On the Run

In the 50s,much before the Milkha Singh became synonymous as the Flying Singh,there was a lesser-known,but equally talented athlete,Paan Singh Tomar ,from the backward region of Bhind,Madhya Pradesh.

Director Tigmanshu Dhulia on his upcoming biopic Paan Singh Tomar

In the 50s,much before the Milkha Singh became synonymous as the Flying Singh,there was a lesser-known,but equally talented athlete,Paan Singh Tomar ,from the backward region of Bhind,Madhya Pradesh. Feared among fellow athletes for his speed and agility on the track,Tomar was also in the Indian Army but later quit the Forces to become a feared outlaw in the Chambal forests. He was the national champion in steeplechase for seven consecutive years and even held the record for the 3,000 km steeplechase event in 1958. But since not much was known about the sport,Tomars legacy was mostly forgotten in the history books, says director Tigmanshu Dhulia,who is trying to recapture the life of the unfortunate athlete through a biopic tribute,Paan Singh Tomar,slated to release on August 27.

Dhulia,whose 2003 film Haasil on student politics starring Jimmy Shergill and Hrishitaa Bhatt had found critical acclaim,has finally finished working on his magnum venture after an intensive research that took him two years . The film has actor Irrfan in the lead and actors Gill and Vipin Sharma in supporting roles. In the midst of post-production work at his Mumbai studio,Dhulia tells us why he zeroed in on Tomar as a protagonist. I wanted to highlight his sporting achievements. I had read an article on him a long time back about how he was ostracised by his family and nobody respected him despite his achievements as a national athlete,subsequently leading him to become a rebel, he says. Accordingly,Khan,who plays Tomar in the film,had to train for several months under athletics coaches from Delhi to get his physique,and his fitness,right.

Given that Tomars bio-data was more colourful and layered than just his sporting achievements,Dhulia will be depicting a huge graph of the characters life,from the time he joined the army,became an athlete,to his fall-out with relatives,and choosing a bandits life in MPs hinterland. I have depicting him from when he was a 19-year-old to well into his middle age,till about 50 years. We have picked out actual instances from his life including interactions with family members and village elders. For this,we met his surviving family members (elder brother,wife,nephew), Milkha Singh ,his national coach and visited the village he lived in Bhind. But the focus largely remains on the negligence lesser known sports suffer in this country, he explains. There were initial apprehensions by his near and dear ones at my inquisitiveness. But later they warmed up to the idea of the film, he recalls.

With shooting schedules divided between the dacoit-infested Chambal forests,to the Army cantonment of the Bengal Engineers regiment in Roorkee,Dhulias task was made simpler because of his familiarity with the terrain and old-yet-friendly dacoits of Chambal. As an assistant to Shekhar Kapur in Bandit Queen,I had developed contacts with locals which came handy in this project. I simply revisited the places and people, says Dhulia,adding that the idea Paan Singh Tomar came while working on Bandit Queen.

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On the Run

In the 50s,much before the Milkha Singh became synonymous as the Flying Singh,there was a lesser-known,but equally talented athlete,Paan Singh Tomar ,from the backward region of Bhind,Madhya Pradesh.

In the 50s,much before the Milkha Singh became synonymous as the Flying Singh,there was a lesser-known,but equally talented athlete,Paan Singh Tomar ,from the backward region of Bhind,Madhya Pradesh.