JANNAT RAHMANI, 10, was married today. A muscled dacoit
placed his bleeding palm on her forehead, declaring they would be
together until death. Lesser goons held guns to her parents’ heads. As
each take ended, Jannat rushed to the mirror, scrubbing off her sindoor. “Papa, it hurts,” she winced at her father, Zubair Rahmani, an actor from Lucknow. The unit of Phulwa
suppressed smiles — bizarre scenes and momentary physical discomfort
are a small price to pay for stardom. Jannat has been ‘in the industry’
since she was three. Seven SOCIETY & LIFESTYLE 14 years later, she
has played the title character in two leading soaps — NDTV Imagine’s Kashi, and now Colors TV’s Phulwa.
This is not a world where little girls play ‘dress-up for fun’. This is
a world of contracts, competition and shooting schedules that last for
hours.
Indian television discovered a socially relevant fix with Balika Vadhu,
the story of 10-year-old Anandi (played by the saccharine Avika Gor)
married to young Jagdish (Avinash Kapoor). In formula, the series was no
different in its usual recipe of domestic strife. Each episode ended
with a public service message denouncing the evils of child marriage.
Colors had hit upon a virtual goldmine. Middle-class Indian viewers
could be socially conscious while absorbing a daily dose of saas-bahu thrills. TRP ratings soared. Rosy-cheeked Avika, a 13-year-old at the time, was an instant star.
“It all started with Balika Vadhu,” agrees Shaalu, writer for Zee TV’s Jhansi Ki Rani. “After that when Colors launched Uttaran,
a story with two little girls in the lead, it became obvious that kids
were great for central roles.” Hastening to replicate their success,
channels opened casting doors for children — kids were no longer mere
extras or comic relief, but protagonists with stories of their own.
“Anandi proved children make terrific central characters. The world is
different through a child’s eyes. Jaded plots can be reinterpreted. They
are cute and the audience feels involved since the character literally
‘grows’ before their eyes,” says Gautam Hegde, a former writer for
Imagine’s Kashi.
One of the young girls who reaped the benefit of this windfall was Ulka Gupta, 14, chosen to play young Laxmibai on Zee’s Jhansi Ki Rani. When Balika Vadhu became a favourite dinner companion, Ulka was winding up her stint on Star One’s family drama Resham Dankh. On her last day, she was called to audition for Jhansi. In the two years that followed, Ulka became the face of the hugely popular series because of her immense histrionic skills.
Now, after her character has taken an
‘age-leap’, Ulka is waiting for her Class X exams to finish. “I get
calls every day from channels, asking if she is ready to take a week off
to appear on shows,” says father Gagan Gupta, 46, while beaming
proudly. Ulka sits cramped on a sofa with her younger brother Janu, 13,
and sister Jigyasa, 12, watching television. There isn’t a single book
in the house. An oil painting of Ulka hangs above the sofa — sword
drawn, eyes blazing and lips curled in a sneer of contempt.
For both Jannat, Ulka, and several other
children that populate our television screens, their parents’
unfulfilled dreams play a big role in their immediate future. Nine years
ago, Gagan Gupta, a struggling actor, began taking his daughter for
auditions, coaching her in accents and dialects before she could even
form entire sentences. Strangely, once she landed a role in Resham Dankh,
Gupta stopped accompanying her to sets. “I let her mother look after
her, as a mother should. I’m an actor, and watching actors perform makes
me feel like a pillion rider. I can’t bear it,” he grimaces.
Not all parents share the same restraint.
Casting director Janet Ellis doesn’t mince her words when she says,
“Most parents of child actors are wannabes. Once their kid lands a role,
they act as if they are the talent. They want fancy food,
script changes, vanity vans. The good thing is they realise their
children are the ticket to the life they want, and focus on grooming
them.”
When Dimple Pendkalkar’s son Rahul turned
four, she took his portfolio to an agent, who, for a princely sum, began
recommending him to casting directors for endorsements. Since then,
chubby little Rahul, now 10, has appeared in 11 television serials, 11
feature films and 76 endorsements. His average fee per day on a set is
Rs 40,000. When not eating McDonald’s or making jokes on television,
Rahul is ferried by his mother all over the city — he learns dance,
skating, swimming, computer, chess and basketball. With the abundant
income flowing in, Pendkalkar senior has found some time off from his
legal prctice to take classes in scriptwriting and direction. While
Dimple enjoys being glued to the monitor for every take whether Rahul is
in it or not, others wait in air-conditioned vanity vans for their
children to take a break from shooting. This is their back-from-school
moment with the kids — complaints are patiently heard, aching shoulders
massaged, colas are ordered while lines are rehearsed.
Often hands-on parenting isn’t enough to protect
children from the rigorous demands of a professional life.
Seven-year-old Ashnoor Kaur’s mother quit her job with Ryan
International School, Mumbai, to look after her daughter’s hectic
career. Ashnoor, who plays the main lead in Zee’s upcoming Jai Somnath,
had a traumatic time on her first schedule — she had to grind red
chillies on a blazing hot afternoon. After the take, Ashnoor’s stinging
face and hands needed medical attention. “She is a brave girl. Sometimes
she is sleepy and cries on the sets, but since her character is
tortured by her relatives, I tell them to just shoot while she is
cranky. She is never bored and remembers all her lines,” her mother
Avneet Kaur smiles. The family has recently moved from what Ashnoor
describes as a “yucky” house in Malad to a swanky high-rise on Mira
Road. That ultimate dream in crowded Mumbai — buying a house of one’s
own — is usually the first one to be fulfilled. Parents see nothing
wrong in giving up their careers to nourish their child’s burgeoning
one. Of course, there are more trips for children to the mall now — to
compensate for purchasing a car that the only earning member of the
family can’t drive yet.
The other frightening consequence emerges
from working in a competitive industry where appearance is key. When
Ulka auditioned for Jhansi..., channel heads thought she was
too “dark and unattractive” for the role. But Ellis, famous for her
stubbornness and keen eye, insisted Ulka was the right choice. “With
children, it’s just a look in their eye. You can tell right away who
will follow instructions and who is a brat who will give you trouble on
the sets. I don’t know where the channel got the idea that Laxmibai was
fair,” she guffaws.
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Tiny dancer Ashnoor Kaur jigs to Sheela ki Jawani
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Being selected for the role was only half
the battle won. While her classmates took naps and watched movies,
Ulka’s summer vacation consisted of a gruelling five hours on Versova
beach every morning, learning horse-riding and sword-fighting. “I would
practice for hours without a drop of water. Initially, the channel
wanted another girl to play the role, and had even started training her.
Every time I fell, the handlers would tell me she was a better
performer. That made me get back on the saddle,” says Ulka. This was
followed by lessons in diction and Sanskrit shlokas. Till her run on the show ended, Ulka performed every single stunt herself, getting thrown off her horse four times.
THE ‘OTHER girl’ that Jhansi’s
production house replaced was 11-year-old actor Ayesha Kaduskar. She
suffered a nervous breakdown when she was told to stop coming to the
sets. Ulka shrugs in response, “The industry is not an easy place. My
sister has been rejected in two auditions and has become so shy. I burst
into tears on the sets so many times that I have lost count now. If I
messed up a take, they would talk about me as if I wasn’t there, saying,
‘Who cast this kid? She is totally incapable!’ But I worked harder, and
forgave everyone.” Despite her grave tone, she reveals a vulnerable
side when asked to pose. “Will you make my skin look lighter? Papa jokes
I only get gareeb roles. I get dark playing in the sun. Look at Avika (Gor), I love her. She is so fair.”
The most disconcerting thing about these
miniature adults is that their childhoods have already become
self-referential — always performing adorable childhood round the clock.
Sushil Bounthiyal, who plays Jannat’s father in Phulwa, says,
“Why think children are unaware of commerce? They know their cuteness is
a commodity, they know how to play it up. They are treated like any
other actor by the channel — expected to show up on time and complete
schedules. So, of course, they have a sense of competition, of earning
more than other actors, of playing main lead.” “A loss of innocence is
unavoidable in an industry like this,” agrees actress Nupur Alankaar,
who plays Phulwa’s mother, adding, “I’d never let my children act.”
THE UNIONS and National
Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who insist child actors must
not give up school, should try playing a title lead in a soap. Although
father Zubair says Jannat has no trouble with schoolwork, word on the
unit is that she has not attended school for the past four months. Rahul
gleefully admits his teachers just “pull his cheeks” and let him get
away with skipping homework because they love his serials. When Ulka had
to appear for her exams during the shoot of Jhansi ki Rani,
she would wake up on the sets, put on her uniform, fly from Jaipur
airport to Mumbai, write her papers, sleep for an hour and fly back to
shoot all night. Parents proudly declare their children “manage to pass”
or “do reasonably well”, paying little heed to that other education
they are completely missing out on — the life-lessons learnt with peers.
When talking to Ulka, one frequently gets the
feeling that one is in the room with a 20-year-old. There are moments of
normalcy, when her brother runs up to her to pull her hair or her
sister gets into a raucous row with her over a missing eraser, but it is
evident that she knows she is the only family member with a regular
income. She started with a per day rate of Rs 4,000 on the show, which
eventually became Rs 40,000 as her father realised the worth of a title
character. Ulka is still called on the sets of Jhansi for
flashback sequences. Apart from this, she makes paid appearances all
over the world as Laxmibai, wielding her sword on the horseback. So when
she rejects an offer for Rs 20,000 to play the romantic interest in a
music video, it is not because she’s shy. It is because “it wouldn’t
look right yet”. When Rahul Pendkalkar’s mother brings him a McDonald’s
Happy Meal, he does not smile, he enacts his expression and line from
the McDonald’s ad he starred in. When a make-up man consoles Jannat,
saying she should pretend the sindoor on her forehead is just a Holi colour, she rolls her eyes and says, “I’m not crying dada, that’s just glycerine.”
It shouldn’t be the awkward moment it is
then, when Ashnoor insists on dancing for us before we leave. It should
be no surprise that the song she picks is Sheela ki Jawani, and
that she matches every roll and shake of Katrina Kaif’s hips and bust
with her little body. These are not merely the self-conscious teenagers
on Facebook that we worry about, who know how to pose for the camera
with alarming ease. These are children who know how to market themselves
as children, which even in a world of adults, is no child’s play.
Nishita Jha is a Correspondent with Tehelka. |
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