I finished my second cup of morning tea, leafing through the newspaper, as I anxiously waited for my maid to turn up. As time passed and there was no sign of her, my temperature soared, even in the cool January climate.
Cursing her, I somehow finished the household chores, before leaving for my class at Institute of Moving Images.
Next morning she turned up with the same old story- her husband battered and bruised her so badly, that she couldn’t come for work the previous day.
Tired of asking her the same question- “Chhod kyun nahi deti hai usko?”, I just asked her – “Saat Khoon Maaf” picture ka naam suna hai kya?”
”Nahi..”, was her short reply.
“Agle mahine release ho rahi hai.”
“Aisa picture ka naam… bada azeeb sa hai !!!”
“Usme ek aurat saat shaadiyan karti hai.”.
“Saat Saat shaadiyan… baap re baap…!!!”
Tu is wale mard ko chhod de… doosri shaadi kar le”
“Hum toh ek se hi itna pareshaan ho gayen hain Didi… doosra kaisa hoga kon jane”
To tease her further, I continued- “Woh aurat, ek ek kar saaton ka khoon bhi karti hai.”
With a gaping mouth, she listened to me and after a few seconds of pause, she nodded, as if in agreement- “ Sacchi Didi ! kabhi kabhi toh mujhe bhi lagta hai, mein bhi murder kar dun apne mard ka”, exclaimed she.
Perhaps, my maid echoes the sentiment of thousands of women in similar situation.
Probably, all these women will flock to the theatre to watch UTV’s upcoming black comedy, 7 KHOON MAAF (7 Murders Forgiven), starring Priyanka Chopra in the lead role, directed by Vishal Bharadwaj- known for his dark, intense, edgy films like Kaminey and Omkara.
The film is based on the Ruskin Bond’s short story, Susanna’s Seven Husbands. It is a story of an Anglo-Indian woman who goes on to kill all her seven husbands.
Last time, Ruskin Bond & Vishal came together to create the magical film “Blue Umbrella”. From the promos this film already looks delicious.
“Vishal asked me if I could do another story for him and I saw no reason why I wouldn’t.” said Ruskin Bond in a recent interview. “Vishal liked a four-page short story of mine, Susanna’s Seven Husbands. I expanded it into a 200-page episodic piece that can be filmed. My protagonist is a femme fatale who bumps off her seven husbands.… I had to find ingenious ways of bumping seven people off while writing the story. Not something that I am used to contemplating generally.”
Priyanka Chopra will be seen playing a negative character once again after Aitraaz and Yakeen. In this film, Priyanka Chopra’s character ages from an young girl to old woman and will be seen going through seven different age makeovers as wife of seven different aged men at different stages of her life. She plays a bar dancer in Maharashtra, salwar kameez clad Sikh woman, a middle class woman in cotton sarees, burqa clad Muslim woman and a pillion riding young wife with Neil Nitin Mukesh.
Priyanka’s other screen husbands in the film include John Abraham, Russian actor Aleksandr Dyachenko , Vivaan Shah as the young husbands as well as Irrfan Khan, Annu Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah in the roles of the seven husbands.
While sharing his enthusiasm for the film, Ruskin Bond further reveals, “My protagonist comes from an Anglo-Indian background. She is a beautiful lady, but reserved. She is not very glamorous like Ms Chopra and does not try to charm men in obvious ways. I hope Vishal will keep that in his characterization. She is very smart too. She even gives an old husband of hers an overdose of Viagra in my story, who of course can’t take it…. No, No, I can’t give out anymore of the story. My only regret will be, I couldn’t be cast as one of Ms Chopra’s seven husbands. Guess I am too old for that (laughs).”
To create those seven different looks authentic for Priyanka’s role in the film, Director Vishal Bhardwaj had hired renowned Academy Award winning, Hollywood special make-up effects artist, Greg Cannom of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
And out of those the most challenging one was that of the 65-year-old wife of Naseeruddin Shah, for which the make-up team has used Priyanka’s grandmother’s photo to try and make her look as close to her as possible.
During the whole process, Priyanka has literally not eaten or not drunk anything for hours thereby starving herself during the shoot that involved prosthetics.
Firstly, the make-up takes five long hours at least, to get right. So, it would begin at early hours in the morning to get it done by 10 or 11 am. Post that, till the shoot ended, Priyanka could not eat anything, as that would damage the make-up. Vishal also wanted Priyanka to put on some weight to fit the bill of the character.
During production, the film has gone through two name changes. Initially, the project was titled Seven which was then replaced by Ek Batta Saat and finally 7 Khoon Maaf. Mohanlal was initially approached by Vishal Bhardwaj for a lead role in the film, but the southern superstar backed out from the film, for unspecified reasons. And was later replaced by John Abraham.
7 Khoon Maaf was first scheduled for release on 21 January 2011, but has now been postponed to 18 February 2011.We, Vishal’s fans are eagerly waiting for the release.
However, in the male chauvinist Indian society, women oriented films often do not fare well in the Box office. A brilliant film like ‘Maya Memsaab’ , directed by Ketan Mehta,wherein the female protagonist moves from one man to another in quest of love, was rejected by Indian audience.This attitude of Indian audience can be traced back to the socio-political history of India.
Interestingly, polygamy has been in practice in India. Kings with multiple queens and Harems, Kulin Pratha, Devdasi system- there are ample examples of polygamy in Indian history but except Draupadi in Mahabharata there is no other example of polyandry. The concepts of Sati and Virginity are always associated with women in India; perhaps the collective psyche of the Indian audience reflects that and cannot accept strong women.
But times have changed. The multiplex going educated urban audience is open to new ideas and this seems to me the best time for filmmakers like Vishal Bhardwaj to experiment with novel themes.
Vishal Bhardwaj is no doubt getting better with every movie and this movie surely looks more promising than Kaminey and Omkara.
Watch the trailer of 7 Khoon Maaf
