As told to Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 10, 2019)

My 2014 drama, Citylights, was an adaptation of the BAFTA-nominated British film, Metro Manila. It came to me on a deadline with the script already written. However, as I pointed out to the producers, while the undercurrents might have worked with the original which was set in Philippines, we would need to explore the Indian remake a little more emotionally. For me, it was like a contemporary Do Bigha Zameen set in Mumbai, with a poor garment seller arriving in the city where he is forced to sell his soul to make ends meet. I wanted one big moment of heart-wrenching catharsis after which the protagonist, Deepak Singh, would turn the corner. That’s how we conceived this sequence which was not a part of the original screenplay, or so I’m told, as I haven’t seen the film.

One night, Deepak returns to the under-construction building, where he’s been conned into buying an incomplete apartment, dead drunk. His wife Rakhi and daughter Mahi are both fast asleep, but Deepak wakes up the former and insists she dance for him. He’d been dragged by friends to a ladies’ bar where, after seeing all that the dancers are expected to do, he’s filled with shame and anger at circumstances that compelled him, a conservative small-town man, to agree to his wife working in one such bar. Rakhi tries to calm him down, telling him their daughter would wake up, but Deepak is too inebriated and agitated to care. He throws some notes at her, saying, “Now, you will have to dance” and Rakhi finally snaps and slaps him, pointing out that she had not taken up the job for personal amusement, but because their daughter was going to bed hungry every night. Hearing this, Deepak breaks down and tells her to slap him some more; he deserves it, he says, and admits that the lights of the city were blinding them, assuring her he will not let her get lost in the darkness. He promises to take her back to their village. This is the trigger for him to willfully participate in a crime which ends tragically for the family.

Rajkummar is a teetotaller, but for this scene he insisted on having a drink. I tried to dissuade him, saying that it wasn’t required, but he was adamant. And before we knew it, he had finished almost an entire bottle of vodka. It was the first time that he had alcohol and it hit him badly. He could barely walk, but insisted on taking the stairs even though there was an elevator. Finally, I got four people to stand around him to ensure he didn’t fall into the elevator shaft and later, off the building.

We went into the sequence blind, without any rehearsals and with a drunk Rajkummar. And all I could do was place the camera on my shoulder to cover up should anything untoward happen. I had mentally prepared myself for a reshoot, but what happened that night was magical. Even though my hero was not in his senses, once he was in front of the camera, Rajkummar’s brilliance as an actor took him through the scenes.

The real surprise was Patralekhaa, who responded to him with just the right attitude and emotions. Citylights was this 24-year-old modern girl’s first film, in which she was playing a wife, a mother and a woman from a conservative set-up, and what she brought to the scene was incredible. She played it instinctively and like Rajkummar, elevated her character with her performance. I remember the focus puller was so moved by what he was watching that he began to cry, which is why some of the scenes are a little out of focus, but I let them remain rather than reshoot them. They made the sequence real. It was an emotionally exhausting experience for everyone on location that day. My hero had to be literally carried home after pack-up. He cancelled the next day’s shoot because he was throwing up constantly.

Scenes like this one and the one before it, when Patralekhaa is auditioning for the job of a bar dancer, came into the film after the script had been completed. They just happened… And later touched those watching the film. I remember after a screening, Pooja Bhatt was so choked she could not speak. That’s the kind of reaction I had wanted because the idea of Citylights was to turn the spotlight on that invisible part of the city, the people who come here looking for work, and in their struggle to survive, end up sacrificing so much.