Castaway at the No-Smoking shoot
No I did not loose weight like Tom Hanks [I wish I had] nor did I grow a beard neither am I an expert at striking a fish from 100 meters with a handmade spear. Then why castway? I’ll come to that in a moment.
It was the last but one day of the No-Smoking shoot. Yup I know we had already declared it was wraps and we had the PFC member pics clicked with Anurag and John….yes..yes…there was some important patch shorts and an accident sequence to be canned. I reached Lokhanwala as I was told. Where? I did not know. Roamed around the place….[this I did a lot in the latter part of the day]. No trace of the crew nor was I sure whether it was an indoor or an outdoor. Was I sure of anything that frickin day?
As I roamed I spotted a few well built looking men in brown safari suits with ear pieces. A now familiar sight for me while visiting the No Smoking sets. If the security is there the crew must be near by. Proudly I stated “Anurag Sir ko milne aaya hun…..”. They let me in.
An unusual sight. Empty roads in Andheri. There was a huge truck and two people entered the SUV [MCP-K2] parked in front of it. From the past few visits I recognized that they were dresses worn by Ayesha Takia and John Abraham [even I know the “continuity”….he he he….] But they looked damn different. John appeared shorted and bulkier and Ayesha was far from the girl I used to adore from Socha Na Tha…..moving closer I came to know they were stunt men one in John’s suit and the other in drag.
It was a stunt sequence. A truck about to collide with the SUV. It was a 2 camera set up one hoisted on the Jimmy Jib and the other on the ground.
Met Anurag. Uzbek was great he said and entered Rajkumar. Then %^*))%$^& %^&*((%$$^*(()))_)__ #####@@@$%%%^ &*(*())____*^$$%@@@ ####^^@&#*()__@&& @&@((&$$&*&$* &*&#^&^&@^&#^#)))))@@@@^
Hahahahaahahhahahahhhhaa….Rajkumar man…you are..oh!Gosh…..seriously….oooo..
[Ok those are not junk but secret coded text from Rajkumar’s Uzbek Diary. Do bug him for the details.]
The shot was being set up. Maybe almost done. Anurag said he was hungry. Rajkumar said he will get someone to get some food. Before we knew Anurag had jumped the divider and ran across the other end of the road hopped into and auto. I donno why even I tailed after him. We both sat in. As the auto left the entire crew was looking at Anurag flabbergasted. Anurag calmly gestured 2 minutes. The shot was ready and I should have clicked the crews reaction. Where were we heading?
2 chicken burger’s, one potato veggi,2 cokes from the nearest Mc Donald’s and we were back. Anurag’s phone was ringing and he had his hands full with all the food. I took the phone, it was Rajkumar and was rather surprised to hear my voice. “kahan ho tum log!!!!” I assured him we were right behind him. The shot was canned. Meanwhile we discussed about Black Friday. Anurag wants to unleash all the accumulated heat of the past 2 years. Am mentioning this as a caution for the PFC server guys. A potential Tsunami to hit the web sphere. The indications are there…..don’t tell me I did not warn you people.
The shoot got over. Over to the next location. Was busy talking to Prashant. Turned around, Anurag had just left with Rajuv Ravi for the next location. Prashant left too. I said I’ll met them THERE…where?…THERE.
Had a drag. Hopped into an auto. “
Film
City”. Maa ki aankh….Sunday bhi bos#%^ road clogged with bumper to bumper traffic. Did not want to miss the shoot. After a grueling 40 minutes and Rs.85 lighter I ventured into the
Huge
Film
City. I remembered being told Studio No.7……why I did not know… I walked my way up and down the rather uphill path to Studio No.7. What do I see? Kaun Banega Crorepati Sets. Aaiiiii??????
I call up Prashant. Not picking up the phone. Might have been in between a shot. I waited. At last he picked. “Arrreee…..7 nahire…11..it’s at studio No.11…” Oh !!! OK…..”11….how silly..I’ll be there..”.Another trek to studio No.11.
And what do I see. B.R.Chopra Productions. Maa ki aank…I see a Plaster of Paris ka Mahal. Bhenc#$%# yeh kya hai be??????????????? Run around…..to confirm whether there is a Studio No 11 A …B…C or something…..there was only one.
Call Prashant. Don’t remember his caller tune but will remember this for the rest of my life.
“Studio No.11 Filmistan………” and I was a CASTWAY at
Film
City. Help…help…..I screamed….no
Wilson for company too….boohooo…boohh…..Rs.85 gone…….no cigarette vendor in the vicinity. ….aaaagghhh!!!!!!!!…..needed a cigarette and light…what do I do chop trees……rub wood….make fire and dance round them…after a long wait….got a bus…..
Now I am back home my Girlfriend go tired of waiting and got married to someone else. So I am single again…..all for misinterpreting a “city” for an “istan”.
PS – There is something in the offing from the Black Friday team…..thats what I heard……but I have lost all credibility after the
Film
City incident…then somewhere I read…..I knew exactly what it meant. “He who knows not his destination should fu#@ off.” -anonymous
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
ha ha ha ha ha ha..sorry vasan
Sir, was really excited to watch the mouse thing….anyways will catch it in the cinema halls.
This was fun too…..:-()-:
Vasan is having trouble posting a comment. And wants to relay a message : that “blank blank blank…” he’s all worked up in trying to reply to Anurag comment…
hehehe vasan …. ‘miss’ understanding ..and miss not standing :-(
Rajkumar pls come and decode the ^@#$%^&%^%$ stuff from uzbekh…
Awaiting for PFC to be assualted when Anurag writes more about Black friday
= KK, Shubh shubh bolo yaar… agar abhi server crash hua toh main… toh main.. toh main… toh main… naya server le loonga…
to main…..to main….hahhahahhaahhha…I could see Takti Tapoor in it…ahahahhahaa..OZ….
The regret of missing the Film”istan” shoot was that I missed the trapping of the mouse shoot.
han…Oz…All posters of Black Friday have the PFC URL…there is more I heard….goodies….
= Damn!!!! Vasan can you send me a link to such a Black Friday Poster!!!
you will not believe it just searching for that…..and what I find….our PFC video and PIC of the poster all over the net…..
what?
I replied here i’m sure I did :(
Oz are messages deleting again?
Sangeeta :
PFC is volatile these days and whatever we write vaporize after few minutes!!!!
we are writing on the sea beach and water waves wipe all the written material.
= Sangeeta/RK, We were moving to a new server and the host f-ed it up… that’s the bad news. The good news is we have moved and on a new server so I expect to see no more of such issues.
Oz:
No worries. May god give you tolerance, strength and energies to deal with these nonfilmi issues.
sniffs, Oz my message to Raj Kumar got wiped out .. as did his comment :(
oh well
Rajkumar…..mere muhse kuch nahi niklega…..PROMISE…and nothing came out.maine kuch nahi bola……
waiting for your post…
Tashkent will no more be just remembered as the place where our Late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died….it will be remembered as the place where Rajkumar visited……
hmm spoilsports not sharing the coded secret :(