Himesh Reshammiya: The Making of a Sphinx

A bloody nose links the singer-actor to the sphinx in Giza, a nose for greatness.

Fed up of the flak he was getting, Himesh Reshammiya decided to do something strange, something impossible of him.

He walked into filmmaker Pooja Bhatt’s production house and had a word with her.

Pooja rolled her eyes and spewed, “Why me, go to Mahesh Bhatt to make a film for you!”

“He does not make films anymore,” Himesh tried to reason.

“He interferes, he ghost-directs!” she snapped.

Himesh sulked, but Pooja wasn’t going to keep her cool.

“Go to Vikram Bhatt, he’ll need someone more horrific than him to sell his films.”

Himesh looked downcast, and was willing to bear the barrage of invectives.

“Mohit Suri is a cousin, go to him; he’ll make a film about Internet porn or some such, and cast you as a lusty trafficker.”

“Bas!” Himesh stood up, holding out his fist in her face, “Maine kuch din pehle apki picture Paap dekhi. Bahut accha laga. Aapke film mein ek ruhaaniyat (spirituality), ek sufiana soz (sufi pain) tha jisne ne mere dil ko ek suroor diya. Mujhe laga ke aap ke saath kaam kar ke mujhe spiritual transcendence milega.”

Pooja gulped. Big words, she thought, for a small man.

Himesh continued, “Maine Paap dekhkar soch liya tha ke agar aap mere saath film banaye toh uske baad chahe mera career chale na chale, yeh tasalli toh rahegi ke hum dono ne milkar kuch alag kiya. Duniya se judaa, khuda ki tarah.”

“Wah,” Pooja widened her amazed eyes, ‘Duniya se judaa, khuda ki tarah,’ she gave it a thought. Only god could have prevailed, common sense was elsewhere.

Tears welled in her thick kohl-lined eyes. She sat stunned in her seat, pensive, not aware that Himesh was reaching out for the door.

“What will we call the film?” she asked the disillusioned entertainer.

He turned around, his new wig firm in place, unshaved jaw turning in slo-mo to give her an appealing shot of his bereaving side profile; face hung down, he looked at her big moist eyes and huskily said, Kajraare with such a solemn feeling that she immediately released her pent and let her smudging kohl licked tears run. She was sold.

“Aashiq bana diya aapne toh,” she thought, but only after she watched him strut away. She dare not utter it to him.

Shooting was far from easy with Himesh. Pooja was no stranger to fits of fury, having previously slapped her actors on the sets, torn clothes of heroines to shreds — her rage had lost her a few good roles even in her own acting days, when she walked out of films because the choreographer’s expression of come hither was bizarre.

Pooja was a dictator on the sets. Some spot boys sprayed dicktator on her chair at one such outdoor shoot. She worked with an unmindful resolute to herself, her current goal was to finish the tortuous shooting of the film.

Camel tow.

During the shooting of the song Rabba Luck Barsa in Egypt, Pooja had to ask her cinematographer to keep panning out as Himesh kept lip-synching without feeling, with one single pained expression throughout. Pooja would yell into the loud-speaker, ‘Himesh, expression do, even the camel following you seems to be singing better, Rabba Fuck Barsa!’

Himesh endured all her tantrums and demands because he believed he was onto something good, that Kajraare would establish his acting credentials. The Bhatts might not have a hit track record but the towering performance of their actors never goes unnoticed. This is the least he could ask for, after giving a hat trick of flops, launch after re-launch.

For the title track, Kajra, kajra, kajraare, the unit went to shoot at the Pyramids of Giza. They dangled Himesh on cords and hoisted him on the head of The Great Sphinx to get a sweeping panoramic visual shot.

Himesh asked to be dropped gently through the disfigured face of the Sphinx and wanted to stand in the centre of the face, where now was remnant chips of its missing nose. The famous Sphinx nose that no one in recorded history has seen, as legend has it that a Sufi apostle, outraged at the peasant offerings to appease the stone idol for their harvest, lopped it off many centuries ago.

Had Himesh suddenly become the grand, epic missing nose? Lawless in Arabia, someone chided Pooja for hanging him up there, precariously perched on the missing nose. She said it was destined. One missing a nose and the other known for it alone.

In the centre, he outstretched his arms, a la SRK in Sooraj Hua Madham. But just as he began posing, his nose started to bleed. Hot spumes spiralled down his nares. The ever-optimistic Himesh saw it as a good omen from the gods that his hard work in the scalding heat; his physical and mental exertion would not be in vain. Rabba was barsaoing luck.

He swabbed the stem of blood flow with an end of the keffiyeh head scarf he was wearing. Each time he opened his arms to simulate flight a simoom in the desert would hiss; a stinging sandy draft blew in his face. Which he found dramatic and hoped it was being captured on film, down below, some distance away.

The loudspeaker had stopped working, and Pooja had no way to scream at Himesh, stranded atop, in his own filmy ruins. She could not draw his attention towards her to give the right shot, and he, oblivious of her instructions, was mucked in blood and sand.

Pooja lost her cool. She found a huge, square glass panel in the prop van, scribbled something with a permanent marker, and asked one of her clumsy spot boys to show it to him.

He read, ‘EID’ and thought Pooja was contributing to his fortune, it was a good, auspicious day to mount the Sphinx. He looked for a faded moon in the heat of the sun. He stood still, and prayed, raising his hands in the sky as men do during namaaz. She wanted him to DIE.

Pooja called for pack-up and set going with her crew to the hotel for rest. By the time Himesh crawled down, everyone had left, except the Sphinx, still standing behind him when he walked his way to the hotel.

At short intervals, he would turn to look back, and wink at the Sphinx, ‘You rock!’ he would exalt once in a while, thumping his fist in the dead desert air. The Sphinx, unmoved, had withstood worse ignobility and looked through him.

In the hotel he asked for a doctor to visit his suite, to inspect him for blood clots in his nose. There were none. This was an even better sign, a miracle. He tipped the doctor, when the doctor, amused at his endurance braving nose, quipped, not to fret, “Just get it insured if you worry so much,” he smiled on his way out.

An august evening at a screening of the film as Himesh stepped out of his luxury car into the wet drizzle on the red carpet, he slipped and fell on his nose. Hundreds of gathered fans gasped but no one dared to laugh.

Himesh chuckled to distract his fans from his bleeding nose which he adroitly shielded with a kerchief. Everyone cheered and clapped in the aisles after he resumed posture. Surely a good sign, he swaggered in bleeding but ready to croon Rabba Luck Luck Luck Luck Barsa, Rabba Muck Barsa.

He looked as expressionless as the Sphinx since centuries, although assured that his nose was insured and would outlast him.

https://medium.com/media/29d782b4ea5a6b8b4897a73f7291c5b8/href