Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra on Delhi- 6's failure: "I was devastated... wanted to drink myself to death, to sleep and never get up"

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is without doubt one of the most talented directors of the Hindi film industry today. But, he has his fair share of hits and misses. He has given the audience films like Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, and has also had flops like Delhi 6 and Mirziyaan. Now, in his autobiography, The Stranger in the Mirror,, he has revealed how deeply affected he was with the failure of Delhi 6.

Talking about it, he wrote, "The film opened on Friday, 20 February 2009, to a great response. By Sunday, we had done over ₹40 crores of business, but then came Monday, and the audience just vanished from the theatres. I was devastated. Was it too dark a reality for them? Were they unable to identify with the protagonist? The box office debacle, and my own conflict with what ending was appropriate, shook me deeply. Was I capable of producing great cinema consistently? Was Rang De Basanti a fluke?"

Then hit the fark phase. He added, "I was going deeper and deeper into a dark hole. Unable to take it anymore, I drowned myself in alcohol," he said, and added, "I wanted to drink myself to death — to sleep and never get up. I could see how much pain I was bringing to Bharathi (his wife) and our daughter, Bhairavi, who was now in her pre-teens. My son Vedant was observing and things were eroding between us. I remained careless and insensitive to the people I loved the most."

But it was his wife Bharathi who helped him get back on his feet. He and the film's cinematographer Binod Pradhan later changed the ending to what they had originally planned- where Abhishek Bachchan's character is beaten to death and submitted it to the Venice Film Festival. The film, despite the box office failure, also won two National Awards that year.