Randeep Hooda’s next, laal Rang, is about the illegal blood donation trade that is rampant in the country. The actor explains how the movie has been inspired by a real story and how the exchanges are made. Shrabasti Mallik reports
For Randeep Hooda, laal Rang is the first release of the year. He has three more in his list. But from the looks of it, the urge to deliver the best has taken a toll on him already. It was just a few days ago that he had to be rush to the ER directly from the sets ofSultan for an emergency appendix removal. But a small thing like that does not easily take over the ‘tough’ actor. Within a few hours of his discharge, he was out and about, promoting laal Rang. “I thought I would make the effort to talk about my film before it releases,” he said.
The movie, on the other hand, talks about the lesser known illegal blood trade and is based on a true story. Hooda shared, “It so happened that our writer was doing his diploma in a blood bank at that time. So he knew exactly what was happening.”
He pointed out to us the real picture — our non-willingness to donate blood. “We simply do not like it. In fact there is a drought affected village in Maharashtra where people go on about their daily lives by selling blood. This is happening rampantly in our country,” he mentioned.
But in a system where you can only replace blood with the amount that you take, where and how do these illegal transactions take placeIJ That is where the touts come in. “They will illegally sell somebody a pint of blood for a lumpsome and then take the blood from a poverty-striken person, desperately in need of money, pay him about Rs300 and replace it in the blood bank. It is a heinous crime,” said the actor.
laal Rang is about a successful man named Akshay Oberoi and the story begins with him in 2007 and narrates how his life changed in 2002 when he met a man called Shankar Singh Malik which Hooda is playing.
As gory as the story might sound, Hooda mentioned that it is not as twisted as one might picture it. “Where, how and when this trade happens, no one knows. The blood trade is the backdrop of the movie and its not that twisted. I believe that you cannot preach or teach people. So the maker has spun the story around friendship and how people live in small cities, what they do and why they do it,” he laughed.
But he did mention that the movie is true to the place it portrays. It annoys him to see movies claiming to be of a particular region and then finding nothing remotely resembling the place. “Hindustan mein zyadatar film vaccum mein hota hai jiska koi haath pair nahi hota. Bolte hain ki ek jagah ka hai, par uss jagah ka koi naam-o-nishan tak nahi hota, koi local element nahi hota usme. But now films are being made on that front. Similarly, I think that if this movie were to be made in any other place apart from Haryana, it would have become a very serious film. But since it is Haryana the mood of the film is light. There is a lot of humour in the way Haryanvi people speak and live so the film is humurous. It also speaks of all the things that a person would do for love. It is a commercial film because it has larger than life characters,” he elaborated and also made his opinion heard.
It is the first time the actor is portraying a Jatt on-screen, someone he really is. “Shankar Singh is the most flamboyant character of my career so far and is a Jatt,” said Hooda, who has his roots in Rohtak, Haryana. He added, “Shankar is ‘wearing the heart in the sleeve’ kind of a character and larger than life. Whatever he does, he does for love. But to know why he does it, you have to see the film.”