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I was in Delhi when Oz called. The Mumbai Meri Jaan shoot was on but I couldn’t make it. Got back to Mumbai and got in touch with the gang to catch up with PFC and get a chance to spend a few hours on a shoot and get back to Mumbai-mode. I am glad I did.

Another interesting film but we can’t talk much yet. Wait for it, you’ll know.

It seems like a film that wants to get into the Mumbai spirit passionately to capture part-reality part-fiction.

The day I landed on the sets of Mumbai Meri Jaan, Nishikant and his crew was shooting a conversational scene outdoor, mid-traffic somewhere in Dadar and then shifting to an Interior location in Mahim.

To my still-outsider- to- Mumbai eyes it was quite wonderful to be out on the streets in rainy Mumbai. Well..Delhi has rain too..but you’ll never find such enthusiastic vendors with emotionally expressive rainbow coloured umbrellas. Hmm..you’ll just find irate traffic and street kids prancing about.

2:30 pm – the unit reports at the signal in Dadar close to Ruia college.

They are shooting a conversational scene between the Paresh Rawal and Vijay Maurya character. Things are being set up. It’s not raining now. It might.

Nishikant is there and I grab a few minutes for the introduction.

Then they are all at work.

A traffic cop interrupts to make sure they have all the permissions. They do.

The traffic is in the background. A bit of a problem as they keep craning their necks to catch the shoot as the signal turns to red and the crew has to keep waving and requesting them to please not look this way.

The crowd around the shooting area is decent, passers-by stopping over for a break. Enthusiastic kids on their way home from school loving it! There were even enthusiastic cops craning their necks out from their police van to have a look.

Shooting Mumbai in July, you know it will rain – and rain it did in bursts and stops, but the umbrellas came out promptly.

Sanjay Jadhav the DoP, found it appropriate to mount the camera inside a van. Maybe there was also some aesthetic sense than just the practical. Hmm..for that we’ll wait and watch the film.

I check with Nishikant about how this film got on the floor. He explains he had worked with UTV earlier and then they met again for this film at a stage when they wanted to work with Nishi and he wanted to work on this idea.

Right now they are mid way on their 60 day shooting schedule.

Hit and miss with the rain but the day shoot is successful.

The next location is a colony in Mahim. Nishikant and team are encouraging so I move along with them, hitching a ride with his direction assistant Vasanti who confesses she chose to move to India from Germany when she watched Dombivili fast and felt things were changing in Indian film-making. She’s the woman with the camera on the set – shooting the making of MMJ.

Cut to:

Mahim

The camera is being set up, five floors up. The highest is 6th- the terrace where the lights are being set up.

There’s a buzz in the colony – Paresh Rawal aane wala hai (paresh rawal is coming).

This is a scene being shot in the floor corridor and in a one-room kitchen with Paresh Rawal. Wow! Now this is another sort of a shooting challenge. Space is a constraint it might seem. Really? With a creative director and DoP, you overcome. They did. Watch out for the shot where the camera looks through the window grill. I managed to catch that over the monitor there.

By the time the room shots are done, it’s dark and rainy outside. Paresh Rawal takes a break in the balcony, looking out around, leaning over the balcony railing. Little kids from across the colony yell out ‘Babubhai’. He’s in control of his emotions and seems to be observing and absorbing.

On this floor the kids queue up, edging stealthily and with one nudge from their encouraging father make a dash to catch an autograph from Paresh Rawal. He obliges.

Aah…he’s not taking a break. He’s rehearsing.

The next shots are right there with just his character. Innovative light guy balances himself strategically on the railing to manage a close up.

It’s a bit crowded in the corridor with the shoot in progress and I don’t want to go knocking over the sound and light equipment so I choose to just be and watch. In any case I am PFC not paparaazi Nishikant however, the sensitive and polite artist he is, did manage space for a bit more conversation. For him, it’s important to keep working all the time, he says. However, with his writing he likes to get over the first draft at a stretch and then rewrite. He was in London when the Mumbai blasts occurred and that to him was quite ironical. It triggered off several stories and thoughts right then.

To me he seems like an individual whose trying to tell a story from what affects him, given the world he’s lived in and experiencing now.

I would have liked to ask him about his writing craft, but confessed that I hadn’t watched Dombivili Fast yet, so was at the loss of words. How do you question a film maker without having watched his film! But I wanted to be at the shoot nevertheless. I guess I’d be going back on another day’s shoot after having watched D.F and get Nishikant Kamat’s take on writing et al. Hopefully, it’ll be on a day when I can also catch up with the rest of the PFC gang on the sets of MMJ.

Till then..here are some pictures…

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