IshkIshkIshk Prod-Story#6

Next day we shot the part of climax near Shyangboche airport. After the 6 day shooting schedule at this hell of a location got over, we had to vacate as soon as possible.

A journalist from ‘Time’ visited us here. She stayed for 2 days interviewing and clicking a lot of pictures. In fact there had been a steady traffic of journalists from Mumbai on all our locations. Dev Saab has got a way with them. Other visitors were music director R D Burman, singer Bhupinder Singh and Gogi Anand. 

It was nearly mid-December and the weather was getting worse. Soon flights would be prohibited here for a long period. Shyangboche airport was very unique too. A 250 meter air strip was like a steep incline, to help airplanes gain speed while flying away and to arrest their motion while landing. Higher end of the air strip touched the mountain side. But the other end was sharply and scarily clipped off at the edge of mountain and opened straight into void of the familiar deep valley. The airplane was a 6 seater Pilatus Porter. Our transportation from here took about 5 round trips between Shyangboche and Kathmandu. Hersh asked me to travel in the last flight with him. So, I waited. Slowly each and everyone boarded the small airplane that kept coming back after a gap of nearly 2 hours. Watching the airplane take off and land gave me necessary confidence of going through the experience of this flight. Frankly I did not mind waiting, because it gave me a longer chance to enjoy that place.
On our turn the pilot announced that this was going to be on the last flight of the season. That was a little scary, because any slip could have left us stranded here for months without any rescue. I with Hersh and some Nepali helpers took our seats, buckled the belts and the plane zoomed down to the edge of the short strip. This was the first time I was flying from here. As it left the edge of the mountain, it fell down about 50 ft like a rock. It felt as if there was not enough momentum for it to take off. But in about 5 seconds, it stabilized and turned right. It took its route in the middle of the valley. The engine kept groaning hard to keep above the white fog that had covered the entire panorama from down below. The pilot could not see anything, so to be safe he had to stay above those clouds. It seemed that airplane did not have enough power. The joy-stick was pressed to the last point. There was a horrifying tension. Sometimes the plane would be tossed from side to side and sometime lost height suddenly. When it fell like a rock, our heads would hit the ceiling. A Nepali boy got so scared that he left his seat and sat in my lap holding my legs in terror. The horror lasted for more than 30 min. Only after we had cleared the mountains, the plane steadied and we could see the ground below. The pilot too relaxed, looked back and tossed some oranges towards us. His smiling face was totally sweaty. Many years later in 1981, Shekhar Kapoor would tell me that the Italian pilot who flew us died in a crash in the same area.
Like many others Hersh too had become very friendly with me during this near 3 month shoot. This relationship would later culminate into me working for his own production company ‘Indu Pictures’ and ‘Aap Ki Khatir’ would be his first film with Vinod Khanna and Rekha. He also introduced me to his wife’s younger sister, who eventually became my wife and still is…
We returned to Mumbai totally exhausted and badly sun-burnt. But in a few days only Dev Saab started shooting on the sets in Mehboob studios. As a part of climax, a set of rocks was constructed, to do close work. Then we had two days schedule on real mountain-rocks of Mumbra, near Mumbai. We had real rock climbers duplicating for Zeenat, Dev Saab and others.
We also went to Narkanda near Simla, to shoot sequences of heavy snow and blizzard. It was so awfully cold. We were standing on snow, snow was all around and storm fan was throwing snow and thermocol balls at the actors. We shot in this, colder than Nepal location, for 6 days and returned to Mumbai.
Another part of the story which moved with Dev Saab’s childhood was shot in Dr Graham’s Homes School, Kalimpong. We were here for nearly ten days.
Soon after the film was edited we started dubbing in music recording facility of Mehboob studios. Robin Chatterji the recordist had not yet started recording songs here. The theatre had just been completed. So, Mehboob management gave it to Dev Saab willingly for dubbing. Mehboob Khan had tremendous respect for Dev Saab. He used to say ‘Yeh Studio Dev Ka Hai Aur Dev Ke Paise Se Bana Hai.’ The largest stage (#3) of Mehboob studios was believed to be financed by Dev Saab.
Song recording and processing of the film had been done at ‘Film Center’, at Tardeo. Being a musical, ‘Ishq Ishq Ishq’ had many songs, written by Anand Bakshi and composed by R D Burman. I met Navketan editor Babu Sheikh at their Khira Nagar office at S V Road, Santacruz. Babu has retired since long and the office too has shifted to Pali Hill, Bandra at the Anand recording studios. The mixing (Re-recording) of the film was done by unbeatable Mangesh Desai at V Shataram’s Raj Kamal studios at Parel. Mangesh Desai gave some suggestions as he watched the film over and over during mixing. So, a little patch work was done on the terrace of Raj Kamal. We also did some patch work on the hills of Lonavala.
The film finally completed and got the censor certificate in Nov, 1974. Its premier at the Metro cinema was a very glitzy affair. It was followed by a huge party at the top floor restaurant of the Oberoi hotel at the Marine Drive. My eyes were popping with the glare of publicity that actors were receiving. I felt good in knowing that I too had been a part of all this, may be on the outer periphery.
In the end, nothing succeeds like success. Being such an expensive film, ‘Ishq Ishq Ishq’ didn’t even run for two weeks in Metro. Nor did it get any good reviews. It was my first painful experience of seeing so much hard work and money going down the drain, so effortlessly.

IshkIshkIshk Prod-Story#2

The film had a large star cast. Shekhar Kapoor and Zarina Wahab were introduced in this film. Shekhar and child actor Padmini Kolhapure were newcomers who would go on to become very prominent personalities in future. Until then Shekhar had been a practicing CA in London. Padmini was a child of about 8-9 years. Other major actors were Premnath, Nadira, Iftekhar, Jankidas, Sudhir, Birbal, Trilok Kapoor, Madhup Sharma, Maruti, Ranjan and Nana Palsikar. Shabana Azmi and Komal (who later married Shatrughan Sinha) too were fairly new in the business. Shabana we all know has reached pinnacles of fame in various fields. Dev Saab had also selected a group of 12 pretty young girls to play as a group of trekkers in the film. Most prominent among them was the established model Shiela Jones.

In the morning of ‘day one’ as our raft was half way, we noticed Dev Saab pacing up and down ready with make-up, dressed in green leather pants and yellow shirt. He was shouting at us telling that we were late. Shooting started with scenes of Premnath, child actor Satyajit and comedian Maruti. It is late morning in the scene. Premnath is mad at sleeping hotel workers (child actor Satyajit and Maruti). Satyajit was supposed to have overslept, so he was to be woken up roughly by Premnath. Premji (Premnath) said he will do a direct take without rehearsal. He came screaming from far, shook up Satyajit roughly and perhaps even slapped him. Satyajit was not expecting so much energy in the scene. He got very scared and after the shot he developed fever and was sick for 3 days. He also brandished a knife at Maruti and he too seemed mortally scared.
Later during night shift we started playback sequences of songs, ‘Mujhko Agar Ijazat Ho To’ and ‘Kisi Na Kisi Se’, inside the large circular dining hall. This restaurant had glass windows all around it and a fire place in the middle. During the song shoots all twelve model girls,

Zeenat Aman, Zarina Wahab, Padmini, Shekhar, Kuljit, Gautam Sarin, Nadira and Premnath participated. We shot that night and every night till about 2-3am. After pack up all of us would rush to wrap up the equipment, in order be the first to take the raft. The second round would delay you surely by about 15 min. Initially a hotel boy was assigned to pull it for us; but soon it was clear that he was not going to get any sleep doing that job. Thus soon enough unit members themselves took it over. For the young technicians of the unit, it was quite enjoyable too. In fact my selection to be a part of this film was done with my age in mind, then 23 years. Navketan’s earlier recordist Mr. J M Barot was quite senior by then and could not have kept up to the rigorous physical demands of this film. Mr. Barot was associated with Navketan until their previous film ‘Heera Panna’ and has had a long association with them. I was told that Dev Saab had a meeting with his close associates on this point and Gogi Anand had suggested my name to him. I will thank him forever for trusting me and linking me to such a famous personality and his esteemed banner.
Dev Saab loves to have energetic people around him. He likes to see his people on their toes, full of energy, rather than sitting around and looking dull. And I fitted the bill. I would say that hiring me for ‘Ishq Ishq Ishq’ was as beneficial for Navketan, as it was for me. The shooting schedules and locations were so strenuous that older technicians would not have survived it. We shot, two shifts a day, i.e. day and night for 42 days without break. That is ample proof of the tough shooting, we had. We slept only between 3am and 7am. For me it was a little worse, because I had got hooked on to drinking. Me, Vijay and Oscar (choreographers) would drink like devils and eat our cold dinner from the restaurant at 4am, everyday! I survived this physical abuse since I was a tough 23 then.
For a few days we shot at another pretty location called ‘Tibetan Camp’. I did my first shopping of Nepali trinkets, copper medallions, beads etc out of my daily allowance of 35 Nepali Rupiyah. We shot scenes of flashback with Premnath and Zeenat Aman. Zeenat had to insert pieces of cotton pads behind her cheeks in her mouth to look different. She played Premnath’s wife (she dies later) and her own mother with this look. Other actors in this sequence were Iftekhar, Ranjan and A K Hangal. Mr. Hangal played a Hindu priest. He did similar roles of a priest in three more films with me later. ‘Kalabaaz’ was another one, yet again with Dev Anand and Zeenat. All the locations that we shot on were totally unexplored by any other camera. As an assistant recordist I hadn’t traveled much. I had just been to Goa once (for ‘The Witness’). Nepal looked so pretty to me. I also had this excitement in my chest that technically I was in a foreign country for the first time in my life, never mind without passport. Navketan had made I-cards for all of us and that was enough.