Deconstructing IPL

Once upon another time in India

So Lekha has been hanging out with Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla.

They were at this major party last week. It went for the whole night right into the "I-wanna-go-wee-wee" hours, with people and drinks everywhere. The Khan and Juhi were great. They’d won a match. In fact, over the course of the evening they’d won the IPL Trophy, but there were legal problems with some dark-skinned cheer leaders refusing to use the Fair & Lovely makeup cream.

Actually, the Trophy wasn't theirs. And it wasn't a real party. The ice cubes in the drinks were made of plastic. It was a scene for the movie Lagaan ka Baap, which is being filmed partly in the Andaman Islands

Lagaan ka Baap is, of course, NOT based on the film Lagaan by Ashutosh Gowarikar, a prop boy, who wrote a script about his grandfather, who, when filing his income tax returns in triplicate in British India and claiming a rebate by playing cricket, wrote in three dialects. For the record Lagaan did not win an Oscar, but till date it has grossed billions of dollars, and has become a major commercial empire, comparable to the Government of Goa, but with more employees.

I mean, sure, the IPL is also about three languages , Hindi, English and Australian and,although not nominated for an Oscar has made the BCCI richer by Rs.350 Crore; is looking to achieve posterity by being offered as a course study in B-schools - an elective in sports management no less!

Set in the present day scenario Lagaan ka Baap will strike a deep resonant chord with cricket lovers everywhere by making two fundamental points:
• It’s all about the money, and in case you forget this, remember....
• It’s RRRRRREEAAAHLLY ALL about the money !

But underneath it all, cricket fans are loyal, loving creatures with hearts of gold. They understand that unlike the movie the IPL in fact has a slightly different thrust:
• It’s all about the money but.......
• It has to be made in the shortest possible time, by appealing to the widest number of cricket obsessed fans with the intelligence of algae.

Anyway, Lekha was hanging with Shah Rukh and Juhi because she had volunteered to be an anchor person in a scene being shot on a field in the Andamans. There were maybe 200 extras -- some from the friendly neighborhood and Jarawa tribes, assorted Naval Admirals others who had responded to an ad on Set Max. Their job was to pretend that they were guests at a surprise 34th birthday party being thrown for Sachin Tendulkar (played by Shah Rukh) by his wife, Anjali (played by Juhi).

The movie set, a literal hive of activity, equipment and cables everywhere and a battery of film crew wearing T-shirts, shorts, mini skirts, utility belts, and pom-poms, striding around doing technical things with lights, cameras, monitors, make- up and props, which included a number of stunt birthday cakes, and a tube of toothpaste. In charge of all this was Chairman Lalit Modi, ( motto: I’m not making money from IPL) a smart and funny man who lives in khaki pants and whose credits include ESPN as well as episodes of BCCI.

Now here’s the set up with a film crew:
At the top of the heap are leading actors or superstars, then the director, cameramen, and prop and light boys, then the support actors, the caterers, security and transporters. And at the bottom comes the producer. In fact the producer is not even considered part of the film crew, except sometimes to pose with the extras when they get herded around as part of the scenery. “All right, scenery, when actor arrives, everybody clap!”

Extras do a lot of work. Sometimes they stand-in for the actor, sometimes they stand-in for the cake. Then they get to be part of the scenery during the rehearsals, and again when the filming is on. Then there are the retakes of the scene over and over and over again, because something is always going wrong. They stand around for long hours. And they do this because they are paid with wads of high-denomination notes of respectable currencies.

I am, of course, joking. For a week’s labour -- and it can be a long week,18 hours a day, including nights and Sundays – an extra gets paid Rs.1000.00, or what one of the extras, Pappu Sinha of Jhumri Talaya, described as ``Ek batli nakli scotch vasool.''

So it's not the money. It's the chance to be in a movie and to be around movie stars, in a house, which had been decorated with balloons, streamers, and a sign that said ''HAPPY 34TH BIRTHDAY SACHINJI.'', handed drinks with plastic ice cubes, then positioned under the curved stairway in the hall around the piano.

In this scene, Juhi (as Anjali) carries the cake into the room while everyone sings "Happy Bird-day" to Shah Rukh (as Sachin) who is wearing a dinner jacket and shades. ''Anjali'' sets the cake down in front of 'Sachin'' and he blows out the candles. Then Sachin feeds a slice of the cake to Anjali, walks to the piano and pretends to play it while she makes moon eyes at him and lip-syncs a love song that clearly sounds like Ila Arun or Usha Utthap or maybe both in tandem. The whole scene is maybe 5 minutes long in the movie but takes 12 hours to shoot.

They rehearse it a few hundred times with professional stand-ins standing in for the stars, and an extra standing in for the cake (aah! that’s where the toothpaste “icing” came in handy.) Then out into the hall comes Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh Khan!

No doubt you want to know if Juhi Chawla is beautiful. Yes Sir, she is. Although it’s true and I want all you other beautiful women to note, that I encouraged Lekha to be in the IPL solely so I could maybe meet her and have the following intelligent conversation:-

LEKHA: Baba, I'd like you to meet Juhi.
JUHI (shaking my hand): Nice to meet you!
ME: Glmphk..
LEKHA: He's in love with you.
JUHI: Aww, that’s so sweet.
ME: Glmphk.
But before this relationship can flower any further, I’m sure it will be time to do another birthday-cake scene.

Lekha had to do one last scene. In this one, they all stood around the piano and pretended to be old friends. The thing was, at that point it felt as though the whole cast and crew had been together for roughly as long as prisoners serving a life sentence, so in a weird way it actually did feel a little like a party.

If this scene stays in the movie -- it's scheduled for release on Diwali -- you might see Lekha. She’s the anchor in the puce skirt, interviewing Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla about their future plans for the Kolkata Knightriders. This was her big scene, and in all modesty, I believe that she delivered a nuanced, yet powerful -- even commanding -- performance. Especially considering that all you see is the back of her head.

What are these two superstars really like? Lekha says, based on the hours she spent pretending to party with them, that they are very nice. They chatted and joked with the extras, and they were always gracious and polite. This can't be easy when you're surrounded by people who are pretending to be cool, but whose brains are clearly shrieking, ``Ohmigod I am standing RIGHT NEXT TO SHAH RUKH KHAN AND JUHI CHAWLA!''