Things you shouldn’t try !!!

Happened a few years ago. I was all thin, naive, irrelevant etc… (Yeah that’s used when people run out of words) Things haven’t changed much since then I guess. The single huge difference is my getting myself a job and getting paid for my irrelevance.

Hmm on afterthought, I guess I’m not quite so naïve anymore either.

Anyways, it was during the time between the first and second IT booms in India, when there was this huge crunch in the job scene and us guys (who passed each year out in numbers enough to equal the dinosaur population on the planet during their prime) were like in real deep trouble.

Those few months in Bangalore were a pain. It’s home and all that, now the major deal with home being your parents' friends coming up with words of advice and expecting you to emulate their kids.

It didn’t seem to matter to them that their kids were equally unemployed as well.

Have you heard the ‘statement’ “Everybody is getting a job nowadays, there are so many jobs around, even [some irrelevant lady’s name]’s son got one on campus… How come you haven’t found one?”? Yeah if you’ve heard it, you’d have a good idea what we guys had to go through.

All that and the sudden having to face the rules at home, after all these fantastic years in the hostel, kinda gets on your nerves. Not to forget the call of the BPO (damn tempting)

It was during that phase of life that I decided to make a movie. I assumed it would (if good enough) have quite a few people who could associate with it, as there were quite a few kids, who were going through something similar.

It was about the frustrations people go through during the post-college-pre-job days, which most people tend to overlook.

I got hold of this damn famous director and confused him into agreeing to direct the movie. So yeah, there we were, trying to make a movie out of something that didn’t have much of a story, but did have a definite target audience. We even got the relatively younger part of the star cast to say things about it being a very bold movie in it’s own way and that it was something being shown in India for the first time ever and that the director was a very nice chap and he never offered to sleep with them in exchange for a role and they never had to tell him that it’s the last time they were sleeping with him as they’d never slept with him ever.

Even the girls had to say such things (just in case you were wondering who the director was).

The story was pretty much a direct copy of ‘Reality Bites’ but who would know anyways.

We had the initial arguments regards which language to use. He was all for Hindi and I wanted the Bangalorean version of English (you got to listen to it to know what I mean).

Anyways, the movie started off with my character (played by this upcoming hero, handsome dude, I was happy and all) and my girlfriend walking into a pub and straight into an item number.

I had two issues with this,
1) I hadn’t planned on a girlfriend in the movie.
2) Which Bangalore pub has item numbers on?

He added a twist in the tale, (before the bloody first dialogue) which involved me completely losing it and dancing with the item chick and my girl storming off in violent fury after having thrown off most of what she was wearing for the heck of it.

Then there was this romantic track shot in Lal Bagh, Lonavla and The Alps, which I completely didn’t like. Even the heroine didn’t like having to walk bare feet in bikinis on the Alps. She kept giving me those horrible looks. I tried explaining. I told her that it wasn’t my idea, but then she was too good looking to listen. I finally had to tell her that she wasn’t even supposed to be there in the movie. All hell broke loose, she started wailing like a retard pup and the director offered his shoulder and a makeup kit.
The aftermath was good fun though, tearing out frozen teardrops from her skin…

The song in the story ends with me (that upcoming hero dude) telling something like, “Tum meri jaan ho, jaan se bhi mahaan ho, I love you”
And she says, “I love you too” (followed by a lingering kiss (she, still in her bikini))

We had decided to split on the sentence count.

Story so far; 2 songs, 1 dialogue (2 sentences each in Hindi and that awesome Bangalorean English). Things weren’t going as I had planned. I was beginning to feel like a bit of a pushover here.

Anyways, continuing with the movie;
The story featured this girl I confided to. It was the general talk about our frustrations and also brought in an alternate view. She was working in this call centre, had her parents looking for a ‘suitable’ groom for her and all that. She had her own set of frustrations to deal with. Most of the movie was supposed to revolve around those two lives and a mature relationship. Not something cheesy.

It was supposed to start with one of those annoying ladies preaching her know all bullshit and me taking it all in without a whimper, and then calling her (friend), waking her up and pulling her out to a café. She figuring out that something’s wrong and coming along in a hurry (no apologies for being late for obvious reasons).

It was this that brought the entire movie crashing down.

The director wanted us to speak for a minute or so in GOA!!! And he wanted to follow it up with a dance sequence and you can guess her dress in the dance.

I said “HELL NO, I’m not going to drive 16 hours to meet someone for a coffee, I’m not going to dance in that state of mind for the third time in 20 minutes movie time”

He: “You’re not trying to understand. We have to keep everybody happy.”
Me: “I don’t care a @#$% what everybody thinks. This is for a target audience.”
He: “It’s going to flop, your story sucks anyways”
Me: “You’ve ever tried anything apart your usual dance nude crap to know if it might work?”
He: “See I’m more experienced here, and also, you’re being very unreasonable… you’ve made me sacrifice too much already”
Me: “I told you, I’m bloody straight, screw your sacrifice”
He: “No, not that, I’m over you now (heh heh no pun intended) you rejected SRK, big B, Salman and Sunny Deol as the lead character”
Me: “Yeah cause, I’ve just passed out of college and I don’t stutter like a car that doesn’t start, I’m less that 60 years old, I don’t drive over people and I definitely wouldn’t thrash the crap put of the Pakistani IT billionaire for not offering me a job… NONE OF THEM FIT!!!”
He: “Fine, forget all that… what’s your problem NOW?”
Me: “Like I said, I can’t drive to Goa, and yeah yeah I know you agreed to scrap the Goa part till the intermission, but there’s no way I could sit in that open air Barista joint on MG road with this girl in swimwear and definitely no if she’s going to kiss me on the lips every second sentence. That’s damn distracting.”
He: “See, you’re being stubborn, that’s what the young crowd wants. And what about the rape scenes”
Me: “Everything’s over the top. Firstly, I wont drive around in a merc while applying for a job, then I won’t take a circuitous deserted route home for the heck of it. If there are 4 rick drivers raping a girl, I might do something about it, not sure, but I’m not strong enough to pummel them into submission… anyways, why does she have to get attempted raped? It doesn’t fit in the thought process of this movie. And NO… NO, I don’t have a sister and she doesn’t need to get raped either.”
He: “FORGET IT THEN!!! You’re not listening to anything I say… why do you need me? For my contacts? I’m not willing to direct this, this is a sinking venture”
Me: “Consider it sunk… I’ve lost interest in it as well… you can go screw yourself and your contacts, I really don’t care… really. I’ve found myself a job by the way, so I’m not so driven anymore. I might write about this someday, and I may not… so till then… you go your own merry way whilst I go mine… adios”
He: “Loser!! B’bye”

And yeah, so the adventure came a crashing down… A relief it did… sigh…

Anyways, it’s a bad world out there… Even if in disparate need for cash and something to do, don’t get there… they really get you to compromise your morals.

- Komodo Dragon