Our kids have been taken for granted," complains the agitated grandmother of 11-year-old Vaishnavi Rao. Vaishnavi was one of the 13 kids cast for Percept Picture Company's children's film, Kabodiram which has been shelved after almost 80 per cent of it was shot. "It's a terrible shock to all the children, after spending so much time and effort." says the grandmother.
The film has been shelved and strangely enough, no one has a clue about the reason. Not even the director of the film, Jayanth C Paranji (who has also directed the blockbuster Telegu film Shankardada starring Chiranjivi, and many other films down South) who is rather confused after Kabodiram was shelved.
According to an interesting reason cited by one of the parents, "One of the 13 kids Rajat Tokas, who was also the lead character in Kabodiram, had signed Prithvi Raj Chauhan on Star Plus and couldn't make himself available for this film. That kid kept the shoot on hold, the film was supposed to release in December but we are still stranded with it."
Vaishnavi adds, "Rajat Tokas had already signed another contract with Star for Prithvi Raj Chauhan, which was a bigger role with better money. It is his fault for not informing Percept about his other projects. He hasn't been giving them dates and hence we have suffered. It is not fair to us as we have put in so much hard work."
When we tried contacting Rajat Tokas, his father answered the phone, "I had given them a few dates in between but they did not shoot then. I don't know what the problem is, it's not my company" and he hung up refusing to comment.
The director says, "I am considered as a senior director, and have worked with big actors in South. But maybe I am yet to get accustomed to the Bollywood style of working. Work happens faster in South and everyone is extremely professional in their approach, but here the shoot took almost a year. The film is under production and it is not ethical to talk about it till things are resolved."
Vaishnavi says, "I feel really bad that all my hard work has gone waste. I have missed more than a month in school and one entire unit test. My Principal is supportive or else I could have been thrown out of school. Not just this but I have lost out on great projects from Disney and other channels resulting in a financial loss. These people kept pleading us not to sign any other projects while we were working on Kabodiram."
Speaking about child artist Nrupa Patil, her mother Dr. Padmaja Patil complained, "The shoot was planned to start from April 15, 2006, and we had made an agreement of 60 days. But nothing materialised until May 16 when we finally begun shooting in Goa. We had to return abruptly due to rains. The planned schedule got extended endlessly and we couldn't sign any other projects. Nrupa rejected 2-3 films, ads etc. Our dates were blocked and we had to go to Malaysia for the shoot. Nrupa's exams suffered badly due to this untimely outing."
"There are a lot of problems with the payments also. We are paid only for two schedules, and the third schedule remains to be cleared. The unit planned to re-shoot the film replacing the lead character and when the child artists demanded to be paid for the extra task, the unit decided to shelve the film cribbing about the budget," complains Dr. Padmaja who also lost out on one month of her practice at her clinic while she accompanied Nrupa to Malaysia.
Mohan Bangera from the production team clarifies, "It is all very confidential and I can't reveal the details. Kabodiram has not been shelved; we are just waiting for the dates from the child artists. Every production house has these hassles." Surely, hassles should come with an expiry date too? |