QUOTE MARTIAL
MAKING WAVES
SHORT TAKES
ROUGH CUTS
MEMORIES
ARCHIVES
MOVIES CHAT

Tough neighbourhood

Mrudula Rajadhyaksha

Sunil Shetty in Ek Hindustani. Click for bigger pic!

After lunch, the model basti set up at Kamalistan is busy again. Maybe model is not quite the right word but as a replica, it's amazingly like the original.

There's a section of Kamalistan that has a few permanent blocks that are painted according to the producer's width of imagination and depth of pockets.

Today, there's a squalid and colourful slum colony in place there, built with loving care by art director Kinny Desai's team. Kinny took about 400 pics of the colonies around Kamalistan and really agonised on the squalid details. The effort shows.

So you have small lanes where papad and pickle sellers peddle their wares, two very doubtful looking cinema halls, post offices, telephone booths, bright clothes drying outside hovels, even a Sulabh Souchalaya -- the public toilet... Every sordid sight wrought in loving detail.

Director Tinnu Anand loves it. "The poor producer is already bankrupt," he chuckles happily, not sounding too worried, and he heads off to meet his cast.

Tinnu Anand

Having admired the sets, we seek an audience with the hero of the film, Sunil Shetty. We are told we can see him in the make-up room.

He's actually lying down when we step in. He smiles and gets up. The chairs are shuffled around to accommodate the visitors. The formalities over, we inquire about his current role.

"I play a guy who at the age of seven saves an 11-year-old from drowning in the Ganges and wins a national award for bravery. He (the protagonist) comes to Bombay from Allahabad and accidentally kills the son of a don. Which annoys the father and attracts the press. And so forth."

So how different is the role from the other roles he has been playing?

He looks you straight in the eye. "Its different in the sense of treatment and presentation. I've also some sentimental moments. This guy, in spite of a tough veneer, maintains his sensitivity and idealism. The film will make people realise that to have a good society, they must go beyond family and self-interest."

An assistant director peeps in and jerks his head towards the set. Sunil gets up to go for the shot. We bounce along in tardy pursuit.

The scene has goons clobber the hero in the basti to make him reveal the whereabouts of a woman, Gayatri. They keep at it till the ketchup stocks of shops around Kamalistan are all expended on Sunil.

Mohnish Bahl. Click for bigger pic!

To protect her hero, an 80-year-old woman steps forth and says she's Gayatri. An eight-year-old girl also claims to bear the damning name. Their solicitousness doesn't aid Sunil's cause since the goons only get madder. That's when the men in the basti decide it is time they lent a hand. And so the two groups get down to some serious mutual damage, sending assistants scurrying around for more ketchup.

Repulsed by all the violence and the reek of tomato in the air, we go back to a make-up room, where we wait for heroine Raveena. The lady comes in with the PR but she has apparently not been briefed about who she is supposed to meet.

"Oh s****," she exclaims as she steps in. "I didn't know this was a press conference." She goes on grumbling, "All press conferences are just the same. Just like when action, start sound, camera and you start." We aren't quite sure what she's on about though we can, perhaps, guess.

She's avoiding the journos, maybe afraid they'll inquire into her myriad personal problems. But that's what we think; the lady doesn't appear interested in telling us what's upsetting her. To reassure her, we ask her about her character in the film.

"My role is very interesting. I'm playing a police commissioner's daughter and Sunil's girlfriend. Sunil brings me here to meet the basti guys for the first time." She speaks fast, not stopping for breath. "This is not a Chitrahaar type of a role. Any more questions?" She ends abruptly, intending and causing offence.

Sunil Shetty and Raveena Tandon in Ek Hindustani. Click for bigger pic!

"No questions? Ok, bye." She tosses a sham smile around, provoking one senior journalist to retort, "There aren't any questions worth asking." Raveena glares at her as she opens the door.

"If looks could kill, I'd be dead, but, hell, what does she think of herself?" fumes the scribe.

She manages to make us forget for the moment her beauty in her pink and mauve chiffon sauce, exposing her hand covered with bangles and jewellery. In fact, it's a relief that we didn't have to tolerate her any more.

We return to the sets where a dance sequence is being picturised.

Choreographer Saroj Khan, in a pastel salwar kameez, is sweating it out, getting the junior artists to perfect their steps to the song, Sonewale nindse jaaga composed by Anand Raj Anand and sung by him along with Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan.

Ashish Vidyarthi and Mohnish Bahl, the other actors in the film, look a little bemused as they move around. They are quite happy, though, that they are playing positive characters for a change.

Says Ashish, who plays a scribe in the film, "Though I've many journo friends, this character isn't inspired by any of them. I'm playing Sunil's friend who supports me in my honest efforts at writing. This is not a completely white character I play, because I've a very bad of habit of drinking excessively, but I'm harmless when I'm high!"

Ashish Vidyarthi.

We wander over to director Tinnu Anand, who is free now that Saroj Khan has taken over. Cap in hands, he sits down with us in a corner, ignoring the noise around. He cocks an inquiring head. So we ask him about his return to direction after seven years.

"Earlier, Bharat Rungachary was to do this film but the film got held up after his death. So on Sunil's insistence, the audio cassette of the story narration was given to me which I carried with me to the outdoors location at Jaisalmer during the Saat Rang Ka Sapne schedule. I liked the story and completed the screenplay with my writer Santosh."

Tinnu claims he returned to direction because of the confidence Sunil reposed in him. Otherwise, he prefers acting assignments since he has fewer responsibilities and the work load is less.

For value addition, he has shot two songs in America. Relief from the shabby basti, maybe. Our guess is that it's a dream sequence but don't bet on it.

But a dream sequence is only where we can see Ms Tandon fit. As she herself admitted, "It's like other film heroine's roles."