Scripting a win - Chak De India

With Chak De India due for release this Friday, scriptwriter and lyricist Jaideep Sahni has reason to feel upbeat

Shirin Abbas

He’s dabbled in almost every genre possible. If Company was an action flick, Bunty aur Babli and Khosla ka Ghosla had him trying his handat comedy. But now adman turned scriptwriter Jaideep Sahni is doing something different—a sports flick.

“The idea for Chak De India came from a small newspaper report,” he says. It was while flipping through a newspaper report on the victory of the women’s hockey team tucked away in one corner of the sports page caught his eye. He says the first question in his mind was, ‘Why such little print space? This item should have got more display.’ The seed of a story thus germinated and he began hanging out around stadiums, reading up every little bit of news on women’s hockey, obsessed with the need to give them their due.

Jaideep says Aditya Chopra heard the initial idea and immediately warmed up to it. With Shah Rukh Khan having served as hockey captain of Hansraj College in his college days, it wasn’t too difficult to select the male lead.

“Shah Rukh knows the pain and the pitfalls of being a hockey player and having to play second fiddle. He has commented that Chak De has been the most difficult film of his entire career—he was so deeply involved,” Sahni reveals.

All praise for the female hockey stars Sahni says he wanted to finally give a fair deal to the “three-time underdogs.” Elaborating, he states, “If you choose sports as a career you are an underdog because it is least important on the priority list of those who matter in this country. Then you are an underdog again if you choose hockey because India runs on cricket.
And if you are a woman playing for the Indian hockey team you become an underdog thrice over. But I’d like to tell them, they are my real heroes.

We have as a team put in our entire enthusiasm and zeal into the film and we hope that if fathers tomorrow encourage their daughters to take to sports and especially hockey, team Chak De will have done its job!” With such noble intention, the film better be good.