Spilling the Beans – A Column By Goher Iqbal Punn

18th March, 2009: Apparently, it seems to an outsider that the stardom is full of sparkles sans the discomforts. But wait…before you consider it a fact. There is another side of a coin too. As far as the glitters of stars’ lives are concerned…’yes’ it’s true that the stardom is swathed with the glimmers. But if you continue to think that the stars have no difficulties in life and the discomforts while they shoot, then you are absolutely wrong. Because they undergo all these sufferings hugely in their private life and on the shoots. Their discomforts during the shootings are not visible to an outsider or a moviegoer. Because what a cinegoer gets to see on screen is the unblemished product, which cannot display the difficulties the stars undergo to doll up with the sequence.

The discomforts on the shoots have been strolling with the stars since the day one when the first movie went on floors. Till today’s time when the technology is very vast, they still exist to disturb the entertainment fraternity.

No other profession requires you to make as many physical adjustments as stardom. Babu Mukherjee, the famous film actress of the past Moushmi Chatterjee’s husband, once said to the media that, “The stars deserve every penny of the price they command for the sheer discomfort they undergo. They are pushed into the rain or fog, made to roll on mud, wear furs in mid-summer and shorts for a song sequence in the snow in the very frosty valley of Kashmir”.

The actors often refuse the good roles due to the torture of wearing beard, moustache or allergic costumes/items for long hours of each day of the shoots.

Anil Kapoor, the actor with the tag of Bollywood’s angry hero, told to the press during the shooting of ‘Eeshwar’, “The glue bites into the skin and there are no words to describe the discomforts”. The top notch villain cum character actor late Amirsh Puri once uttered his distress to the journalists saying that, “The elaborate wigs give him a headache and there were times when he wanted to throw them all up but couldn’t”. Forever suffered with a pillow inside her petticoat because she was playing a pregnant woman in many films, Shabana Azmi would throw away the cushion immediately after pack-up. “What a relief and thank God, it’s not a real pregnancy. Imagine what pregnant women go through for nine months”.

Whether it was the dancing queen Madhuri Dixit, whose feet were blistered because of dancing 9 to 5 – the dusky Rekha who endured chipped nails because of regular rape scenes, no generation has been spared the ordeal. The Venus of beauty late Madhubala fell ill due to the heavy chains she dragged during the shooting of ‘Mughal-e-Azam’. The late actress Geeta Bali died of small pox while she was shooting for the film, ‘Ek Chaddar Maili Si’. The superstar Rajesh Khanna was allergic to synthetic fabrics. The decent looking gorgeous actress of Chudhiween Ka Chand song’s fame Waheeda Rehman got allergic to stick-on bindis. The costume jewellery did not agree with Jaya Bhaduri (later became Bachchan after getting married to Amitabh Bachchan). The dimpled actress Sharmila Tagore got a headache because of the hair pins. Once, during a long shoot for a dance sequence, Dimple Kapadia felt hugely embarrassed when a fly had got into her blouse. At the outdoor location, Jaya Pradha refused to drink water because there was no facility for a toilet. While she was shooting for Mr. India, the Hindi film industry’s diva Sri Devi had to drive all the way to her hotel to change her costumes because there was no facility available for changing the clothes on the sets.

Overworked and constantly in the public eye, the film stars deal with more stress than the ordinary people. The glamour world is full of complexities, passion and magic. There is triumph, euphoria, loneliness and countless memories… This is the swanky world of Bollywood.

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