New beginnings beckon Ajay Devgn. After kickstarting the shoot of Drishyam 2 earlier this month, the actor has now turned his attention to Bholaa, the Hindi adaptation of the Tamil film, Kaithi (2019). On Saturday, he began shooting for the actioner that is being helmed by debutant director Dharmendra Sharma, who previously served as the editor of Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (2020) and Shivaay (2016).

The original film revolves around a prisoner — played by Karthi — who comes to the aid of the police when they are attacked by a gang of smugglers. In exchange, the police help him reunite with his daughter. A trade source reveals that while the premise remains the same, the Devgn-starrer has been tweaked to suit the taste of the pan-India audience.

“Director Lokesh Kanagaraj had penned the story of Kaithi. For Bholaa, the story has been revisited by Sandeep Kewlani and Aamil Keeyan Khan, who have written the dialogues too. Ajay kicked off the month-long schedule by shooting an action sequence on the streets of Kharghar on Saturday. Several chase sequences, designed by action director Ramazan Bulut, were shot till Tuesday. Next week, the team will head to Madh Island where a set of the police commissioner’s office has been built. Some crucial dramatic scenes will be filmed at this location,” reveals the source.

The movie, also starring Tabu, is being envisioned by Devgn as an action thriller with elaborate set-pieces. 

As told to Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 5, 2019)


• DIRECTOR • SRIRAM RAGHAVAN

• FILM • Ek Hasina Thi (2004)

• CAST • Urmila Matondkar, Saif Ali Khan

• LOCATION • Kharghar, Chandivali Studio

Fifteen years since its release, my debut film Ek Hasina Thi is still remembered for its horrific rats. Interestingly, they were not a part of the initial script. In the first act—the initial 45 minutes—Saif’s (Ali Khan) character, Karan Singh Rathod, comes across as a classy guy, a suave, rich businessman, even though one is unsure about what he does.

It was while brainstorming with RGV (producer Ram Gopal Varma) on how to establish that Karan is a gangster with underworld links, that we recalled a scene from The Godfather, Part 3, where Andy Garcia and his girlfriend were in bed when a gangster surprises her in the kitchen. In our film, Urmila’s (Matondkar) character Sarika is surprised not by a man but a mouse in the kitchen. Her scream brings Karan running, but he later scoffs at her for being frightened of a mouse which has since fled.

The scene brought thrills and some laughs and helped establish that Sarika is terrified of rats till she is thrown into prison for a crime she is tricked into confessing to having committed. Behind bars, she encounters not just bullies and weirdoes, but also looks her fear straight in the eye. When she smashes a plate on one of the rats, you know her ordeal has empowered her. And that was the perfect interval point.

The second half was Sarika’s quest for revenge as she entangles Karan in a cat-and-mouse game. In the original script, we had Karan threatening her at gunpoint for the money she has stolen from his boss, making him the patsy. Sarika tells him she’s hidden it in an abandoned mine where her father worked. She takes him below, then, knocks him down and escapes in the shaft which she destroys once she reaches the top, leaving Karan to die underground.

While on a recce to Rajasthan we had found the perfect mine only to realise that it would be impossible to shoot there because how do you take a crew and equipment down there. So, we wondered what to do and someone mentioned that this place must be full of rats. That gave us the idea of using rats.

We toyed with several endings, including the usual one of Sarika pushing Karan off the cliff. Then, we came up with the idea of her trapping him in a cave where the rats come creeping once it gets dark. When I argued that since the story was set in Delhi, where would Sarika find a secluded cave, Ramu emphasised that emotion scored over logic. He told me to shoot it convincingly, confident it would be accepted.

We filmed in a quarry in Kharghar and at Chandivali Studio. It was kind of ironic that having mocked Sarika’s fear earlier, Karan is himself terrorstruck by rats at the end. Chained in the cave, in the fast fading light of the flashlight, he sees rats creep up on him, gnashing their teeth, and knows it is the end. We debated over how much to show, eventually leaving it to the audience to imagine his death as the light goes out and he screams as the rats attack… We had three junglee rats which we kept tied and used for terrifying close-ups. The rest of the rats you see in the frame were actually white mice. We had called for two dozen of them and my assistant Kusum touched them up with black tooth-powder so they appeared a darkish grey on screen. These mice are the friendly sort, and even I have held them without fear of getting bitten. For that shot where a rat runs up Saif’s leg, we used a wound-up mechanical toy.

I must confess that I had a moment of worry when my sister-in-law who was not around when the film released, excitedly called me from a theatre in Delhi a few days later to say that she was watching the film. And, she added, that Maneka Gandhi was sitting one row ahead of her. Fortunately, she didn’t have any problem with the rats in our film.

Ek Hasina Thi was a turnaround film for Saif. His first reaction to my narration was, “I have just started getting a fan following and you want me to play a villain, make them hate me!” Fortunately, both of us like the same kind of films and after I pointed out that Karan is more like a Charles Sobhraj kind of a character, diabolical but charming, he accepted the challenge despite the fact that it went against his image. Urmila too veered away from her glamorous avatar and came up with a gritty performance. After the film’s release, many girls asked my co-writer Pooja (Ladha Surti) for the location of the cave. They wanted to send someone there.

The film wasn’t a huge commercial hit, but it was critically-acclaimed. Interestingly, even though the title was Ramu’s idea, he later wanted to change it because he felt it gave the impression of a romantic film. He suggested Shock! instead. But I stuck to my guns and I am delighted Ek Hasina Thi and its rats still linger in people’s minds.

Swara Bhaskar files complaint with Kharghar police following “fraudulent” cash withdrawal
Anirban Das (MID-DAY; September 1, 2015)

Swara Bhaskar, who is currently shooting in Karjat for Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, has fallen victim to ATM fraud. On August 27, she had attempted to withdraw cash at an ATM in the premises of a Navi Mumbai shopping mall, but in vain. A few minutes later, however, she received a message that Rs 20,000 had been debited from her account.

A source close to the actress says, “After wrapping up the day’s schedule, she was heading to a hotel and on the way, stopped by the mall in Kharghar. The ATM was quite slow and two people standing close by informed her that it was not working properly. So she left without making any transaction. When she stepped out and reached her car, she got a message saying Rs 20,000 had been withdrawn from her account. She was shocked as she hadn’t even entered her ATM pin.” Swara then ran back to the ATM to find that the machine was functioning normally.

Without any delay, she filed a complaint with the Kharghar police. “People from the film’s production team also reached the police station to help her. She called the bank to inform them about the fraud. The money has not been credited to her account so far,” adds the source.

Swara confirms the news, saying, “It seems strange in retrospect that the ATM would hang the minute I swiped my card, and two random strangers would appear and start offering advice. But what is scary is that my account or the ATM could be cracked though I did not provide any account details or PIN number. I spent the whole night lodging complaints with the cyber crime cell and the bank and kept the team of my production awake as well.”