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Taking some bold steps

Debutant director Homi Adjania's black comedy is ready for release

Homi Adjania

Kersy Khamabata, captain of a yacht and resident of Mumbai, wrote a short story some time back. He showed the manuscript to several publication houses. They rejected it out right, on the grounds of its "very strong" language and bold content. Khamabata reached an aspiring filmmaker and ad maker, a political science graduate from St. Xavier's called Homi Adjania. Homi, earlier an assistant director for the film Bhopal Express, lapped up the offer. And the result is Being Cryrus, promoted as a black comedy starring Naseeruddin Shah, Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Boman Irani and Rimi Sen, releasing this month end.

Not that Homi, an adventurer by heart and even profession (he was a scuba diving instructor for eight years in Lakshadweep), retained the story as it was. He did "improvise on it with great inputs from Saif, Boman and Naseer". The end of the story too is changed to suit all palettes. Developed by these three, the story took three months for screenplay writing and 32 days of shooting in actual locations of Mumbai and Khandala, like, near fountains, on roads, in market places and on. To keep the actual affect live without the assistance of `special effects' even dubbing was done on the spot and not in an empty recording room!

So, now the film that is actually a narration by Saif about the past two years of his life, will "no longer have shock value but it will definitely sting at places, apart from tickling your funny bone," says Homi. However he does not deny that you will have to use a kind of suspension of disbelief while watching <243>this film. "When you come out of the hall, you will regain conscience and say, what the hell I was doing in the cinema hall? Why did I watch this film?" he laughs.

The film portrays Saif as an outsider to the kind of world we are living in. He is quite an understated character. He has his own set of morals you may not conform to.

He takes social values with great casualness. Yet he points a finger at himself by introspecting. All this happens as he lands up in the happy home of Naseer and Dimple. There he gets to see the cracks in their seemingly happy life.

The film that was shown in the New York film festival in the invited film category saw "fully sold out shows" with lot of applause for Homi.

For now, Homi, a freelance travel and humour writer and photographer for several Indian and international publications, is waiting "with bated breath" to the response of his film with the Indian audience. Though he has "one period film" and his own story "International Fakir" as his next productions.

RANA SIDDIQUI

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