Waiting For Guru

Ever since I have been in Chennai, I have watched the shooting of quite a few Tamil movies -- mainly song and fight sequences. Even a war scene, in Mani Ratnam's Kannathil Muthamithal (forgive me if I've spelt it wrong). These shootings took place in the old Express office on Mount Road.

Among the stars I've seen in action are Vikram, Vijay, Sarath Kumar, Ajit Kumar, Jyothika, Rambha... and some more whose names I do not know or recall. And very recently, I missed the opportunity of watching Rajnikant in action for Sivaji -- ah, never mind.

I have always wanted to know how a shot looks on the screen, with the dubbing and the background music and the special effects. But the idea of sitting through an entire Tamil movie, just to watch a couple of scenes whose shooting I had witnessed, is not really enticing. There are only two Tamil movies I've seen in theatre till date, Kandukondein Kandukondein and Pudupettai. The former I saw on my own in a Delhi theatre and fell in love with, so much so I packed my bags and came down to Chennai. The latter I was dragged to.

Anyway, I am now eagerly waiting for the release of a movie, parts of which I've seen being shot: Guru. Guru is based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani and his famous spat with media baron Ramnath Goenka.

Mithun Chakraborthy plays Ramnath Goenka, and for the role he wears cropped grey hair and a khadi kurta and dhoti. He runs two papers, Independent and Swatantra Bharat. During the shooting, Mani Ratnam got the Express signboard covered with that of 'Independent', and it was copy of 'Swatantra Bharat' that Mithun Chakraborthy was holding during his showdown with his reporter cum son-in-law Madhavan. I have already written a detailed post about the shoot.

Mithunda, in spite of his long years in Bombay, still retains some of the Bengali accent. Each time he screamed at Madhavan, "Tum ek reporter ho, reporter (you are just a reporter)!", he would say something that sounded like "reportar". But the accent should go fine with the role because the media baron in Guru is a Bengali. What a great actor!: perfect in each retake. The retakes were happening because Madhavan was goofing up.

Mithunda is another reason why I am waiting for Guru. He still rocks. I will give you an example why. During the shoot of Guru, I posed with Mithun for a friend's camera. While going on my annual, Diwali trip to Kanpur, I copied a whole lot of pictures, including this, into a CD so that I could take prints there. At the photo studio, a young man, barely 18 or 19, scanned through the pictures, checking for the resolution. The moment he saw my picture with the actor, he jumped up in shock: "Arrey! Yeh to Mithun Chakravarty hai!"

Till then, I had only read literary exagerrations such as, "He fell from the chair when he heard the news" or "She jumped off the chair in surprise."