Phew! After almost eight long years the Sanjay Dutt-Ajay Devgan-Manisha Koirala starrer ‘Mehbooba’ finally saw the light of the day last week. Although there were speculations galore over the film’s delay, not many are aware of the fact that it was actually a particular scene in the film’s climax that became the main hindrance to an otherwise completed film. And guess what? It took over 18 months to can that scene! The scene -- featuring all the three lead actors, involved a moving train being chased by a car.
It so happened, for the scene a railway track was required in the middle of the desert. After scouting for locations in
Jodhpur, Jaipur and
Ajmer, an ideal spot was found in
Bikaner. However, the major hitch was that the sand around the track was very fine and certainly not fit for walking, let alone a car being driven on it. Besides, a one-and-a-half kilometer long road was also necessary to shoot the sequence. Director Afzal Khan then asked Nitin Desai, the art director to make a concrete road at the location. It took three months to get the road ready. Following which, Afzal Khan had to wait for almost eight months, to get the combined dates of the actors.
But, Afzal’s ordeal didn’t end there. He was in for a shock when they decided to begin shooting. At the site the military was carrying out a training programme and would continue for at least four weeks. Afzal had about 25 days from his actors but his dates were wasted again.
When Afzal finally managed to get everything in place again, he found that there was more problem in store for him. He had trouble bringing an old steam engine, which was on display in
Chandigarh for an exhibition. When he went to check there, he realised that it was dummy train and no longer in use. The only way it could move was with the help of three diesel engines, which would help push the train all the way from
Chandigarh to
Bikaner.
However, the worst was yet to come, as Afzal realised that the train from
Chandigarh came from the opposite side of the track in
Bikaner and they could not shoot from that end as they had already made the road on the opposite side of the tracks. He had to call for a special crane from
Delhi which could lift the train and put it on the right side of the track. The crane finally came after 20 days while the coal for the dummy train came after about three weeks. Everything went haywire but Afzal refused to get bogged down and compromise on the script. He felt, that particular train sequence was very crucial to the climax.
Click here to watch
trailers of Mehbooba.
Aruna Chandrasekharan
