 By the time he was in his twenties he had already seen classics like The Seventh Seal, Bicycle Thieves, Pather Panchali, Rashomon and Ghatashraddha.At the age of nineteen, he along with his cousin and their friends made a short film called "Happy Birthday" with a VHS camera loaned by a friend whose father worked in the Middle East.Since they had no editing facilities then, they shot the film in the editing order.