Metroscape

May 15, 2000

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Launch pad

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Facelift for the stony maidens

Designer dance

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We're in the army now

By Anna M.M. Vetticad

A class is in session. Platoon No. 4 of Bravo Company is getting a lesson in map reading. "There are three norths," the man at the blackboard explains, "the grid north, the magnetic north, the true north." Spotting a distracted student, he strolls up to him and asks casually: "What are the three norths?" The boy springs up: "Naths? The three naths, sir? Uh, umm, Amarnath, Badrinath, Kedarnath?" Cut. Or rather, cut to 1989, the year Fauji was released. That was the teleserial that launched an unknown young man called Shah Rukh Khan, who's since made his place in history. Back then it was a pioneering effort, the show that had girls swooning over its handsome cast in uniform, and made a deadpan "I say chaps" a youth mantra. Eleven years on, Colonel Raj Kapoor, the maker of Fauji, is back with Ek Aur Fauji.
"It's not a sequel," he insists. Ek Aur Fauji is also not an ultra-patriotic, post-Kargil cry for young men in the army. It's about everyday life in the forces, the fun, the flirtation, the laughter. With this one too, Kapoor has picked a cast of newcomers. There's Ashwin Chadha, 25, whose first long tv series this is, though he's done quite a bit of theatre, even acted in the film Godmother; there's Manish Mathur, 24, who's "excited because this is a big break for me"; and chief assistant director Vandana Bhatti, who's also acting as Chadha's girlfriend. "I remember Fauji," she laughs, though she was barely 11 then. "I had a crush on all those guys." Of course, when Ek Aur Fauji goes on air on May 18 on dd1, it's up against a host of channels and shows that viewers didn't have 10 years back. Kapoor, now touching 70, tried to get Khan to introduce the serial, but it didn't work out. That could have been a USP. "But hey, when I made Fauji, I didn't have Shah Rukh as a star to help me. He was new then. It still clicked." Point taken.

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