Death in Mumbai: How Ekta Kapoor makes television that sizzles

by Meenal Baghel Editor’s Note: The Maria Susairaj-Neeraj Grover-Emile Jerome drama set Indian television on fire with its cocktail of murder, youth and sex. It was a made-for-television story. And television’s queen bee Ekta Kapoor wanted to make it. After all Grover had worked for her and Susairaj came to Mumbai desperate to land a role in her media empire. Mumbai Mirror editor Meenal Baghel got to eavesdrop on Ekta Kapoor’s meetings to understand the irresistible power of television in the lives of young people like Maria Susairaj. Here is an excerpt from her gripping book Death in Mumbai (Rs 299) published by Random House India. Ekta Kapoor walked into the meeting late, and within ten seconds, like a tearaway bully on the beach, she dismantled all the castles the others had been building. ‘I want Crash,’ she said, referring to Paul Haggis’s multiple- Oscar winning film. The meeting had been convened to discuss her newest project, a movie ‘inspired’ by Neeraj Grover’s killing. Ten films, Ekta informed everyone, had already been announced on the subject. Since Neeraj was a Balaji product and Maria had come to Mumbai aspiring to work with Ekta, it only made logical sense that they should stake ownership. ‘If there has to be a film on the TV industry then why shouldn’t we be the ones making the story?’ Except, at this point, there was no story. [caption id=“attachment_209774” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption="‘I’d like to produce quickies made on a tight budget.’ AFP Photo"]  [/caption] The executives of Balaji’s fledgling film division, and the actor Rohit Roy, who had been signed on to direct his first full-length feature film, were in a massive conference room, brainstorming. ‘I have the opening sequence all ready in my head — it begins with a woman’s audition tape running. . .’ Rohit said to the young assistant who had joined the company two days ago; the assistant looked suitably impressed. Someone suggested a Madhur Bhandarkar-style voyeuristic drama, while another executive came up with the idea of an ‘intense love story’. The consensus was veering in that direction when _Crash_landed. ‘It blew my mind,’ Ekta said. ‘Let’s also have the plot set over one night featuring several characters and their stories. . . Your budget,’ she said, turning towards Rohit, who was beginning to lose some of his good cheer, ‘would be Rs two to three crore.’ I met Ekta, India’s most successful television producer— and an astute mind—to get an insider’s perspective on the world that Neeraj and Maria aspired to. At which she suggested I sit in on her meetings to see how she works and creates. In the US, a single episode of a television show like Sex and the City or The Wire costs more than the budget she was offering Rohit for his film. But television in India works on simple volume — the more episodes you produce the more money you make. ‘It’s not amazing talent that makes me special,’ Ekta explained without any hint of self deprecation, ‘but the sheer volume of work I have done.’ In its fourteen years, her company has produced over seventy shows, which have defined Indian television. Her approach to movies is similar. ‘I’d like to produce quickies made on a tight budget.’ The quick turnover demands a constant feed of actors, technicians, and scriptwriters, making Balaji Telefilms one of the largest employers in Bollywood. ‘Every day about a hundred people come to us looking for jobs. I know, because I have to deal with them.’ Like Muammar Gaddafi’s battalion of women bodyguards, a brisk bevy of bejewelled, tilak-sporting women that included a writer, a head of production, and an assistant, insulate Ekta from the pressures of her own celebrity status. Tanushree Dasgupta, who has been with her for nine years, is at their head. When Ekta, famously and publicly devout, goes jogging every Tuesday from Mahim to Siddhivinayak Temple at Prabhadevi, she is often waylaid by people on the road wanting roles for themselves, their children; she hands them Tanushree’s number. Others get in touch with acquaintances working at Balaji Telefilms while trying for a break, as Maria Susairaj did. Maria befriended Balaji employee Jyoti Jhanavi on Orkut, who in turn introduced her to Neeraj, who was in charge of auditions there. Most recently, Ekta’s Facebook account had been overrun with pictures of young men baring their six-packs. ‘They think that’s their show-reel,’ she said, quite tickled. Last year, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring scriptwriter from Naini, Uttar Pradesh, Akshay Shivam Shukla, having exhausted all avenues of meeting the Boss Lady, came up with a most ingenuous plan. On August 4, the day of Shravan Puja, he infiltrated the Balaji Telefilms office disguised as a priest. Unfortunately for him, the staff soon realized that instead of mantras, Panditji was mumbling mumbo-jumbo. Shukla was pulled aside, questioned, and thrown out. In protest, he spent the night outside Balaji House, and when morning came he tried to immolate himself with a litre and a half of kerosene. The watchmen, desperate to douse the flames, pushed him into the open sewer that runs alongside the building. Cops were called in, a case was registered, and Shukla — finally deterred from his mission to meet Ekta —  was admitted to Cooper Hospital. ‘Eighty per cent of people in TV today have gone through Balaji,’ she told me, with pride. ‘The young, especially those from small towns and middle class families, like Neeraj, join because they want quick money, they want a platform to express themselves, to see their names and faces on TV. In their hometowns, TV is the primary source of entertainment, and to have their families see their name and face on TV is a big power trip.’ Her own creative head, Vikas Gupta, was a loose-limbed, floppy-haired twenty-one-year-old from Uttarakhand who leapfrogged up the hierarchy one evening when he saw Ekta struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with one of her episodes. ‘My mother would not buy the logic of the lead character,’ he told her casually. ‘On instinct,’ she said snapping her fingers, ‘I decided to make him Balaji’s creative head. It’s a big job, and I’ve made him sign a tough contract, but he understands the audience consists of women like his mother. Also, I liked his attitude.’ That was what had also first brought Neeraj to her attention. As she waited for her private lift to take her up to her fifth floor office, one of the aspirants hanging around on the ground floor saw Ekta and flicked an impertinent salute. ‘It was a really arrogant gesture, but I liked it,’ she said, letting me into the secret of how she creates stars. ‘There are only two things we look for in our lead actors: the man should have attitude, and the woman should look innocent. Between you and me,’ she said with a wink, ‘virginal.’ This has led to some peculiar casting problems — ‘It’s become difficult to find young urban women who meet this criterion.’ Ekta bypassed this problem by casting schoolgirls. Her youngest heroine has been a sixteenyear-old. Continues on the next page As television boomed into a Rs 27,000 crore industry in just over ten years, Oshiwara transformed from the dump Ekta first came to in 2000 into one of Mumbai’s most fashionable neighbourhoods. Young television stars and technicians, who spent upwards of twelve hours a day in near-squalid studios at Goregaon, Saki Naka, and Malad, going weeks without a break, invested heavily in plush homes here. The skyline is dotted with Singapore-style condominiums with hard-to-pronounce French-sounding names. (The illusion of a First World lifestyle is reinforced with easy access to fancy cold cuts, cheese and wines, the latest Almodovar DVD, and 24/7 air-conditioned houses. This lasts only until one steps outside, and is rudely brought down to potholed earth.) Real estate expansion has been matched by a thriving nightlife, forcing even froufrou South Mumbai restaurateurs like Rahul Akerkar, the owner of Indigo, to open branches here. The idea and attitude of Oshiwara now pushes beyond the reclaimed marsh. It is in the vanity of little-known designers housed in glass-plated buildings announcing their genius tersely, like Giorgio Armani, or Jimmy Choo, and without a smidgen of irony: Rahul Agasti, Turakhia Dhaval, Roopa Vora, Babita Malkani. It is implicit in the flashy EMI-driven lifestyle prevalent here. But most of all it lies, said Jaideep Sahni, in the ‘severe ambition’ that crackles in the air. His is the classic story of the outsider who made it big in Mumbai. The forty-one-year-old from Delhi is the most sought after scriptwriter in the film industry. ‘Just sit at the Yaari Road Barista for half an hour and you will know what it’s about.’ ‘The atmosphere is electric,’ he said referring to another coffee shop not far from where Neeraj and his friends hung out each evening. ‘Those men and women who look like Conan or Barbie behave as if they are out not for a cup of coffee, but for a screen test. Everything is about getting face time with the right people,’ said the writer of hit films like Company, Bunty Aur Babli, Khosla Ka Ghosla, and Chak De. Jaideep himself is often accosted at film premieres, where a glass wall cuts the Bollywood hierarchy off from the hoi polloi. Such is the premium on these opening nights that cinema chains like PVR have introduced the idea of ‘paid premiere’ tickets. ‘A well-dressed stranger will persistently catch your eye and since it would be rude to not respond, and one may be unsure of having met them, you go across. That’s all they need. After small talk about how they admire your work, or similar fawning attentiveness, they’ll follow you back into the enclosure, past the usher, as if that’s their natural destination.’ He laughed half-admiringly. ‘Once in, the person will drop you to go mingle with other directors and producers. Mission accomplished.’… … The film on Neeraj Grover’s death never got made, though Ekta produced one of the most celebrated movies of 2009, Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, an edgy triptych about sexual betrayal, cinematic aspirations, and parental disapproval—themes that deeply resonated with Neeraj’s killing.