Inside the mad skull of Suparn Verma

Raja Sen meets Suparn Verma, the zany director of the thriller, Acid Factory

I will not review Suparn Verma's Acid Factory.

And no, this isn't just because the director once broke my little finger -- though one must admit the rest of the digits are rebelling against the idea of taking on the madman yet again.

Not that one of the most energetic filmmaker I've known ever needs actual provocation. The man clearly fell into a cauldron of Red Bull as an infant, and if you ever run into this wall-bouncing loon, just buckle up and hold on tight. 'Cause Suparn loves an audience, any audience. What better quality for a filmmaker?

We're sitting in a Delhi bar, less than a day away from his birthday, talking about his upcoming film (Which I'm not reviewing, by the way, only because I'm still out of town).

The idea is to ply the compadre with Delhi's finest kebabs and most easily accessed lager and loosen that lip. A dodgy plan, at best. Suparn doesn't need loosening up, and rattles off a long explanation about a chemical called Pentane that leads to temporary memory loss when I ask him about the origins of his film's title.

So it has nothing to do with, er, acid? The hallucinogenic kind? He guffaws loud and hard, startling our clueless bartender. Suparn goes on to recommend watching the film on acid, and then explains that it was quite trippy working with over a dozen smoke machines, and then blames all the intoxication on cobwebs, something they needed to recreate for the abandoned factory.

"Now the way cobwebs are made in films, is there's a chemical called glue." What people sniff? "Exactly! So glue is what they spray to make those webs. And if you are standing too close and they are making these cobwebs, trust me, you're going to be happy."

He laughs maniacally, his eyes gleaming as he describes crewmembers feeling dizzy and we both ponder about the fact that the very mention of glue brings sniffing to our minds instead of, well, sticking things