On the sets: Baa Bahoo Aur Baby
Suchita Trivedi is swinging on a traditional jhoola, cooling herself for the next shot. Dressed in a printed saree, she’s chatting animatedly on the phone about a party later that night to celebrate two years of being one of the funniest families on the tube.
“Just T-shirt and jeans. No, don’t touch up at all. Everybody’s doing goonda dance. It’s crazy!” she adds delightedly.
We are on the on the sets of Baa Bahoo Aur Baby, now chatting with Suchita aka Meenaxi, who is one of the bahus in the long-running serial. “The show is a mirror image of the middle-class. We’re showing what everybody can relate to. In fact, the director and the writer are very open to suggestions,” she says. As if on cue, Suchita’s colleagues pounce on her, “Suchita, don’t lie, okay!”
We can’t help but notice how most of them seem so unreal, in their everyday clothes (jeans and T-shirts, hair falling casually, speaking in English), as far removed from the screen characters as possible.
It is a plush set, with old wooden furniture and black and white framed pictures on the wall. On closer inspection, the images reveal themselves to be of real people, not the actors in the soap. How’s that for a touch of make-believe?
Meanwhile, attention is drawn to a courtyard where Baa (Sarita Joshi), the central character of the show, is giving a shot. A thorough professional, Joshi breezes through her sequence in a single take before moving to the monitor to check out the shot.
“Phati gayeche script,” (The script is torn) declares director Deepesh Shah, referring to the torn page
Cutting chai doing the rounds, the air rife with Gujju banter, assistants are however working diligently. Elsewhere, Benaf Dadachanji, playing the polio-afflicted Baby, delivers her reaction shots, her crutches lying around carelessly.
Suddenly, three kids, all seemingly of the same age and height, come running in like Uncle Scrooge’s nephews Hui, Dui and Lui, mother in tow. They are the director’s sons, we learn.
As the unit begins to wind up for the day, the table, often a focal point in the shots, is laid out nicely for the take. “Phati gayeche script,” (The script is torn) declares director Deepesh Shah calmly, referring to the torn page. This shot is a long one (in duration), and takes up an hour.
BBAB is perhaps one of the few serials to have survived the axe, and according to Shah, it is because each person can identify with some character or the other. “That’s why Aatishbhai (writer) and I have taken real life characters and situations,” he explains humbly.
And as Shah shouts ‘Pack up’, the customary Ganpati bappa morya echoes in the air.
Watch Baa Bahoo Aur Baby on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9.30 pm on Star Plus.
