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“She’s pure magic,” says Dheer Momaya, talking about his wife, Dar Gai, without a trace of sheepishness.
The 31-year-old film producer married Ukrainian director, screenwriter and producer, Dar, in 2019, and together the two co-founded the production house Jugaad Motion Pictures.
They have produced multiple music videos, including Prateek Kuhad’s cold/mess and Kasoor, Ritviz’s Sage and Liggi, and When Chai Met Toast’s Break Free. What they’re now perhaps most well-known for is producing Chhello Show [Last Film Show] along with Siddharth Roy Kapur and Marc Duale, the movie that is India’s official entry to the Oscars this year.
It’s obvious from the second you meet Dar and Dheer that the two are very much in sync, behaving unconsciously like yin and yang. Clearly, that extends to their professional lives as well.
Meet-cute
It all began when Dar and Dheer met in 2014. The way they met sounds like something straight out of a rom-com.
“It was a lot of coincidences that brought us together,” reveals Dar. “I’ve danced the Argentinian tango since I was a child. I was dancing at an event in Mumbai when his uncle came up to me and said, ‘you dance really well. Can you give me some lessons?’ And I thought, why not?
‘We became really good friends; we used to discuss philosophy, politics, and the tango, of course. One day he told me, ‘You know, even my nephew is into filmmaking. I think you should meet him.’ I said, ‘yeah, great, sure, maybe we could collaborate on something.’
I walked into the office, and when I saw Dheer, I knew I was in love. I’ve never been in love with anyone before! I was trying to be all nonchalant, discussing my ideas, but I kept looking at him and thinking, ‘he’s so handsome!’”
Was it the same for Dheer?
“Ya!” he says emphatically. “Dar walked in—and she’s got this incredible energy. When she enters a room, there’s this sort of magnetism that attracts you to her. She came in and narrated a couple of stories that she’d written and I was like, ‘I have to stop everything I’m doing and just produce for her, and make sure I tell her stories first. They were just so compelling.
“Obviously I’ve had girlfriends before, but I’d never really dived knee-deep into a relationship. The day I met her, I told a friend, I think I’m going to marry that girl… if she’ll marry me,” he laughs.
The rest, as they say, is history. And it is also history the two are making together now, with Chhello Show.
Hitting a mark
Making an Oscar-worthy film is no easy feat. But it helps that the couple is as passionate and committed to their work as they are to each other.
The two of them play different roles at different times of the day, and are constantly in work mode. Dheer describes himself as a writer-producer who just started directing, and Dar as a writer-director who’s also producing.
On Chhello Show, Dheer was the delegate producer; Dar was running the company while he was out producing the film.
“She’s also just created her first Netflix series, which will be out mid next year. She’s the writer, creator, showrunner, director, everything on that,” Dheer says proudly. “Basically, when I’m out producing things and Dar isn’t, she’s the one making the money, filming commercials, music videos. She’s making the money and I’m blowing through it!”
Chhello Show is the result of this constant creative collaboration, and their close relationship with director Pan Nalin, whose movies both Dar and Dheer grew up watching. But they wouldn’t exactly call it a labour of love.
While Dheer does note that, “All movies are labours of love,” he ventures quite plainly that, “The process of making a movie is quite alienating and lonely. There’s a lot of insecurity you have to deal with, and the actual process of filmmaking is quite taxing, too. You’re often working 16-hour days, shooting on location, away from your friends and family for months at a time. Chhello Show took a huge time commitment, a massive effort, because there was a huge discrepancy between what we were trying to achieve and what we had.”
Did they see Oscar potential before they started making the movie?
“We were looking to create a massive cinematic achievement,” confirms Dheer. “But it was a no-brainer. We didn’t really pick the story; we picked the filmmaker. Because Nalin’s made such incredible movies before, we knew he would only deliver something of exceptional quality.”
“Six years ago, we were at Pan’s office and he was narrating another story,” Dar remembers. “Then he started telling us about his childhood, about how he used to find matchboxes on the railway stations and pick them up, and Dheer said, we have to tell this story.”
Dheer picks up where Dar left off. “He kind of shot me down at the time, but a few years later, he called and said, I want to make a film. He narrated the story, and I was like, finally!”
Of course, every film producer wants to believe that they’re creating something legendary, but neither Dheer nor Dar could have foreseen what would happen.
“You don’t really think about awards or laurels, per se,” Dheer puts forward. “Even the Oscar is really a milestone, not the end result. The end goal is to have as many people as possible watch your film.”
“That being said,” he adds, “Nalin’s films have sold really well internationally. Even Chhello Show has been acquired by some major film studios worldwide, including in Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, Israel and Taiwan, and has been dubbed in five languages. The track record he has as a filmmaker internationally is massive.”
Persistence of vision
The day they found out that Chhello Show would be India’s official entry to the Oscars 2023 was momentous—for more reasons than one.
“I was on a plane, coming back from Germany,” Dar recalls. “I switched on my phone after I landed and my WhatsApp was flooded with all these messages saying, ‘Congratulations’. Then I opened Instagram and figured out what had happened.
“Dheer, Pan and everyone at the office were waiting for me until 4 am to celebrate. And we were all drinking tequila!”
It was slightly more emotional for Dheer.
“My grandmother had had a heart attack and was in the hospital. It was a strange time and I was in an emotionally weird space. Finally, the surgeon came and told us she was in the clear, so I had a moment to breathe, thanking my stars. And that’s when Nalin called. I picked up the third time he called, and he was like, ‘I don’t know where I am!’ and he put the phone down.
“Then he called me again and said ‘I think… I think they’ve picked us. I’ll call you back!’ and then I started getting calls and texts, and I remember just sitting down and celebrating by myself.”
The two of them are quietly optimistic about their chances of winning, but are thinking practically, too.
“I think we have a good chance,” says Dheer. “I have a lot of faith in our international partners. Orange Studio, our world sales agent, is a massive French company—it’s their first Indian film—they have won eight Oscars in the last five years, for films like The Father and The Artist. And Samuel Goldwyn has been nominated for four and won one foreign language Oscar in just the last three years. They understand how to navigate bringing a film to the academy, finding the right people to watch it, they know what film has potential.”
He sums it up in one sentence: “We’re going to put our best foot forward and hopefully get that win.”
Behind the scenes with Dheer & Dar
The couple answers questions about life together, their wedding, work and what comes next
Who is more creative?
Dheer: Definitely her.
Dar: It’s not me. But it also depends on how you define creativity. I have no discipline or spontaneity. I think what Dheer has is incredible intuition for stories and incredible empathy for stories and for people.
Dheer: I’m the fixer. I’m the plumber. I come in and fix the leak. Oh god, that was a bad analogy.
How much of that creativity was channelled into your wedding… whose ideas won?
Dar: Between the two of us… it was his mother! We were shooting, working on Last Film Show and several music videos. Of course, like everyone, we thought we were going to have a very small wedding. And when I sat down with his mother, I said, ‘let’s have a really small wedding. Okay, but let’s have a sangeet. Okay, let’s also have a haldi. Let’s also have a reception.’
We wanted to combine both Indian and Ukrainian traditions, so we got some musicians from Ukraine, and had some Ukrainian rituals along with Indian ones. We just wanted everyone to come and just have fun.
Would you say you’re a ‘typical’ married couple?
Dar: Such an interesting question. I keep forgetting I’m married… I’ve never called him ‘husband’, only ‘Dheer’!
Dheer: What makes our marriage atypical is that we don’t really bicker much over small things. Because we work together and run a business together, we have such pointed discussions on such large matters, the small stuff just floats away.
Dar: One of our biggest fights after we got married, was about Elon Musk. I actually cried.
Dheer: She wins every fight in the short-term and I win in the long-term. It’s like when we play Settlers of Catan.
Do you fight over home décor… like the colour of the sheets?
Dar: No, because he always chooses everything.
Dheer: No, she chooses everything.
Dar: I expected a lot of fights during the lockdown, because we have different ideas about messiness. I’m not a very organised person.
Dheer: Well, one thing I’ve learnt is, I can’t buy clothes without having Dar there. If I buy something and she wasn’t there, I’ll probably never be allowed to wear it. Now, I make it a point to send her photos before I buy anything.
Who’s the sloth?
Dheer: We’re both lazy in our own ways. The other day, we had a meeting with someone at 12 pm. At 11 am we decided to put on one episode of The Offer. Cut to, we’ve cancelled all our meetings, cancelled all our calls, ordered pizza, it’s 10 pm and we’ve finished the entire series.”
Do you argue about things like Insta captions?
Dheer: No, not really.
Dar: Both of us are very sloppy with our social media. We have to force each other to post something and be present on social media because it is important for our work.
How do you unwind?
Dheer: We read a lot. Dar made me a lot more of a reader than I was before. We do also love travelling, but Dar has a limited capacity for holidays. Four days in and she wants to go back to the office.
Dar: I don’t feel like I need a break. I feel like it’s the other way around—like I’m not doing enough. I love writing, even though it’s a painful process, but I’m glad I have the opportunity to create something, and I don’t feel drained when I’m doing that.
There isn’t much about the two of you on the internet. Is that on purpose?
Dar: For a long time, it was on purpose. We didn’t want to be present for everyone. It was just easier to keep things private. But it’s not like we’re strategising it. It’s organic. We create things and we want the work to speak for itself and not have the focus be on who created it.
Dheer: We made the conscious decision to not have a publicist for ourselves, personally. We’ve been approached for our personal PR and it’s not like we’re fiercely private or anything, that’s not the intention. We just want to focus on the work; we don’t want to think too much about what’s being projected. In an ideal scenario, we wouldn’t be on social media either. But I think we’d lose connections with people and just being there and seeing the zeitgeist play out in front of you.
Who’s the workaholic?
Dheer: Dar is more of a workaholic. She’s at office even on Sundays, doesn’t take days off, she enjoys spending time with her team, her writers. She’s done her Bachelors and Masters in Philosophy, and she reads a lot, too. From time to time, she comes to me with these incredible insights on human behaviour, all excited at 3am!
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From HT Brunch, November 5, 2022
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