Talk Room

The process of making Ramchand Pakistani started early Jan 2006, when my father, Javed Jabbar met the real life father and son on whom the film is based and wrote the first draft of the story which he showed me on one of my visits to Pakistan.

With Mohammad Ahmed then coming on board as the screenplay writer, the script was finished end 2006, with filming taking place in Feb 2007. It has been quite a process making this film and a miracle of sorts. With my mother, Shabnam Jabbar putting in the initial part of the investment, my father who is also the producer of the film approached several of his colleagues, friends and associates out of which 19 individuals all of whom had never previously invested in a film before together with Wateen Telecom and Peek Freans Biscuits Manufactuers became the combined investors of this film. This list includes a couple of my own friends, a cousin and my brother and sister in law. I owe them my profound thanks and gratitude for their support at a time when the Pakistan film industry is seeing one of its darkest days and to my family for their love and belief in me.

I am an optimist though and do believe we have the talent and the will to revive our film industry. We just need to think outside the box and dream a little more.

I wanted to write production notes as we shot for almost 45 days in Thar, Mirpurkhas and rural Karachi, but somehow only managed a few paragraphs.

Have decided to post those notes.

24th Dec, 2006 7:30 am: Nagarparkar, Thar desert. Nothing like the open air. It is very still here. Early morning..almost all of us are ready. This is one of our location hunting trips to the desert. Sofian (cinematographer), Mohammad Ahmed, Farrukh Faiz, Rashid Farooqui & Saboor Haider are in the mountains since sunrise. Probably at the Jain temple. Today we look for our border in the Runn of Kutch, a well and the locations for our opening shots.
Look forward to how this place will be in a month. The bathrooms must be comfortable, otherwise the days will be tough!

11:00pm. Mehran Hotel: Mirpurkhas.
In bed at the Mehran Hotel, one of 2 decent hotels in the city.  Feels good to be by myself finally. Long drive from Thar to Mirpurkhas. Some changes to the script were discussed on the way here. Abdullah (Noman Ijaz) is now a jewelry seller and Champa’s (Nandita Das) denial track is being re examined. Looking forward to the green fields tomorrow and then home. It’s been an incredibly useful trip again. The film finally seems real.
We found our border in the Kutch, a well and the perfect Choras (houses) for the Ramchand family.

25th Dec, 06. 7:25 am: Mehran Hotel.
Wake up call was 7:00 am. Last night, I slept to the sounds of Mohammad Ahmed killing a cockroach in Mariam Mukaty’s (Associate Producer) room and assuring her that it won’t rise again. I myself killed one on my bed and filled the room with Mortein..
But I had a very comfortable night. I was given the only room without a TV which is a relief. Have ordered my comfort food. Boiled egg and toast.

I have to make a list of Champa’s activities…grinding lentils, picking and carrying wood, water from the well.
What about her character’s struggle between the state of denial and holding out hope. What is the more powerful emotion..dramatically?

3rd Jan 07. Karachi
New Year. Last month of pre-production. Has it really hit us? Ahmed is working on 2 of Kamla’s (Maria Wasti) scenes, Farrukh is sorting out the schedule for the shooting spell in the jail and I….. I go from here to there, sorting out knots and emotional states. It is finally near and God knows what awaits us. I am determined to make it an incredible experience. My father has done it again! We have the money to shoot comfortably and he’s confident of raising the rest of the amount.

9th Jan 07. Karachi.
The days are going by. 3rd day of jail scenes rehearsal. Moti is now being played by Adarsh Ayaz and Shankar (Rashid Farooqui) is a more pro active character. Fazal (Younger Ramchand) is getting more and more comfortable with the rest of the cast…in fact I think all his fellow actors are in awe of him. I have such a talented bunch of actors.. am learning from them. They are fully immersed in the characters and loving the improvisations and the discoveries that happen during rehearsal.

Older Ramchand (Navaid Jabbar- no relation!) will take a little time to get into it. It’s his first acting experience. He comes from Mirpurkhas, is the son of a motor mechanic and is quite street smart. Loves driving his father’s motorcycle around town. He is 14, goes to school, but has a little trouble with reading, so he’s memorizing his lines. He appears to be a fast learner.

What should be the one common physical characteristic between the 2 Ramchands? A mole on the cheek or a gash on the eyebrow? Or a common habit? Thankfully, the look like they could be the same person. We got lucky! (We went with gash on the eyebrow as suggested by Sonia Rehman)

LIST OF THINGS TO TAKE TO THAR DESERT FOR THE CREW & CAST
1. Cereals. 2. Granola bars 3. Hand and body cream 4.Speakers for music during spare time 5. Sweatshirts from Zainab market 6. First aid kits 7. Stools 8. Folding table 9. Chewing gum 10. Caps.

28th Jan 07: Karachi
Last real day at the office in Karachi. More social talk than work today though. Still feel I am missing something. Not nervous, just curious. And right now, very hungry. A lot of packing going on around us. It seems as if we’re taking the entire room with us to Thar. Computers, clothes for the film, lots of water, the white production board, amongst other things.

31st Jan 07: Nagarparkar, Thar Desert
Been here 2 days. I have the most cosy tent. Feel a little guilty :). It has a charpai, a mirror and a chair. Almost everyone else is sharing rooms, some sleeping underneath large tents. Nagarparkar is a difficult place to host 80 people. But with the help of Baanhn Beli and the production team headed by Mariam, I think everyone is quite comfortable. The energy is focused, ready to go. Spent the last 2 days in coordinating locations and finalizing last minute things while Sofian has been eagerly filming sunrise shots at 6:30 am. Am excited to see what the everyday call times will be for filming to start once the real shooting begins.
This place is incredible. Majestic. Overwhelming. It silences you and humbles you.

8th Feb 07: Nagarparkar, Thar desert.
What a week. Never seen something quite like it. The first 3 days of filming in Nagarparkar were grueling and energizing. The first image of a 16:9 (widescreen) landscape and the boy (Syed Fazal Hussain as Ramchand) creating pure magic.

A first sense of it being a film. The shooting schedules themselves have something oddly exciting about them. 5:00 am, 5:30 am, 6:00 am call times with breakfast in the open air of greasy parathas and fried eggs. Almost all the food that we eat here has traces of sand.

We are usually in the desert filming for around 12 hours. The only irritants are the heat and the chapped lips. The truck that has been specially modifed to contain one ‘English’ and one ‘Indian’ toilet stands nearby, occasionally going off to offload its load.

Everything was going very smoothly, till our first real ‘issue’ reared its head. One of the several intelligence agencies raised objections (for purely bureaucratic reasons..:the paperwork apparently did not reach on time) and the filming has to grind to a halt. And the waiting game begins.

I remain the optimist. My father tries his best to resolve the situation in Islamabad. The actors get to know each other even more. We hang out in the courtyard of the Baanhn Beli office (my father’s NGO that has been working in the Thar desert for over 20 years). Fazal keeps himself the busiest. His new best friend is the wardrobe assistant with whom he makes toys out of cardboard with. Nandita smiles through it all, as do Zhaley Sarhadi, Rashid Farooqi and Farooq Pario. Jesse James (sound recordist from New York) does yoga with Fazal and Nandita in the courtyard.

Ahmed spreads out the clothes that have been bought from the Thari women nearby  and the wardrobe assistant, Imran tries them on as Nandita and Zhaley give their opinions.

9th Feb 07: Nagarparkar.
We have to move. No permission to shoot in Nagar despite all paperwork being complete. We can shoot 2 hours from Nagar, but I haven’t finalized any locations there, so now we go to Plan B, which we didn’t plan for, which is moving 80 people and luggage and equipment to Mirpurkhas to film the track that was supposed to have been the last shooting spell of the film.

Everyone is positive. It is uplifting to see that, though Mariam Mukaty must be wanting to scream because she is in charge of all the arrangements, and how do you find accommodation overnight for 80 people in a town with only 2 hotels, one of which is occupied.

Everything is loaded onto trucks and vans and the 7 hour journey to Mirpurkhas begins.

We are very sad to leave Nagar.

12th Feb 07: Mirpurkhas
Chaotic. Mariam and the production team of Shakeel Rana and Mohammad Rahimutoola have been up all night trying to arrange for beds and rooms to house all of us. We manage.
But the shoot is early morning the next day. And the location is an hour and a half from our hotels. We arrive half dead, but the village air lifts our spirits and we plug in.

(The Mirpurkhas shoot was probably the toughest in the entire spell only because we were thrown off guard by the sudden change of schedule. Small things like finding the right ‘bull’ in Mirpurkhas that would match the kind of bulls that are common in the Thar area..there was a continuity of the bull because it had to travel to Mirpurkhas from Thar in the film and we couldn’t find the right colour bull in Mirpurkas…the result: When we shot the linking scene in Thar, the poor bull had to be brought from Mirpurkhas by truck.

Also, the daily commute to the locations of an hour and a half or 2 hours every day back and forth meant we woke up very early and slept very late.

14th Feb 07: Mirpurkhas
Last day of the Mirpurkhas track. A strange feeling of control finally, but today is the mela (festival) scene, so let’s see what that brings with it.

Yesterday was an exercise in voice throwing and patience. We were filming in a bazaar (market) and controlling around 150 people. I just hope that no one stared directly into the camera while we shot.

While filming, we also have to go location scouting. We need a border location that will match the one in Thar. Luckily we had shot most of the border scene in Nagarparkar but because of this abrupt move, we have to find a location that will sort of look like the Runn of Kutch for the remaining shots left to be filmed. We’re also looking for a long stretch of bare land that can pass for the Thar desert for the mirage and the attempted suicide scene.

My eyes are now perpetually half open and my voice is in base. I have forgotten what my original voice sounded like. The air is chilly, especially at night. Cooler than the desert which is strange.

Same night:
The mela scene is done. Incredible rustic, original mela but a lot of shouting and organizing of the extras. Poor Mohammad Ahmed had to leave for Karachi because his mother fell sick. Really missed him. I think I sound rather unpleasant when I shout, especially on the megaphone, but there really is no other way

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