally overwhelmed because I’m completely opposite of their perception. I can’t change that. A lot of people think that I smoke up. Often, when I get trolled, people call me ‘ganjedi’ and ‘nashedi’. But I just roll my cigarettes; they don’t even know I’m allergic to it. I get serious asthma attacks even if I smell somebody smoking pot around me.”
And this is what happened at the Toronto International Film Festival once, when a fan approached Anurag with a special gift. Recalling the story, the director said, “I was in Toronto for the festival, and somebody came and said, ‘I’ve got a nice gift for you’. He had a wrapped bag, with flowers on it. And because I’m allergic to it, I can smell it from a distance. I said, ‘What’s in that bag’. He said, ‘Something you’d love’. I opened the bag, and he had rolled joints in it.” Anurag told the man to take the marijuana away immediately. “I said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Take it away from me, take the smell away’. I had to take an antihistamine immediately. It’s that bad for me. But it’s perception. I can’t change that,” he said.
Anurag has recently opened up about the many health issues he experienced during the pandemic. The filmmaker said that he slipped into a depression following professional setbacks, and then had two heart attacks. This put him on steroids, which had an impact on his weight. He said that he is taking care to get back to his best, one day at a time.
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