The buzz on Kaizad Gustad's Boom

Lata Khubchandani

When filmmaker Govind Nihalani turned commercial with Thakshak he roped in choreographer Mahesh Mahbubani to direct Nethra Raghuraman's slinky number Toofan ki raat for the film.

Subhash Ghai took a look at him and cast him as choreographer to Aishwarya Rai in Taal. So Mahesh was a choreographer for real and on reel.

Mahesh is now off to Ladakh to shoot the music video of Aaj ki rat koyi aane ko hai for Times Music and the remix of Pakeezah number Chalte chalte.

He's also bubbling with excitement about his work in Kaizad Gustad's new film Boom, which he is directing for actress-producer Pooja Bhatt.

Gustad who has lived out of India most of the time after the release of Bombay Boys was introduced to Mahesh through a common friend, Bharata Natyam dancer Rajika Puri. "I had just returned from London in 1996 and was new in Mumbai, when Kaizad was working on Bombay Boys," Mahesh recalls. "But he wanted to work with me. So he called me for his next film Boom."

"We discussed the songs. Kaizad gave me his perception of what he was looking at and this project fell into place. I met the whole team, and we took it from there. I am casting it, doing the camera angles as director to the song. I am creating this number cinematically."

Mahesh will work with Madhu Sapre, model Padma Lakshmi, Catrina and Javed Jaffrey for the shoot. The film, he says, is a thriller. "Javed Jaffrey plays an underworld don. Then there's photographer-actor Boman Irani as a bank manager. We are even casting a couple of housewives to play fat old women."

Mahesh has over 26 music videos to his credit, including Asha Bhosle's Yeh mera dil pyar ka deewana, Ila Arun's Dilwala from the album Khichdi, Shaan's Dil kya karen, Biddu's Dance of Shiva and Shubha Mudgal's Naachoon main saari saari raat. He has also shot [actress] Raveena Tandon commercial for Lux.

For the stage, Mahesh has choreographed Lilette Dubey's Jaya from the Mahabharat and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

He also teaches at [the late Odissi dancer] Protima Bedi's Nityagram, where he works with Odissi dancers as a visiting faculty member. He has taught dance and movement workshops at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Now, he teaches film and movement at St Xavier's Instiute of Communication, Mumbai.

"All this work is an expression of myself. I am not looking for permanency. I was the first Indian student to win a full-time dance scholarship to London's Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. What I learnt there contributed immensely to my growth. I gradutated in 1995 and specialised in choreography."

Back to Mahesh's work in Boom. He says, "In most Hindi films, we have this pattern of the girl, boy and chorus. I don't like the chorus bit because it doesn't excite me. In Boom, I have 20 characters but there's a story I'm telling. The language is an amalgammation of movement --- performer movement, camera movement in conjunction with the rhythm of the song.

"What is exciting here is that it is a comedy and that is very challenging because your sense of timing is so crucial. The characters excite me because it leaves me free to recreate. What works for me, especially with films, is the musical genre, like the styles seen in Australian director Baz Luhrmann'sMoulin Rouge.