Homi Adajania: The club culture everywhere is the same

A still from Murder Mubarak

For all the clichés about a movie-shoot, starting with star tantrums, ending with director screaming, "action", "cut" - between which life on screen gets captured, forever - we've actually never been to a shoot, where the director, lording over the set, yells "action" at all!

Including the ongoing production of Netflix's whodunnit, Murder Mubarak, at Hotel Maidens in North Delhi, the Capital's oldest five-star property, which opened to public in 1903. The location is an obvious stand-in for Delhi Gymkhana, in Lutyens' Delhi; also around since 1913.

The two imperial, snow-white structures architecturally match each other to a T; if you don't zoom out. As do the green lawns, where the shoot - mainly to pick close-ups of hand and other movements - is on. Actors and extras calmly look over afternoon aperitif, neatly laid out on tables, with bells for ‘bearers'!

Homi Adajania

Director Homi Adajania (Being Cyrus, Finding Fanny, Cocktail) is the master of ceremonies. And, no, he never says, "Action!" His chief assistant does that for him, while he's busy behind the monitor.

As for ‘cut', he adds, "Nobody dare say that [on my behalf]! But I let the scene linger, after actors have delivered lines. I use a lotta stuff from the outtakes; expressions that come up. It feels authentic. Dimple [Kapadia] yells cut on the set, when she's not in the scene; I don't know why?"

Well, we know why! Kapadia, 66, being Kapadia, the frisky Cooks Aunty in the film, of course - hanging about fully bindaas/badass, on location, sparring randomly with Adajania. Him suitably giving it back to her. You can trust this is how she is.

Homi Adajania and Sara Ali Khan. Pic/Instagram

Whether or not on a shoot, that itself feels no different from a day-out at a club. Rather than an intense workday, given so much at stake, with a massive ensemble cast, each of whom is a suspect in the murder - of a physical trainer in the gymkhana's gymnasium, who also provides other physical services to club members.
Adajania says, "I'm clear, it's not me making the film. The unit is. It's important, therefore, to keep a certain kinda energy on set - so we all leave with a better memory."

Some of those onscreen memories, Adajania is happy to share on his laptop - a rare sequence in this film, shot on a live location [perhaps Delhi's Kamla Nagar Market], where his protagonist, cop Bhavani Singh, i.e. Pankaj Tripathi, has trouble backing up his car.

He blasts the unreleased promo of his series, Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo, that parodies the title-track of the hit soap, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, that once starred Smriti Irani, currently a cabinet minister.

This is before he patiently explains scenes for the day. This generosity isn't common, let alone from the director! The sequence we actually watched, shot around a pool table, doesn't make it to the final cut. But that's filmmaking for you.

Murder Mubarak is based on Anuja Chauhan's novel, Club You To Death. How did Adajania get onboard? He says, "I was a gun for hire. The writers [Gazal Dhaliwal, Suprotim Sengupta] eventually got the juice out of the novel."

The first time Adajania engaged with the murder mystery, in the deliberately corny/comical space, he found it convoluted: "It took me a while to wrap my head around, who's doing what, and why. That's the way it's written. You nail [the culprit], another skeleton [literally] pops up." Which, for better or worse, would be the audience's experience as well.

Apt to ask Adajania, though, if he had trouble navigating the world, since he's so quintessentially ‘Bombay', while Chauhan's novel, like the film, is so ‘Delhi', as it were? He reasons, "Apart from the obvious ‘Delhi-isms' among characters, the [gymkhana] club culture, everywhere, is the same.

"There's an insulated segment within it that breathes, drinks, lives inside these clubs - the elections to which seem more important than politics of the country! This is where they derive their validation… I've observed this [culture] closely, being part of a couple of clubs myself."

Although Adajania jokes, once Murder Mubarak is out, he might lose his club memberships - surely, Bombay Gym will not be so unkind!

The outsider looking in to this "bizarre world" is Tripathi's character, solving the murder. Adajania's last film, Angrezi Medium (2020), sequel to Saket Chaudhary's Hindi Medium (2017), starred Irrfan.

Firstly, he confesses, "Hindi Medium was a way better [film]." Also, he finds Tripathi and Irrfan similar in the sense of actors, who know their lines, but subsequently submit themselves to their surroundings; working up the magic of the moment.

Tripathi genially drops in to say hi between shots. Murder Mubarak stars, among others, Sara Ali Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Vijay Varma. None of whom are at work, when we visit. Sanjay Kapoor, who plays a raja/king (from a former royal family) regales us instead with stories from his '90s super-hit film, Raja!

Young Amara Sangam, who's both an actor (gymkhana staff) in the film, and an assistant, fills us in on the MBA course she mentors, on the ‘masterclass in business of acting'! The adorably bumbling Brijendra Kala passes on pearls of wisdom.

These are all intriguing characters, by themselves. The hotel, for location, is also conveniently where they've been staying and shooting together for months.

Hypothetically, what if something mysterious happens, while they're unspooling the murder case, for the screen. Could make for an even better movie than Murder Mubarak? We don't wish this upon them, of course.