Of Dudes and Dreams

The venue — PL Deshpande Hall in Prabhadevi,Mumbai,— is abuzz on the Friday morning that the auditions are being held. Close to 400 boys have lined up for it. Watching them can be a lesson in current fashion — coloured trousers,kaftans and waistcoats are easy to spot. Sunglasses rarely leave their faces,even as they await their turn to fill forms on the basis of which they will be called for the first screening by a team from the production house,Miditech. It is a test of their personality,to gauge if they are indeed fit to be on camera and woo a girl.

None of them,however,seems interested in wooing a girl — it is fame that they are all chasing. Dressed like the ’90s’ rap artist MC Hammer,in dhoti pants and a jacket,Sunny Arora waits outside the screening room. A Haryana boy,he moved to Mumbai four years ago to realise his dream to become famous. He says he isn’t unrealistic “like millions of others who want to make it big in films”. He wants to be a TV star. The 24-year-old has appeared in cameos in CID and Adalat on Sony and was even a prospective bridegroom on Veena Ka Swayamvar,but the channel,Imagine,shut down before the show could take off.

Shalini Sethi,director-programming,Bindass,admits that of the three cities they scoured for talent — Chandigarh,Delhi and Mumbai — the Maximum City has a majority of contestants who aspire to be famous. That these contestants are indiscriminate about the show format does not bother her.

The show had introduced the “Superstud Oath” in Delhi — boys are made to pledge that they will not objectify women. Few of the contestants practise it in real life. While Chouhan brags about having four girlfriends — each for a different mood — Paras Saluja,a successful entrepreneur in the North but a struggling actor in Mumbai,believes his day is “incomplete” until he has “interacted with a woman in some way”. Karan Kullar is open about dating but wants his parents to find him the “right girl” when it is time for him to marry. Another aspiring “superstud” Jayesh Lakhotia,an MBA-turned-struggling actor,is wary of women.

But the judges at the audition — Patel,British-Asian model Sofia Hayat and television actor Madhura Naik — say that it is easy to weed out non-serious contestants in the second and final rounds. “We’re looking for a sense of humour and charm,” says Hayat,who found the Sikh boys from Chandigarh to be the most romantic.

In this air of competition,the boys manage to forge bonds. “We’ll find girls anyway,but good friends don’t come easily,” says Kullar nodding at Chouhan and Lakhotia. Yet,these aspirants of fame rarely lose sight of their goal. “They are just one-minute friends,” says Abhinay Podhiyal,who claims to have snubbed fellow contestants. A student of Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College,he believes that he has it in him to win the show. “Then I’ll have a bike,bungalow,Aston Martin,fame,everything,” he says. Will winning Superdude get him an Aston Martin? “It’ll be a start,” he replies.