Anxiously he looked at the dipping sun. 'Pack up!' He yelled to his assistant before occupying his chair. As he reached for a chilled bottle of water, he looked around at the hundreds of junior artists on the sets of his period classic Lord of the Ruins. He was certain this magnum opus on the life of Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, the excavator and archeologist who started the extensive excavations of Harappa, would elevate him to the heights enjoyed by the likes of Peter Jackson and Steven Speilberg. His script writer had done a brilliant job, by adding a time machine to transport the protagonist to the time-frame of the glorious civilization! Maybe it was destined that he, Bahadur Mandarkar, the ‘Director with a Difference’ as the tabloids addressed him, would be the man to win an Academy Award for the nation! He took a contented swig out of the chilled bottle of Bisleri.
How many strings he had to pull at the central government level to get permission to shoot his film in Lothal! Permission was not granted by the Pakistani government to do the actual shooting in Harappa. But here in Lothal, there were topographical similarities…and the ruins of the bygone civilization….OH! How jubilant he and Saxena had been when they discovered this valley sequestered from the eyes of the modern world, preserving the ambience of a world, 3000 years old!
Harappa had been an obsession since his high school days. He had to thank his history teacher for this movie. It was in her class that he had been labeled a prize fool. History lessons in the post lunch periods were a pain… He used to sleep, screened by the hulks sitting in front of him. On one such noon, the teacher had fired a question at him. He hadn’t even heard it properly and she had thundered, ‘Haven’t you even heard of Harappa?’ He had jumped up and said, ‘Yes Maa’m. He was our Field Marshal…!’ He had been nick-named Field Marshal after that! I will show the world who I am, he used to tell himself. Today, 2 Screen awards and 3 Filmfare awards later, ( the latest for his ‘ Platform No 3’ depicting the stark life of the microcosm whose life and destiny were on the platform of a railway station…) he was a director of great repute!
Today, actors clamoured for a role in his films. Bahadur Mandarkar… You have made it, man! He mentally patted himself. Hearing a muffled cough he returned to the present. It was Saxena, his assistant, who looked quite troubled. ‘BM’, Saxena said, ‘we have trouble. The heroine wants to talk to you. She wants something. You better talk to her.’
Mandarkar walked with Saxena to the heroine’s tent. When he heard her request he was livid! ‘Madam’, he said trying not to blow his fuse. ‘This is a period piece. What you want is impossible! We are in Harappa . There can not be any mermaids in this story….!’
'C’mon, director saar, if you want to, you can always put in a dream sequence, where I can come dressed as a mermaid and the hero can sing from the beach to me. We can do the shooting in Amsterdam!'
‘ BUT… but…’ blustered Mandarker, ‘My movie is about a race that existed thousands of years ago!’
The star pouted. “Don’t talk to me about race and racism… I know very well how insensitive and racist people can be! It is the mermaid scene for me or I say Goody...I mean Goodbye to you and your film!’ Mandarkar realized the mistake of having cast a controversial reality show celebrity as his heroine! ‘If I were Field Marshall Cariappa, I’ll shoot you, madam… and not the film!’ he muttered angrily. ‘Saxena’, he yelled, ‘Get a car to dump Miss. Dumb as Mermaid at the nearest railway station!’ He took another swig at the bottle hoping that the chilled water would cool him down!
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