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Freefalling in
Bollywood The
world’s biggest film industry is a terribly unsafe workplace. The
recent death of an assistant director in Mumbai highlighted the negligence
of safety norms on set. Sanjukta Sharma tracks other
instances
Feroze Petiwala
died a slow, lonely death. Paralysed and bed-ridden for four years, his
end came a few days after a Mumbai local train knocked down Nadia Khan,
Kaizad Gustad’s British assistant, during a film shoot.
 For
Petiwala too, like Nadia Khan, it was just another hectic shift four years
ago. The sets of Gadar — the blockbuster that gleaned crores of
money — were abuzz with activity in Sarna, a village near Jalandhar.
The ace camera attendant mounted a crane that rose up to a height of 30
feet. The camera was ready to roll, when one of the arms of the crane
gave way and Petiwala collapsed to the floor. He was rushed to the nearest
hospital where he lay motionless for days.
When his condition
deteriorated, a crew member got him to Mumbai by train. Petiwala languished
in a local hospital, unattended by the crew of the film.
Film
City, the biggest and busiest studio in Mumbai is terribly unequipped
for an emergency. Studio officials skirt the safety issue. A host
of smaller, privately-owned studios that have cropped up in recent
times are equally ill-equipped. They have compact in-house sets
with all kinds of locations under one roof, given out for hire to
producers for relatively lower rates. Most of these studios have
low ceilings made of cheap materials like asbestos. They have no
emergency measures available during shoots |
After a year, Petiwala
and his family received a compensation of a lakh of rupees from Zee Telefilms
and Nitin Keni, the producers of the film. Petiwala was crippled by then,
incapable of even urinating naturally. He bought a shanty for his family
in a far-flung Mumbai suburb and lived there, waiting for his death. He
had been a daily wage worker in the film industry for 25 years; he had
no money for better treatment. Petiwala yearned to be back in the chaos
and humdrum of Bollywood film sets, where he nursed dreams of making it
big. Zee Telefilms is not aware that Feroze Petiwala is no more.
It is an old story.
Of faces that have vanished from Bollywood film sets, of limbs that have
been dismembered, of lives that have been taken by freak accidents on
film sets. The victims are inevitably the daily wage workers — lightmen
who climb on to precarious scaffoldings carrying heavy lights, wearing
rubber chappals, unprotected by any kind of safety gear; camera attendants
who mount wobbly cranes and special effects assistants who toy with explosives
to make bomb blasts look spectacularly real on screen. Stunt men live
in dire straits and most on-the-set accidents and mishaps are usually
hushed up unless a star bears the brunt of it. Top cinematographers demand
remote control cranes and camera equipment because they don’t want
to risk their lives. Sanu John Varughese who was the director of cinematography
for Main Bhi Madhuri Dikshit Banna Chahti Hoon, says, “I’m
wary of getting on to a crane. Most cinematographers are.”
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