Star Struck

Blog 23 of 30

I started working with the Heroes Project as Senior Media Director.  It was a steep learning curve understanding the development sector, how it worked, about HIV, how it was transmitted and most important of all, how people reacted. I never had the need to talk to people about sex or other such issues before in my professional life. What surprised me was the level of embarrassment people had. Conversations about condoms and sexually transmitted diseases would have people squirming in their seats refusing to look at you or meet the eye. I understood the challenge. How did one educate people about HIV, about safe sex, if people where not even prepared to have the conversation?

We began with a series of awareness workshops for people from the television industry – writers, directors, and the rest. It was my first experience doing something like this and rather challenging because I realized that our entire team was from Mumbai and most comfortable in Hindi or English whereas the people attending the program where far more comfortable in Tamil.

 My Tamil was terrible at best, but far better than my colleagues from Mumbai. I was forced to step into the fray and convey a lot of the messages in my broken Tamil. This was my first experience. As the years went on, it improved, and I got more and more comfortable communicating in Tamil. Years later I addressed a group of infected children and their care givers. Before going on stage, I confessed to one of the grandmothers that I was terribly nervous about my Tamil. When I finished, she very sweetly stood up and applauded and told me it was not that bad after all!

While working with script writers, producers, and directors was a large part of the job and another part of it was working with actors themselves. I got involved in a very interesting campaign which was run on a radio station in Chennai involving a message from an actor each day to build awareness on HIV.

We ran all around Chennai meeting various actors and actresses to record this one-minute message. This was tough for me as I did not know most of them. But Sheela, a colleague of mine, a laughing, cheerful, wonderful person, helped me by compiling the list of people, a photo reference sheet so I could recognize them, and some information about them. I expected arrogance and attitude but was so surprised by the intense commitment they all brought to my little project. From one actor who did multiple takes to get the intonation just right, to another who rewrote the entire script so it would resonate better with his fans, we were met with such respect for what we were doing.

It was serious work but there were a number of hilarious incidents. I met one actor during shooting, and we were asked to wait in his trailer. When he came in, he was in make up with a wig, and I did not recognize him at all. Sheela kept glancing at me waiting for me to start asking him the right questions. I thought he was an assistant to the actor and was having a casual conversation with him.  When Sheela realized this, she took the lead and started asking the relevant questions. The penny dropped and I sheepishly joined the conversation!

Another hilarious incident occurred when we went to interview an actor who was filming in the old the Chennai jail. We were told to wait under a banyan tree, and we did. It was quiet and peaceful, and I was half dozing off. Next thing I knew, there were several bangs and the crashes followed by screaming. A minute later someone with scars all over his face, knocked on the window of the car. I let out a piercing scream and then realized it was merely the actor in makeup.  I am not sure whether he scared me more than I scared him!

On another occasion, an actor was filming on the beach on a hot summer day, when I had to talk to him. He told me to call when I got there which I did. I was met by someone who walked behind me the entire time holding a large umbrella over my head. A lot of people glanced at me curiously and I would like to believe they thought I would be the next famous actress!!!

One embarrassing moment occurred in Bangalore. I was supposed to meet a senior actor at a coffee shop. I requested the waiter to let me know when he arrived because I was worried about not recognizing him. The man looked absolutely shocked and kept asking me again and again how I could not recognize this actor who was almost a God.

But no blog about film stars would be complete without writing about my meeting with Richard Gere. I honestly thought he would be a figurehead not quite understanding what we were doing and merely lending his name to the project. I had a chance to interact with him during a round table organized by us in Bangalore. Since Bangalore was my territory, I spear headed the entire initiative interacting with people across entrainment, industry and civil society preparing them for the round table. I was impressed by the questions he brought up and the observations he made. In the lunch that followed he complimented me on the round table and discussed with me at length what more we could do. It was definitely an exciting moment in my professional life! Humor aside, I learned to appreciate how many of them took the effort to spend their personal time to make a difference by interacting with NGOs like ours. But for this project I would never have met them, but it taught me to put aside my preconceived notions about people and to respect them for who they are. I may still not watch a lot of movies and still not recognize the actors but I can say that I was truly star struck by their attitude in helping our efforts.