It’s a late Sunday evening at Juhu beach. Families spill out on every bit of the sandy stretch and across the water, Mumbai lights up slowly, building by building. “You know, this is a great place to pick up dialogue. Stand around the coconut guy, the sevpuri stalls on the beach and you’ll hear some great stuff. I used some lines for one or two characters in Company,’’ says Jaideep Sahni, scriptwriter of Chak De India, the sporting drama that the nation can’t stop talking of.

For Chak De , for which he also wrote the dialogues and lyrics, Sahni kept a different kind of company—he hung out at national hockey training camps pretending to be a student writing a thesis on the game. Back from Los Angeles where the film was screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Sahni is jetlagged and a bit taken aback by the success; but he’s still immersed in the story of the spunky women’s hockey team. He dials the number of Haryana hockey player Mamta Kharab, who was the take-off point for the film’s most lovable character, Komal Chautala, and grins in delight. “She has set Chak de as her caller tune,” he says.

From Lucknow to LA, players have identified with the film. “At the LA premiere, I saw an old lady trying to catch my attention. I went up to her. She was crying and asked me, ‘How did you know about my life and about the things we said in the hostel? Thank you for giving back my life’.” That woman was Otilia Mascarenhas, a surgeon now and Goa’s first woman Arjuna award winner, who captained the Indian women’s hockey team in Auckland in the 1971 World Cup. 

... contd.