A recipe for action, strewn with homilies

Azizbhai is a cowboy. He must be 90, or at least 85 years old now. Until about a year ago, he was a fixture at the office or on the sets....

Azizbhai is a cowboy. He must be 90, or at least 85 years old now. Until about a year ago, he was a fixture at the office or on the sets. He only makes it to the office a couple of times a year now — on Diwali and on Id — to wish us all. And at that time we have tea together, and he usually shares a few stories from the old days with me. I have spent a great deal of time with him in these last few years, and a lot of what I have learned about film production, about the craft of making movies, has been under his guidance.

He is truly one of the old school all about discipline, order and punctuality. He started off as a camera assistant in the 1940s on films such as Ratan, at a time when Suraiya was the singing star sensation, and then worked his way up to the position of manager at Kardar Studios, till the time that it shut down more than 30 years ago, when he joined our company.

He is the quintessential construction manager, in charge of everything to do with sets and locations, responsible forphysically getting all the pieces and props of the set together in front of the camera. But he was above all known for his destructive powers — pulling down bridges, throwing impossibly huge volumes of water down buildings, blowing up other buildings and gigantic villain’s dens, and tearing down elaborate sets — all of these were part of his repertoire. And in a sense it all was very tricky, intricate work — once the cameras are rolling, and the director shouts out "Action!" there’s simply no second chance whatsoever.

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Add to that the monumental safety concerns — for the stars, the unit, the horses even! All that has to be kept in mind, which is not an easy thing to work out since the act of destruction is chaotic and unpredictable. But he managed it on several huge action films, with the limited resources at his disposal compensated for by his ingenuity and methodical approach to his work.

He also has built things that last — including a half-mile-long jetty that survived two Bombay monsoons, made ofjust rocks and planks, glittering disco sets that have withstood a year of a star’s nervous breakdowns, entire villages in remote parts of India — and above all else, he has built a unshakeable reputation as a hard taskmaster and a fair man.

In an intangible business that relies so much on observation and instinct, he has schooled me with some of the choicest homilies.

— `Ghar ki murgi dal barabar’ — often used to refer to technicians who created a fuss and wanted to order equipment from outside instead of managing with the company equipment.

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—`Teen paisa ki murgi, naun paisa ka masala’ — about production managers who tried to take shortcuts, and ended up paying heavily for it in delays, expense and mammoth firings from the boss.

But with Azizbhai, it was always his actions that spoke loudest to me, and an attitude that remains to this day solid gold. He works for one thing only — the respect of his peers, be they his set workers, his fellow technicians, or his boss. It issomething so natural to him, like his joy at telling me how he was invariably the first man on the sets every single day.

And that makes him a true cowboy, wearing his leather hat tilted on his head, and his heart on his sleeve. He embodies what I have always enjoyed most about this business — the cowboy spirit that relishes impossible challenges and an opportunity to show the jigar that lies within.

It seems Azizbhai has almost hung up his spurs, but through him and his stories he has passed on what is most important — a standard of excellence, and a love for his work that I aspire to.

Rohan Sippy is a television producer.