Lights , Camera , Action !

The Amisha Patel episode

‘ I need a Mercedes to go back home ’.
Amisha Patel , the photogenic and well endowed actress , shot to fame in the movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai . Actually , she didn’t quite shoot to fame as much as Hritik Roshan , the hero of the movie and son of not-so-successful Bollywood actor Rakesh Roshan , did , creating history unheard of before . The movie was a miraculous debut for Hritik , he became a legend overnight . One of the reason for his success was he had broken the stranglehold of the ‘Khans’ , namely Salman , Shah Rukh and Amir who were the reigning Kings of Bollywood with movie after movie starring either of these three . Hritik was Punjabi , tall , muscular and handsome , combined with great agility helping him create some super dance moves . None of the Khans had his personality , height and slick killer looks . Another reason for this success was the movie’s choreography , marvelously shot in Mauritius it was a ultimate relief for an ordinary movie-goer . Then the music . And finally , fresh , mysterious , good looking Amisha Patel.
‘I need a Mercedes to go back home ’
I had only heard of the tantrums celebs threw before , here I was witnessing one . We had bought her a return air ticket from Mumbai to Pune , as part of our compensation to her to inaugurate our radio station . She had insisted that her mother’s ticket also be paid for , which was done . Now , having done her bit by giving the first on-air interview to pune’s new radio station , she wanted to travel by road and not by air , as we had planned and agreed earlier . The flight was leaving in an hour , but she was clear that she wanted to go back by road . As time ticked , I needed to organize the car and fast .
The first of May was Maharastra day and labour day , a double holiday . On any given day , most shops shut for a siesta between one and four in the afternoon in Pune . On a holiday like this one , it was impossible to organize anything for this city of the tired , retired or ready to expire .
I made the first impressions executive call up all the travel agents in the city .
Shut .
We attempted to call the travel desks of all hotels .
‘No Mercedeses , sir . Will a Toyota Qualis do ?’
It won’t . I thought hard for a solution .
And then it struck me .
As usual , the answer was the most obvious , right under ones nose and completely hidden till the last minute .
The Mercedes Benz car in India is manufactured in the Chakan factory industrial area , twenty two kilometers from Pune . And that this fact struck me so late came also rided on the caveat that a factory can’t lease out a car , just makes and sells .
I thumbed through the telephone directory to find the numbers of the factory. The best thing to do on a holiday is to call the residential numbers of the people listed .
I called up the first guy listed , Suhas Kadlaskar .
‘Mr.Kadlaskar , I have a sticky situation . Amisha Patel has just inaugurated our radio station here and she would like to go back by road in a Mercedes . We had organized air tickets for her , but she insists on going by road . It’s a holiday , have tried all avenues and finally decide to call you from the directory . Can you help me organize a Mercedes for Ms.Patel ?’
‘I know it’s a strange request . You will need to give me some time . Can I call you back in a couple of minutes ?’
‘Sure , Mr.Kadlaskar ’
The next ten minutes seemed to last a lifetime .And the five minutes after that were awesome .
‘Where must I arrange for the car to come ? ’, said Kadlaskar .
‘Hotel Blue Diamond , Koregaon Park ‘
‘The car will be there in half hour . Could you please ensure that the car is back by the evening ?’
‘Sure , Mr Kadlaskar ‘
It was remarkable of Suhas Kadlaskar to have done that . I mean , we didn’t know each other , yet he sent his own car to drop Amisha Patel to Mumbai on my request .

Siraj Baig besides being one of our best sales managers , was also a big Amisha Patel fan when he was not busy chasing his targets . And a big , crazy fan , at that . He carried a tattoo of her on his chest and a photograph in his wallet . You couldn’t say a bad word about her in his presence . He would pick up a fight and defend her .
I called Siraj up at his house .
‘Siraj ,do you want to drive back Amisha to Mumbai . She’s leaving in ten minutes . And it’s a Mercedes which has to come back to Pune by evening .’
Siraj was dumbfounded . Amisha Patel , heartthrob , live . He didn’t believe me. Some things just can’t come true is the general belief .
‘ Her mom is traveling with her , you can even propose marriage ‘,I joked .
He just didn’t believe me , missing the opportunity of a lifetime .
Siraj can’t get over what I said then , till this day .

Suhas Kadlaskar , as it turns out , is the Financial Controller of Daimler Chrysler Benz in India . he’s the most powerful man on the board and the distinct number two man in the company in India after Hans Huber , the CEO .
As we chatted on the day of the launch of the Mercedes E230 launch on Indian soil , I pointed out the Amisha incident to him and asked him what made him send the car on a strangers , or fellow professionals , request on a holiday .
‘ Well , ‘ said Kadlaskar , taking a deep breadth ,’ you see , Amisha Patel is our customer . She drives a Mercedes in Mumbai and as part of our cultural ethos , our customers concerns override everything else .’
I was thoroughly impressed by the car and its ethos .
Later , as I test drove the car and felt the exhilaration of its absolutely superior engineering , I was convinced nothing even comes close .
On July twenty seventh , unprecedented rain caused havoc in Mumbai with major flooding in all the roads . It took three days for the rain to clear . Many people abandoned cars on the roads and ran home , creating absolute chaos . Some people died in their cars as the mechanical systems failed and the doors jammed , making it impossible to break the windows and get out before water swallowed them . Thousands of cars were rendered useless with their gear boxes turning paralytic . Most car garages after that took days to even register the cars for repair . Only one company replaced all the cars that had functional disorders due to the floods . Mercedes .

I walked upto Amisha Patel .
‘The Merc is waiting for you ‘
‘Thanks . Is it ok if we leave in an hour ‘
‘Sure , just that the gentleman who sent the car needs it back by the evening ‘
‘Sure .So we get anything to eat while on our way to Mumbai ?’
‘You could grab a couple of sandwiches here . You can’t stop on the expressway .’
‘Good idea ‘, and she disappeared in the elevator to her room .
An hour later , she was on her way to Mumbai . Siraj didn’t come and missed something .

The photographer gave the developed photographs in two days .
Amisha Patel looked stunning , ravishing and brilliantly photogenic . The entire office was staring in stupor at her beauty and charisma .
I keep a photograph of her with me and my team next to the photograph of the Mercedes E230 , the most outstanding car ever made .
Noone quite knows how the photographs are connected , yet .




The Hritik Effect

The fact that Hritik was visiting our studio was enough to send shock waves across the company rank and file . He had just completed his comeback movie , Koi Mil Gaya , a science fiction flick , directed and produced by his father just like his first mega hit , Kaho Na Pyar Hai . And as part of his promotional tour , he was jet-setting cities giving interviews to publications , television networks and radio stations . The hysteria that had ensued after his first movie was a little missing this time and one felt it in the air . There was a deafening loss of public memory after his first movie . He had been relegated as a one film wonder and abandoned to darker corners of peoples’ memoirs . From Hritik , Hritik to Hritik , who had been a painful transition for this young actor . Worse than ignomy is ignomy post enourmous fame . He coped by working his muscles even harder and waiting for the right script that could turn his fortune .We were , in effect , meeting him when he was pretty much down and out . He was expecting the release the next Friday with dated breadth , hoping for some sort of a reinstatement of his erstwhile superstar status . Fridays are when new movies hit the theatres and that’s when a star’s fate is decided , with the box office collections playing the jury . Next Friday would decide Hritik’s fate .
‘He’s coming at five’ , ‘ anybody and everybody knew this .
The photographer was studying areas around the studios trying to see places he could shoot from , looking at the possibilities of creating a not-so-ordinary environment for the photographs . Shortly, he stood on a desk , held the camera close to his eyes and examined the effect . Then he jumped and went behind a work desk to study another possibility . He looked at the studio equipment and tried creating an angle that would avoid the mikes and glares reflecting from the window .
A large flower basket was ready to welcome him . Kabir would probably object . I remember his couplets

Mujhe us panth per rakna dal ,
Jis panth per chalte veer anek .

Kabir , the faqir poet , rued the practice of garlanding people that didn’t matter . His couplet describes the desires of a flower , which as part of a garland , wouldn’t like to be placed around the heads of politicians , not on the feet of Gods , but on the path that is treaded on by courageous soldiers and freedon fighters .
Hritik didn’t qualify to be anyone of those mentioned by Kabir , but he could qualify as a fighter , fighting for a comeback in peoples minds and hearts , many years after his first movie . Just about .
‘Is the script ready ?‘, screamed the enthusiastic and energetic young producer of the show , Deepika Rana . Deepika was one of the coolest cucumbers one will see . that she handles production remarkably well is established . How stress and success sit easily on her shoulders is to be seen to be believed . Pretty cut and dry too, they don’t make creative professionals like her anymore .

Minutes later , there was some commotion .
Hritik Roshan , potential king of Bollywood , acting talent and phenomenon , was here .

Hritik looked much more smarter in person than in print or camera . All the photographs and television snatches failed to catch his extremely handsome personality . He was physically perfect , his jaw and cheek bones aligned , his musculature defined to the T , am sure his six-ab pack had rippling muscles . Tall and slight , he was well defined male. His smile and nods could easily set hearts flutter . In all fairness , Hritik perhaps deserved all the adulation he got .
His handshake was warm and friendly , neither firm like Shah Rukhs’ nor out-of-the-world like Amitabh Bahchans’.
I noticed curiously how he was paying particular attention to each and every girl in the office . He wanted to know if they were looking at him !
It was strange that he wanted acceptance demonstrated . Most girls who work in a radio station are star struck , since movies and television is the most definite next halt for most creative radio professionals . Yet having seen many stars close and having spent interviewing them on their lives , meeting them when their movies didn’t do well or when they went through trying circumstances in their lonely lives , most radio jockeys take the stars very lightly . Hritik was looking for some sort of a reaction from every girl present there . He was double checking his relevance amongst today’s young ones .Times change radically nowadays , more so in India . Every couple of years is a new generation .His last movie had been five years ago .The stars change every five years compared to decades earlier .Even technology changes radically each year now , so this new movie was adequately armed with a lot of science fiction , making sure audiences fell for its special effects and the star was reborn .
Hritik was just reading if his fan following had dried up .
Checking his effect .
He gave a soulful interview , full of optimism and hope .

Ten days later , Koi Mil Gaya , the science fiction remake of Spielberg’s ET was declared a massive super hit of 1994 , raking in millions in its opening weekend and turning Hritik into a confirmed sensation in the movie business .

I saw him again at the Filmfare awards precursor , celebrating the best movies of last year. It was the fiftieth year of the Filmfare awards , the most respected awards in the movie business in India and the coveted statuette had been turned golden for the ceremony . Everyone would get golden statuettes instead of the traditional black tanned one that was given for the last forty nine years . ‘Hamara Yaar , Hamaara bachchpan ka dost ‘, is all that Javed Akhtar , the much celebrated script writer , had to say when asked to describe the filmfare awards and compare it with the other newer movie awards that were lauched in recent years by other media houses .
Hritik was again in the reckoning for the best actor award for his performance in Koi Mil Gaya , an award he had won when he debuted five years ago with Kaho Na Pyar Hai .He looked cool with his grey flannel suit and worn jeans , holding hands with his beautiful wife Suzzane .
Confident and more surer of himself than when I had met him first , Hritik Roshan was beginning a new climb to superstardom .



Waiting for Sandhyali .

As we waited for the inaugural ceremony of the latest event that we had created , I was cordoned off in the open air lounge of the Maharastra Education Trust college of Management in Bandra with Sandhyali Sinha , a fellow army brat and an upcoming movie actress .
Her last movie and as I jogged my memory , probably the only movie she had done to date , was a tear-jerker called ‘Tum Bin ’ where she played the role of a girl who was expecting her fiancé , but as fate would have it , the guy is killed accidently by some rich guy’s son , who then falls in love with her . She has to overcome the grief first to fall in love again and so they move to Canada where she joins her uncles business and then eventually the most evident thing happens and she weds the accidental killer of her fiancé.
I remembered the movie as a fast moving script with good choreography .
She was our celebrity guest invited to inaugurate the Business Process Outsourcing event that we had organized at the third floor of the institute . Intensive radio promotions would lead to a lot of aspiring people looking for jobs coming to the venue . Sandhyali Sinha would inaugurate the event and was the main draw in our ceremonial beginning of the event. We waited at the open-air lounge , awaiting the signal that enough crowds had come and we could go ahead and inaugurate the event . The last time around we had a similar event , three months ago , we had Dia Mirza to inaugurate the event . The event was a sell out . Dia was an extremely simple girl and had an opinion on a lot of subjects under the sun , including the entire BPO revolution which she felt was damn good for India .Dia Mirza also was on a rapid fire ascent up the Bollywood ladder , being a finalist of the annual Miss India contests and having represented India on the World stage. Her list of movies was rising each couple of months .
Sandhyali , who wore her hair very elaborately , was different in that she was a relative unknown in the industry and bagged a role when she was spotted by the director at a party .
She was a little too pretty for an army officers daughter . She detailed for me the life she was leading now with leased apartments and her grandmom cohabiting with her in harsh , capitalist Mumbai . Her next movie was something called ‘Ab Tumhare Havale Watan Saathiyon ‘ with a whole host of stars and slated for release in a couple of months . She talked excitedly about the movie and her expectations , sharing wee bits of the movie story .
It’s common practice that whenever two army officers children meet , you tend to check the schools one has studied in and the locations where their dads were transferred to , hoping to find a link somewhere .
Nothing matched in our case . Srinagar , Mhow , Tezpur in Assam , Ambala , Gwalior ,Shimla Nagpur and Pune read my list . Jabalpur , Bangalore , Jodhpur , Patna , Lucknow and Chandigarh read her list .
Alas !
Nevertheless , we struck an instant communication over movies that I liked and movies that she was going to act in , again not reaching any kind of mutual agreement on a Bollywood formula that we both liked .
Soon it was time to inaugurate .
The inauguration was quick , the traditional lamp was lit , the flashlights blinked , the crowds were parted and we walked in to meet each participant company in their classroom-stalls .

In an hour ,we were done .
As I walked with her to her car , I wished her the best and promised that I would see her new movie for sure . She smiled , shook hands and left .

The movie bombed . Within a week of its release, the movie sank without a trace . It was withdrawn without even reaching a lot of cities it was meant to be distributed in .
I couldn’t keep my promise this time around and Sandhyali Sinha vanished somewhere in tinseltown waiting for another script , another movie ; leaving me with good memories of a lively conversation .




The Serial Kisser of Bandra

The Photographic studio neatly tucked outside the Mehboob studio near Mount Mary hill also doubles up as a photocopy shop . While running around for the British visa , I found this shop pretty well located for my tasks of getting my snaps done and organizing document copies .
As I emerged from the photo lab , I found Emraan Heshmi , the newest Bollywood star standing with his girlfriend discussing a photocopy requirement with the shop owner .
Emraan Heshmi , will write his name in the history of Indian movies as the guy who brought about a great cultural revolution without knowing it .
He has earned the sobriquet ‘ serial kisser’ , because of the elaborate kissing scenes his last three movies , Murder , Zeher and Ehsaan with three new actresses . The movie Murder had scenes of uninhibited sex , something that was brought brashly out of the closet by Mahesh Bhat , low budget moviemaker . Most of his movies are made on a very small scale , address an typical social issue and create a controversy to get free publicity and therefore save on promotional costs . Murder was the story of this bored housewife’s extra-marital affair . Mallika Sherawat shot to instant fame because of this movie though her debut movie boasted sixteen kisses , seemed like they were in vain . This one rocked . The audiences lapped up her sex appeal and Emraan Heshmi’s ordinary boy next door cum jilted lover profile and kept visiting the theatre for more of her skin show . While Mallika Sherawat fell out of the Bhat camp , one of the low value camps in Bollywood , the Chopras and Johars being the biggest ones , Emraan became their mainstay for future movies . Mallika is also the smartest kid on the block , with an attitude ,and she’s made it to the Cannes Film festival as a celebrity invitee on the basis of just one movie , while Aishwarya needed a ten year working history post winning the Miss World title in 1994 to be invited . She is ever ready with a soundbyte and knows what people want in this day and age .
Emraan Heshmi on the other hand is very short for his screen presence and am sure he was unaware of the revolutionary thing that he has started - kissing was suddenly okay in public and on screen , unlike the last fifty years in Bollywood where in each movie , as soon as people came close to kissing , there would surface a set of flowers covering their faces and the audience would need to assume that the actors kissed .
Maintstream movie superstars with great reputation started kissing their actresses on screen starting a revolution of sorts . Amitabh Bachchan , clean superhero without a doubt , kissed Rani Mukerjee in the movie ‘ Black ‘ released a full year after Murder , Sanjay Dutt elaborately kissed the difficult but most beautiful actress ,Aishwarya Rai in ‘Shabd’ , Kareena Kapoor kissed Fardeen Khan blissfully in the movie ‘Dev’ and Saif Ali Khan numerously kissed Priety Zinta in the movie ‘Salaam Namaste ‘. And Manisha Koirala , who’s starred in some great movies with superstars even kisses an unrecollectible non-descript actor in the movie ‘Tum’ .
With that one movie ‘Murder ‘ , Emraan Heshmi has made sure that no actress can ever refuse a kissing scene in a movie . Lesser actresses like Neha Dhupia probably can’t refuse any number of kissing scenes .In two of her recent movies , Siskiyaan and Julie , she kisses her co-stars with great abandon , making the act larger than the movie itself .
Movies have given way to television serials trying to present the kiss to the family closeted in front of the television screen .
Television has followed up the moviedom’s experiments with kissing with many of their actors and actresses kissing away to rating points .
Newspapers couldn’t be left behind , in the issue of twelfth January 2006 , Mumbai mirror a mailine daily supplement , carried a large article on ways in which people kiss and methods to improvise kissing , something that was usually discussed in issues of Cosmopolitan and read by young girls in the privacy of their rooms .
The serial kisser from Bandra just changed that .



The hardworking Kapoor

‘What next after No Entry ?’ I asked Boney Kapoor , the producer of the new movie ‘No Entry’ as he sat next to me in the Sahara airline lounge in Lucknow airport waiting for our flight to Mumbai .
Big Boney Kapoor laughed .
‘Did you see the movie ?’
‘Yes, I did . It was terrific ’
‘ Thank you . Working on my next film , it’s a big film . Tying up loose ends .’
Boney Kapoor , twice married husband to South Indian heartthrob Sridevi , was also the elder brother of Anil Kapoor , who has built his reputation in Bollywood working in the remakes of all movies that have hit great success in the south . Most of Anil kapoor’s movies have had good success and baring a few audacious large format movies like Ram Lakhan , Taal and Tezaab , he’s done well for himself in remakes .
Anil kapoor , sat quietly , saying nothing . There was a third guy in the group , who looked like a producer type . The ones who manage the monies for any movie .
Anil Kapoor soon opened up .
He animatedly had a conversation about some new movie project .He was upset with Boney for some concessions that he had done for some supplier . He was also upset that some co-actor’s role had been made larger than necessary . ‘You can’t build someone else’s brand on our money ‘ said he emphatically , ‘ I work hard , harder than any other actor . I might not have the best of personalities , but I work harder than anyone else in the industry . ’
I thought about him . Many years back , way back in 1987 , just when I entered college , the movie ‘Tezaab’ was released . It was a gangster movie on the people living on the fringes of society and their milieu . I had to fight for the tickets at the queue as it was sold out for many many weeks and when we had decided to see the movie , we needed all seventeen tickets together . There was mayhem at the ticket counter , and in the mad rush our task was to make enough way for one of us to hit the counter and get the tickets . It was an amazing experience , but we got them with our clothes and our spirit intact .Anil Kapoor became a rage . But after that , somewhere down the years , he couldn’t position himself well enough to be a good mainstream actor like a lot of the others have managed to do . And when the Khans took over Bollywood in the mid-nineties , Anil kapoor shifted to remakes for survival , only to reemerge after many years with this hit movie ‘No entry ’.
I quite liked the hard working Kapoor . He seemed to be sincere than most actors I have met .





The 88% problem

The biggest event that we pulled off was the builders mela , where consumers could get home loans from banks and multiple options for properties across Mumbai .
Vivek Oberoi , dashing young hero of ‘Yuva’ and boyfriend of the extraordinarily beautiful Aishwarya Rai was invited for the opening ceremony .
He was a true sport . he spent a long time in the studio describing how he needed a home loan himself and therefore was coming to the mela inviting all the others to come too . That it was a mela for only expensive real estate properties helped him establish his credentials as a premium actor too . Houses worth upwards of sixty lacs were up for grabs .
Vivek Oberoi came on time , cut the ribbons and walked around the stalls looking at each of the exhibits carefully .He spent time talking to each of the builders and exploring possibilities of buying the property .
An hour later , we got him to our stall where the entire sales team had been assembled for a small ceremony for rewarding the team that had sold the event .It was quite historic as an event of this magnitude had never been sold before in Mumbai and we had made a tremendous amount of money out of the event . This one event transformed our entire sales team and turned it into a victorious outfit that could go out and sell anything ,achieving the years numbers and growing the company’s performance dramatically . The team had also hit eighty eight percent of its targets for the first time in history .
We aptly got a large cake with the numbers 88% written in the centre and ‘congratulations’ written around it .
Vivek Oberoi walked upto the cake . I handed him a knife , explained the occasion for the cake .
‘Wow, fantastic show , guys ’ said Vivek to great cheering from the team .
And he cut the cake to general shouting and loud bonhomie .
Then he turned to me on the side , shifted his weight to move away from the cake , put an arm around my shoulder and said ‘ Next time , do 100 % . Okay ! ’.
Damn !




The Greatest

Ever since ‘Deewar ’, the movie about values in life , I have been a great fan of Amitabh Bachchan . All other movies added to his legendary status as the actor classique’ of Indian cinema . Much of his life is an open book , he’s covered by every publication worth its salt , the nation prays whenever he hits the hospital , his wife , son and daughter have pretty clear non-controversial lives . Even if there are , like in the case of his son’s love affair or his political career or his attempts at corporatizing Bollywood with his company ABCL or his friendships with strange political bedfellows or Rekha , he rides them over with ease .He had been there and done that and was still at it .
I had no idea of what the reality was till I actually met him as part of the Filmfare Awards ceremonies .
The new multiplex Inox was the venue where the golden statuette of the Lady in Black , as the Filmfare award trophy is called was being unveiled by us . Select guests included Dilip Kumar , Bollywood thespian , who had won the first filmfare award when it was instituted , lata Mangeshkar who had won the award for best singer and Javed Akhtar who had a great role to play in the many movies that went onto become blockbuster superhits . Yash Chopra was invited as he had made a lot of those movies over the last many years and Amitabh Bachchan was invited because he was Amitabh Bachchan and no Bollywood ceremony is complete without him .
Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu , his wife and actress of yesteryears was the first to arrive.It was a strange sight . He came dressed in ordinary clothes and had an orderly carrying the clothes that he would eventually wear for the ceremony . He walked using a walking stick , his age catching up with him fast .
Yash Chopra , Javed Akhtar and Lata Mangeshkar came in one Mercedes car and were promptly ushered into the room .
Every heart and soul there at the entrance of Inox theatre beat for Amitabh Bachchan as news spread that he was round the corner signal and expected any minute.
Ten minutes later , the crowd was swelling and ecstatic . Suddenly a whole lot of photographers emerged from the blue . Surely , they were greater than the number invited by us .
Another minute later , a large golden Toyota Lexus pulled in .
Out stepped Amitabh .
My heart sank . He has undoubtedly ,immense aura and stupendous charisma . Impeccably dressed , he emerged as a man in great spirits and as many cameras merrily clicked away , he smiled superbly .
‘Is this the party ’, he asked in his characteristic deep baritone .
I just extended my hands , ‘ Welcome ’
He grasped and released my hand firmly and rushed in .
As I ran to catch up with him, there was absolute commotion . There are two escalators to go up and down parallel to each other as one enters Inox . It could have been a scene from a movie , as Amitabh moved up the escalator , many photographers who were waiting inside came down the other escalator trying all kinds of camera angles and shots .
Amitabh Bachchan leaves an impression , unlike any other actor anywhere . Probably Shean Connery comes close . Tall imposing and very well read , his smart repartees make people take notice . As he entered the room , no one was larger , or more magnetic ,or more authoritative and or commanded more attention than the Big B . The event started and stopped with him . He could feign humility but I know now that there’s nothing bigger than the Big Bachchan .
I saw him at a couple of other occasions and it reinforces the truth . Jeetendra , father of the creator of Television sitcoms Ekta Kapoor , was once asked how he ranked himself in the industry . Prompt came his reply , I am the eleventh best star in Bollywood .
He was asked , so ‘who are the top ten ’ .
‘Amitabh Bachchan ’, said he , without batting an eyelid . It’s true .