On Oct 21, 1973 an Indian Airlines flight bound for New Delhi was preparing to take off from Mumbai. Nearly half of the Caravelle aircraft was occupied by the unit members of to be launched film, ‘Ishk Ishk Ishk’ being produced under the banner of Navketan International Films (P) Ltd. The ambience was vibrant with loud excited voices, handshakes, high5s and hugs. Most of the people knew each other. Dev Saab (Mr. Dev Anand) the actor, writer, producer and director of the film was in his usual high spirits. He was walking briskly down the
isle to ask his unit members individually if they were comfortable.
My anxiety and nervousness had peaked as my life’s first airplane flight was
about to take off. Airplane’s various changing sounds had been making me
nervous. I was trying to occupy my mind by finding faces of known actors. I
found Jeevan, Premnath and Nadira.
But mainly my eyes and mind were on this phenomenon called Dev Anand. I wanted
him to recognize me, since earlier I had been an assistant in ‘Darling
Darling’, staring Dev Saab and Zeenat Aman. The film was directed by
his nephew Gogi Anand (now no more). But Dev Saab’s energy level in the
airplane was at its legendary level; the level which has been recognized by the
entire film fraternity. They say when Dev Saab is on the sets of his own movie
no one can walk along with him; Dev Saab does not sit; Dev Saab never goes back
to makeup room unless it is lunch time… In Oct 1973 he had just turned 50 and
was oozing with youth.
The plane landed at Delhi and the unit was accommodated for an overnight stay
in Oberoi and Lodhi Hotel. Next morning a Royal Nepal
Airlines Corporation (RNAC), Boeing-737 took us to Kathmandu and then
took a connecting RNAC Avro to Pokhra –
our final destination. This 48 seater Avro, was full of the film unit entirely.
When the flight was about to land at Pokhra, I looked at the landscape below
and got very nervous. It seemed to me that there might be some kind of
emergency since the aircraft was descending directly into a field. The plane
went straight ahead and landed smoothly on a seemingly unprepared surface.
Pokhra had such a basic airport. I was told that before a flight landed here,
they blow a siren to alert the shepherds to drive their cattle away from the
air strip. While the helpers were collecting our luggage and we just walked
off, crossed a narrow road and entered our hotel. As easy as that!
In the meanwhile another caravan consisting of two trucks and a bus load of
technicians had left Mumbai a week in advance. It carried all the hardware
stuff like lights, camera trolleys, cranes, electric sockets, stands, cutters
and other related stuff. Dev Saab’s nephew Hersh Kohli, the production controller of
Navketan was traveling with this unit. They too reached in time to meet the
other unit. This road journey must have been real fun, though surely a bit
long.
A third unit consisting of the Art Director, T K Desai,
his assistants and carpenters had been at hotel ‘Fish Tail Lodge’
since the end of September, at least to construct a set in the premises of the
hotel. The set was a large two story wooden house. Production had agreed that
after the film shoot was over, the house would be handed over to the owner of
the hotel, Fred Barker. So the house-set was made really very sturdy and good
looking inside out. It had many fully functional and decorated bedrooms for
Nadira & Premnath and their daughters in the film, Zeenat Aman, Zarina
Wahab, Komal, Komila Wirk, Guddi, and Padmini Kolhapure.
Entire unit was accommodated in four different hotels. Technicians like me,
twelve model girls and equipments were in Annapurna; Shekhar Kapoor, Gautam
Sarin and Kabir Bedi were in Hotel Crystal, light-boys etc were in another
place and senior actors and cinematographer Fali Mistry were
in Fish Tail Lodge. Here again I noticed Dev Saab was going to each room
in Hotel Crystal to check if all his actors
were fine. Dev Saab is very pro-actor director. I was introduced formally to
him as the recordist for the film in the passage of the hotel. He knew me but
it was the first time that we were going to be dealing with each other
directly. He said ‘hi Arun, very good’ with a firm hand shake, patted my
shoulder and carried on to check other rooms.
Fish Tail Lodge was one of the main locations for the film shoot. In the film this hotel was christened as ‘Seven Sisters Inn’, as its owner husband and wife team of Premnath and Nadira supposedly had seven daughters. Hotel’s entire landscape was the set for the film; the rooms, restaurant, lawns, even the kitchen. It was such a pretty locale. The hotel had various structures scattered on a large area, with Fewa Lake along its length, snow-clad mountains in the background and clear deep blue sky. It was about 20 minutes drive from our hotel. Vehicles had to be parked at the edge of Fewa Lake, as the road ended there. So to reach the hotel, a narrow part of a lake had to be crossed by a flat bamboo raft. This raft was tied to both ends of the lake with ropes. You had to pull the rope to drag the raft to other end. The raft was about 10×10 ft, square, so not more than 10 people could stand on it. It was a beautiful way to cross the lake and kept pollution away from the hotel premise.
