Yarana hawao se humne bhi kar liya is baar.’

In the end, the work was too good to go unnoticed, and a well-known Bengali producer signed up to produce the film in Hindi. Once the big-name producer was attached to the project, everything else fell in place. The lead actors were signed on, a budget drawn out and the crew was all set to start filming in Himachal Pradesh for the first leg of the shoot. But there was one problem. The crew was supposed to film the songs first, but Sahil had not produced even a single track. Even after auditioning thousands of promising female singers from across India, paying dozens of them to come to Calcutta to sing for a day, he hadn’t found his voice. The producer was getting anxious as he had sunk a fair chunk of his money by holding his crew and recording studios. But what broke down all communication between them boiled down to a single thing – the producer had agreed to finance the film and wanted to name it ‘Sarhad ke uss paar,’ whereas Sahil thought it should simply be named ‘Sarhad’. The producer felt Sahil’s suggestion was too dry, and that his option offered a dramatic sense of longing that was easy to interpret without watching a single second of the film.

‘This title goes against everything the story stands for! Can’t you see?!’ Sahil yelled at the producer. To him, the story was about the malleable nature of borders – the ever-changing boundaries between nations, religion in the time of Partition, the fluid understanding of what was dead and what was living itself. The producer tried to explain the commercial aspect of the title, but Sahil wouldn’t budge. Fed up with his stubbornness, as well his never-ending search for the perfect voice, the producer pulled the plug on the project. Sahil moved on, but as he shopped for other producers, the word had spread in the city that the composer was in over his head, chasing his dream to make an expensive film with no commercial upside. So, the grifter composer, lyricist, screenplay writer and director packed his harmonium once again to go to the city of dreams, Bombay. Not only did he go on to find the money to make his film, but he also chanced upon the key ingredient for his film in a discarded scratch tape – Meera’s voice. His dream project had crossed a veritable hurdle, and was close to becoming a reality.

Chapter 19

Chapter 19