How Madanlal Dhingra did William Curzon in!

After shooting stints from Ratnagiri to the Andaman islands, the crew of Veer Savarkar, a Rs three crore film funded almost completely by charity, have descended in Pune, for Scene 32. Just 10-minute-long, the scene captures the death of Col William Curzon Wyllie (Bob Christo) at the hands of Madanlal Dhingra, (Pankaj Beri of Andaaz fame) who paid for it with his life.

The shot may take up 10 minutes of the movie, but the crew has been hard at work for two days, scrubbing the floors, polishing the stairs and wiping away at the chandeliers. “We were amazed at the dirt and neglect of the hall, but it was our only choice, because the interiors are of the British period, and it was easier to get permission at the university, than to consider any palace,” says Madhusudan Tamhane, who plays the chief superintendent of the Andaman jail.

Sprucing up the set was not the least of their worries. At the modest offer of Rs 100 per day, the crew fell woefully short of the 100 extras they needed. While some girls flatly refused to get into the costumes, one of the few enthusiastic ladies was too tall to fit into any.

Ultimately, it fell upon the technicians to double up as Maharajahs and bartenders, who sip Fanta, Sprite, and Coke in wine glasses, bare-foot, for the red carpet must not get a speck of dirt, though you won’t see that in the movie. Of course, all that blood on Christo’s white shirt was the work of special effects man, Prashant Naik, who had attached a balloon filled with the red liquid to his chest, to be blown up by short circuit. You cannot see the wires, for they run inside his clothes and under the carpet.

But after Beri had walked into the hall more than nine times, looking as murderous as possible, the scene was still not shot to the satisfaction of cameraman Sameer Athalye, who had arrived from Kolhapur only last evening, for either the Santa’s cap fell off as he jingled around the hall, or the extras entered at the wrong place, wrong time.

Written and directed by Ved Rahi, the movie is the brain-child of Sudhir Phadke, president of the Savarkar Darshan Pratisthan formed in 1985, Mumbai, to keep alive and propagate the work of Savarkar and the revolutionaries who believed in the philosophy of the revolver and bomb to achieve their ends. After a jinxed phase when previous director Basu Bhattacharya passed away after 60 per cent of the film was shot, the fresh product is slated to be released immediately after completion, by December this year, and will be dubbed in all Indian languages, and reach an international audience. Though the film is aimed at keeping the flame of Savarkar’s fight alive among youth, being devoid of any nach gana, how popular this historical documentary will turn out remains to be seen.