A Conversation With Shagufta Rafique

What happens to a writer when the Film Industry stops listening? In this stark & achingly honest episode, Pooja sits down with screenwriter Shagufta Rafique, whose words once powered some of Hindi cinema’s most successful films - Aashiqui 2, Murder 2, Jannat 2, Raaz 2 & 3, Jism 2, Awarapan, and many more.  This is not a victory lap. It is a survival story. Shagufta speaks of a life built from lived experience - of wanting to be the 'good daughter' and supporting her mother by becoming a bar dancer. Of learning the language of pain early and of writing not from theory, but from the body. She reflects on what it means to be labeled “Irrelevant” and a "Has Been" in a system that constantly replaces memory with speed, instinct with metrics, and listening with noise. The conversation moves through the quiet erasures of the modern film Industry: how corporate gatekeeping reshapes classic storytelling, how female writers are sidelined, how simplicity is mistaken for weakness, and how algorithms now decide what deserves to be heard. What remains constant is her refusal to be silenced or disappear.This is a conversation about dignity and endurance.It is about the cost of speaking your truth when the room grows deaf. About writing - not to be celebrated, or even be read, but to simply remain alive.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.