If anyone claims to know what ambition is all about, what it takes to know your true ambition, how you can go about fulfilling your ambition and the various games ambition plays with man, he must be God or someone closely related to God or at least a chosen one or a favourite of God. Ambition has its own moods and temperament, its own ways, its own ways of changing colour and changing the lives of man.

I have seen and been and lived with men (and women) who have nurtured and nursed one ambition or many ambitions. And I have seen them trying their best to pursue their ambition and I have seen how their ambition makes them work towards fulfilling it, even help them and then suddenly takes a turn they had never expected and cannot easily explain.

Like I met this young man (so what if he had greyed before his time, it only made him look more dignified), a man I was meeting for the first time but who I strangely realized I knew for ages after sitting and talking to him for just the first twenty minutes of our meeting, a dashing man with soaring ambitions and ideas, Trinetra Bajpai.

Bajpai was an ambitious Indian who had his own ambitions to make it big in his own way. And within a short span of time, Mr. Trinetra Bajpai was a name known in the international market in the field of chemical process technology and petrochemical, steel and wood products with a brilliant record of successfully executing numerous mega international scale projects both in India and in different parts of the world down the last thirty five years. He was successful. He could have grown much more successful. But what could he do about ambition which had other demands and plans for him and his future?

Bajpai always had a strong leaning and liking for the creative arts, with music specially. He had a wide variety of vintage songs which could and still be the envy of any connoisseur of Hindi film music. He was also very fond of Hindi cinema, now called the business of entertainment. He saw his ambition driving him into a new direction. He slowly forgot all that he was and discovered a new Mr. Trinetra Bajpai in him, a man who wanted to diversify, a man who wanted to make motion pictures, television serials and establishing in-house production support facilities.

His new ambition found avid inspiration in his wife, Kanika Bajpai, who was a renowned theatre and television artiste who had worked in sixteen major plays in India and abroad and thirty tele serials and worked with outstanding directors like Chetan Anand, Lekh Tandon, Atmaram (brother of Guru Dutt), Shyam Benegal, Basu Bhattacharya, Dinesh Thakur, Bansi Kaul, B N Shah, M S Satyu, Jalal Agha, Dr. Gopal Dutt and others. Kanika Bajpai was a name to reckon with and respected as an artiste.

Mr. and Mrs. Bajpai had one more advantage. Their daughter, Anshula Bajpai had a Masters Degree in creative writing, journalism and mass communication from UK and Australia. She is a director on the board of the company, Kanika Multiscope Pvt. Ltd. founded by her NRI parents. Anshula is also a talented writer of stories, screenplays and dialogues and has worked on more than a dozen scripts already.

Mr. Bajpai was "armed" to take on his own ambition. But it was also one man and his vast body of work as a filmmaker and director of tele serials (twenty films and fourteen major tele serials), the reputed veteran Lekh Tandon who was once an assistant to Raj Kapoor and then branched out to make ambitious and adventurous films like Professor, Amrapali, Jhuk Gaya Asmaan, Prince and Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye. He was one of the pioneers of Indian television, making serials that have been landmarks in the history of Indian television. It was Lekh Tandon and his work that inspired Bajpai to take a decision no man interested in making films and serials would dare to take. He decided his company would have Lekh Tandon and only Lekh Tandon as the director of all the serials and feature films his company would make. "I decided that I would be Lekhji's producer even till the day I would be walking around with a stick", Bajpai says. It is a lifelong agreement between Bajpai, his company and Lekh Tandon.

Bajpai's company, KMPL has also constituted a panel of eminent personalities with Lekh Tandon as the head, music director Khayyam, writer Pandit Revati Sarang Sharma and lyricist Naqsh Llyalpuri. The panel will be responsible for all the major creative decisions taken by the company.

The Bajpai's who have made Mumbai their base now have already completed three serials. The first "Bikhri Aas Nikhri Preet" is based on a popular novel "Vyadhaan" written by Bajpai's mother Mrs. Shantikumar Bajpai. It is a family social, produced on an ambitious scale, almost a magnum opus as Bajpai would like to call it. The second, "Bada Aadmi" is a comic thriller with subtle socio, political overtones, the first made for DD and the second for Sahara. The third "Kehta Jaaye Banjara" is a 52 episode serial based on short stories written by well known writers. Even as I write news comes from DD that Bikhri Aas Nikhri Preet has been passed by them and will be aired from November 24. The competition in DD is very tough but Bajpai's company has got their serials all through sheer merit alone. A major credit for this achievement goes to Lekhji who has done great work for DD in the past and because of the subject of the serial. Needless to say, all the three serials have been directed by Lekh Tandon.

Even as the Bajpais are busy with the making of what they call serials with a difference without meaning it like cliché goes and with all the confidence at their command, they are working out plans to go headlong into feature film production in a big way. They are aware of the changing trend in making films in Hindi. They have a team doing a thorough study of the market and all that goes into the making of feature films today. They know it is not easy these days when everyone talks about crores without caring for good and original subjects or scripts that are planned before films go on the floor and the selection of artistes are not done just because of their market value but because of the value of their work. "We are not going to take any hasty step for which we will have to repent later. We have our own ideas which are practical. We know how to plan in a realistic way, we believe. We don't want to be a part of the rat race. We don't want to make films only because of the glamour. We want to make films which will serve as purposeful entertainers. Our intentions are very clear. We are here to make good films, even try and set some new trend. We hope KMPL makes a mark and we would be glad if the planning we have in mind and the films we make encourage other filmmakers to find a way. It is not a boast but something coming out of all the experiences that we have collected", Bajpai whose confidence shows in every word he utters speaks volumes.

A team of writers are now busy working on the scripts of the company's feature films, "Kahin Ho Na Jaaye", "Kya Shaadi Hai" and "House on Ewitt Road". The motto of KMPL is the script first and everything else to follow. The company already owns in-house editing and dubbing facilities which are also available to outside production houses. It has a full scale writing department which works to plan a certain kind of unique revolution in the world of Hindi cinema. KMPL is on the threshold of trying to break new grounds in the world of entertainment where so much is already changing. They have just started and have a long way to go. With a man like Lekh Tandon as the brain behind it all and Mr. Bajpai as the man with the potential, the drive and the desire to give Hindi films entertainment a new dimension and, if luck, that one word which has always played an important part, whether people believe it or not, is on their side, they have no reason to look back.