The Titan that could’ve been Titanic!

(From left) Naseeruddin Shah and Jim Sarbh as JRD Tata and Xerxes Desai in Amazon MX Player’s biographical drama ‘Made in India: A Titan Story’

If there's a person from history that actor Naseeruddin Shah resembles - you could, technically, go with Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad. It's the role Richard Attenborough offered him in Gandhi.

Naseer was clear he'd play the Mahatma, or no part in the film. He has subsequently played Gandhi on screen (Hey Ram), and stage (Mahatma Vs Gandhi).

Hey, but how about JRD Tata? It's only when you watch the GOAT, Naseer, 75, with a slight droop, in light coloured suits, no prosthetic makeup, just his grey hair naturally gelled back, in the series, Made in India: A Titan Story (Amazon MX Player), you go - Oh my god, of course, Naseer = JRD!

The show's lead writer, Karan Vyas, tells me, "He was our first and last option." Centrally, A Titan Story isn't so much the biopic of JRD as of his eccentric mentee, Xerxes Desai, who founded a watch-making start-up, within the Tata group.

Jim Sarbh plays Xerxes. He had, likewise, splendidly portrayed another fellow Parsee, Homi Bhabha, in Rocket Boys, an equally unlikely show on the building of public institutions of science, within the Indian government.

Titan is, essentially, a private concern, albeit started in collaboration with the Tamil Nadu state. Why are we so neatly drawn to its story?

Because popular shows on business/corporations generally tend to focus on the greed/rot/politics within the system that's made for profit, and somewhat designed to profiteer. Take the finest Indian series, Scam 1992, or the world's greatest, Succession.

A Titan Story shines a light, instead, on the middleclass, Boomer Generation, of faceless engineers, MBAs, graduates; employees, in general - most of whom devotedly worked their life off in the same firm, with passion, loyalty, adding value to society, and raising their families, alongside.

That's most desi dads, born between 1946-64, you've known.

As it is, a story about something beyond an individual is inspirational, regardless. Groups achieve that. Whether in the private or public sector.

Neither holds a monopoly in good faith. And their quiet contribution to an economy remains unmissably immense, unmistakably underrated.

The latter, more so, because these aren't particularly dramatic lives, fit for popular fiction. Besides banks declining loans, the worst that can happen in A Titan Story is the marketing head getting replaced.

The greatest catastrophe is the company investing/expanding into the European market.

The equivalent of a heist sequence is the start-up's managing director, Xerxes, and his leadership team, at the 30th anniversary party of their only major rival, HMT (named GMT) watches - poaching their potential recruits, right there!

It's a series about manufacturing quartz watches, for god's sake.

The screenplay "ticked no boxes for masala" among the OTTs, Karan recalls. The strategy was to attach the lead actor, beforehand.

Jim was game, soon as he heard Karan's narration at Bandra's Eat Around the Corner. He waited for a year for the series to start; shaved off his head for the part; wearing wigs, instead, for roles, elsewhere.

However, the show's actual lead is the Titan watch itself. For the most part, I was convinced A Titan Story is, foremost, a corporate film - which might be a first for a credibly good story to emerge from. No knock on vanity content. Only, the scenario's quite the opposite.

Producer Sunil Bohra, who holds the rights to Vinay Kamat's book, Titan: Inside India's Most Successful Consumer Brand, that the series is based on, clues me in: "I met the Tata Board. These people are so conservative, you won't even find their photographs, anywhere. I told them: I don't own Tata shares, but the company feels like my own."

The board, reluctantly, allowed the producer to film, on location, at the Tata HQ, Bombay House, and Titan's factory in Hosur.

Wherein, filmmaker Robbie Grewal, who's masterfully directed the series, tells me, "I hadn't come across a happier set of workers in a factory, while they're on their seats, with needles, all day. We filmed, while they carried on with their job, because machines can't stop!"

As a movie-buff, I watched

A Titan Story as a brilliant BTS. A new obstacle, every step of the way - from pre-production, production, to distribution - it's like the making/unmaking of a film, isn't it? Perennially a sinking Titanic.

And, inevitably, moments of epiphany, or symphony, as in this case, of discovering Mozart's 25th that became Titan's signature tune!

The filmmakers express the passage of time through classic Bollywood tracks from every year/era. The songs were written into the script. These are bloody expensive to buy, by the way. Both Robbie and Karan insist they wanna keep that figure a secret.

Sunil says, "You've no idea how inexpensively we've made the show. Music labels can charge kidney, liver - making copyrights of songs itself about 15-20 per cent of a budget. Amazon did the deal." All worth it, you can see.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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