Ransomed!

Komal Nahta

On an average, it takes about a year to complete a film. In the Hindi film industry, at least.

Whatever the end product, the fact that a lot of blood and sweat goes into the making of a film is undeniable.

What is also undeniable is that inside three hours, you can praise it to the heavens or confine it all to hell.

And it takes less than a minute to misunderstand the spirit behind the film and raise a hue and cry about it. And hold the film industry to ransom. Especially when religious or communal sentiments enter the picture.

The pandits of Varanasi, for example, seem to be an extra sensitive lot. Some months ago, they hounded filmmaker Deepa Mehta out of the holy city even before she could start shooting for her film, Water.

Last week, they were up in arms against Amitabh Bachchan for his film, Mohabbatein.

The superstar, they alleged, flouted Hindu tradition by reciting the Gayatri mantra with his shoes on.

Amitabh, for his part, lost no time in clarifying that he had, indeed, taken off his shoes during the filming of the scene which showed him reciting the Gayatri mantra. Why, he said he had even taken them off while dubbing for the scene.

That cut no ice with the outraged pandits. They stormed into Taksal cinema earlier this week and forcibly got the scenes showing Amitabh Bachchan reciting the Gayatri mantra cut.

The fundamentalists also sent a letter to the Information & Broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj, asking her to get the relevant scenes deleted from the film.

Meanwhile, the Film Producers' Guild of India dashed off a letter to the minister, registering its protest against "the extra-constitutional authorities who barge into cinemas and, with their muscle power, force the cinemas to delete scenes according to their whims... Can we allow hoodlums to hold the world's largest film industry to ransom?"

The Guild has urged the minister to take up Mohabbatein with the government of Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, recent reports say the pandits have decided to forgive and forget, provided Yash Chopra and Amitabh Bachchan go over to Varanasi, so they they can be honoured by the pandits...

Like Yash Chopra, so also Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

The latter has been asked by the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC), to tender an apology for projecting the entire Sikh Community as cowards in his Mission Kashmir.

What upset the SGPC is an innocuous scene in the film which shows Sanjay Dutt asking a junior Sikh police officer to take a plunge into the Dal Lake very carefully lest the bomb planted there explodes before he does so. The Sikh officer gets so jittery that he wets his pants.

The SGPC has asked Vidhu Vinod Chopra to delete the "objectionable" scene immediately from the film as, according to them, it shows Sikhs as cowards. It has also asked the producer-director to express his regrets to the Sikh community.

Surprisingly, the Film Producers' Guild of India has not made any mention of the Sikhs' undue demand to cut the scene in Mission Kashmir.

One wonders whether that is because Vinod Chopra is not a member of the executive committee of the Guild?!

Having said that, let me move on to matters more recent.

We sometimes refer to a beautiful film as 'a painting on celluloid'. I wonder if M F Husain took that analogy a bit too literally and thought that a celebrated painter like himself could paint the town red with his painting on celluloid?

What else could have prompted the artist to spend a couple of crores on something he doesn't have the faintest idea about?

You would agree with me if you have the courage to endure his celluloid disaster, Gaja Gamini. The only honest thing about M F Husain's brush with cinema is its title in the sense that it moves at a pace as slow as an elephant would move. Perhaps even slower.

The words Gaja Gamini, for the uninitiated, means 'the woman who walks with the grace of an elephant'.

Yash Chopra who is distributing M F Husain's dream in Bombay did a smart thing by opening it in only two cinema halls in the entire Bombay circuit.

Eros is showing it in just matinee shows (12 noon), and the other hall is the newly-opened Cine Planet.

Even then, the theatres are finding it tough to draw in the crowds.

Gaja Gamini opens next week in the capital city. Let's see what the response of the Delhiites is.

Meanwhile, Hrithik Roshan has been signed on for three Hollywood films for a total fee of Rs 900 million.

Right?

Wrong.

Dismissing the above as journalists' figment of imagination, father Rakesh Roshan wondered how such false news find space in respectable papers and magazines, too.

"They should at least verify the authenticity of the news before printing it," remarked the heartthrob's father. And while the world is wondering when the wedding bells will chime for the star, he is shooting for Subhash Ghai's Yaadein in Delhi.

January 1, 2001 will see Hrithik in Australia. He will be shooting for cousin Rohit Kumar's Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage.

Hollywood, it seems, can wait.

On their part, the cinegoers will have to wait for nine months to see a Hrithik flick.

The actor's next release -- Yaadein -- will hit the screens in August 2001.

Those suffering from Hrithik withdrawal pangs need not despair. There will surely be a couple of ad films before that!