Sajjan Chowdhry : Transformation of A Simple Small Town Boy In World Class Foley Artist

Few days back, my neighbor, friend and sound designer of national repute Subash Sahu visited me to inform me about his documentary on Bollywood's pioneer sound recordist Mangesh Desai . During the discussion, I asked him whether he knows by any chance Sajjan Chaudhry from the sound recordist fraternity. He than countered how I know him.  I explained to him that in early eighties he came to Bombay to start his career in sound recording. He said,' If you are talking about Sajjan Chaudhry, Foley Artist than he is leading name in Bollywood.' I took his contact number from Sahoo  and called Sajjan. He immediately recognized my voice, though we were talking almost after 28 years! After pleasantries he insisted me to visit Aradhna Sound Service, the place from where he is currently  operating.



Sajjan is running Foley Department in joint collaboration with his long time associates and buddies Karnail Singh and Rajendra Gupta under umbrella of  Aradhna Sound Service. 

As I entered in Aradhna Studios, Sajjan's son Danish given me brief about the art called Foley. He tells, 'Once the film is shot sound track and songs put in place, there is a  need to enhance sound of what is happening in the background. This adds right  flavor to the  emotional drama, enhance suspense element in suspense movie, thrill to the car chase, horse race, speeding vehicles, in fact possibility is immense. The term Foley art coined  to mark respect to  Jack Donovan Foley, an American sound engineer. Foley is credited with evolving the first sound effects techniques during twenties and thirties of nineteenth century. Today Foley is evolved as a creative art, artists  use different props to recreate movie sounds but there are some standard methods. For example, the sound of walking on a slushy mud track is achieved by stomping on wet newspaper. Similarly, the rusty tap usually does a good job of sounding like the creaking of a door. Foleys in the beginning years used to work at night after everyone else has finished work and left the recording studio. The scenes of a movie are played on a screen and the visuals are matched with the live sound effects recreated by Foley artists. The biggest challenge for a Foley artist is to actually make his work sound so natural that it seems effortless'.



Once I took entry in Sajjan's Foley workshop it appears to me like a bhangarwala's godown where all kind of rubbish occupied the floor space ranging from different kind of shoes, doors, glassed, plates, nails, hand globes, dresses, set of bangles. Explains Sajjan, 'These are our equipments to create desired sound magic.' His  son Danish has recently joined the team shows me two very big boxes filled with spears, shields and other props belonging to Padmavati, used to create right kind of sounds.

Rajendra Gupta, member of the trio was sitting in front of console watching sequence from Vishal Pandya's Hate Story 4. He tells, 'Observing the sequence again and again is very crucial as we can understand which particular  action need enhancing the sound to boost visuals'.

In any line of work, however adventurous, unconventional or creative, the workplace is sacred. But Foley Studio is just opposite looks like the most unorganized place as if someone forget to pick up the garbage here “If we brought in racks and shelves, and organised it,” says Karnail Singh, “there wouldn’t be space for two of us to stand and do our work.” All around is detritus of older films only of use to foley artistes - the chain that bound Amitabh in Khuda Gawah (1992) binds Salman in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015); the metal bed used in Udta Punjab to creak out the noise of a bed re-purposed for Phillauri. Under the closets spilling with odds and ends, I almost expect a dead rat.

At least 20 pair of shoes, pots and pans stare back from the studio floor. Atop an cupboard is a violin. Its use? “Oh we’ll break it,” shares sajjan cheerfully. After a while, I stop seeing dirt.The shoes, one is told, can tease out the perfect sound to match a hero’s tread that will add nuances to a scene.

Sajjan further explains how the right kind of sounds are created by his team,' You remember, in Sholay before the start of the song Jab tak hai Jaan, Hema Malini is shown to dance on shards of glass. Actually it was plastic. When the 3 D version of film was released in 2014, we smashed glass bottles on the studio floor on which I moved my hands, encased in leather gloves, in rhythm with the actor’s dance. “Pairon ko kaam haath se kiya. (Hands did the work of legs).” Action scenes are his forte. Each time Arjun Kapoor kissed Kareena in Ki and Ka, Sajjan smooched his own wrist. So it’s the  kiss that was recorded and which you hear in the film. In 1920, a Vikram Bhatt horror film, “Before the cat’s murder, the cat nibbles a corpse. To enact that, I got myself a plate of mutton to produce the slurping sound,” he reveals .

His perfect foil is Singh. He is Mr Subtlety. He does the the lady-of-the-manor roles such as Priyanka’s who plays the Peshwa’s wife in Bajirao Mastani. Or the “happy-heroine walk” of Alia Bhatt when she takes Varun Dhawan around Singapore in Badrinath ki Dulhania. The two work in seamless understanding.

“Aaj jootey kar rahe thhey (We were doing the shoe scenes today),” says Singh, referring to ‘Sachin’ playing in the park and the movement of various characters as they walk up his staircase, the day we visit them in the studio. “Baad mein aag lagayengey (Next, we will do the sounds of lighting a fire for another scene),” tells Sajjan with a grin and some pride, showing us some of their secret weapons – the wooden logs to break open doors or create crashes and thuds; a plastic bag that can be crumpled to emulate fire crackle; empty coconut shells worn as gloves to emulate a horse’s gallop; the cups and saucers placed or banged on table-tops to suggest a change of mood; and finally, the make-shift tub that these fifty-year-olds fill with water as they sit in their knickers and splash their hands to imitate a heroine’s deep dive in a swimming pool. One of the prized possession of studio is cycle used by Akshay Kumar in Padman !

Journey of Sajjan from Moradabad, a small town of Western UP, to Bombay and becoming globally recognized Foley artist was full of ups and down. In 1982 he joined as trainee under tutelage Karnail Singh at Sea Rock Sound Studio. Quickly he understood nuances of sound recording, dubbing  and mixing. I saw him behind the console  busy in mixing. For almost an hour he was doing is mixing job and regaling director as well as other staff members with his jokes and mimicry. In the year 1993  Bombay blast rocked Sea Rock with the result studio was closed. Karnail Singh joined Natraj Studio, Sajjan and Rajendra joined Ketnev and worked for Devanand.  Twelve years back the trio joined Aardhna Sound Sevice and gradually   him  as his    become a The art of Foley is therefore not just technique. It is performance, done with physical labor, imagination and brio.

Sajjan and Karnail with over three-decade-long experience are believed to be the best in their field. Parinda (1989) was their first big commercial project. From avant-garde filmmaking geniuses such as Mani Kaul to commercial success stories such as Rajkumar Hirani, Karan Johar, Ramgopal Varma and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, they have worked with them all. National Award-winning sound designers such as Biswadeep Chatterjee (Bajirao Mastani, 3 Idiots, Devdas) and Academy award-winning Resul ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Pookutty hired them for films such as Highway, Robot, Jazbaa, Shootout at Wadala and Black.

The team manages to complete more than 100 films a year. The industry’s regard for them has a reason. Foley is a thinking man’s job translated into action. “We feel the film, and feel the character”, explains Sajjan. “Amitabh and Naseersaab, for example, have distinct military walks, so we walk accordingly. They know where they are going. Young actors today – body kidhar, footstep udhar (the body is somewhere and footsteps are somewhere else). Mostly casual.”

For all their experience, Foley artistes like Karnail and Sajjan suffer the same invisibility that was Jack Foley’s lot. Foley’s name never appeared on film credits. Ironically, he achieved cinematic immortality when his category of work began to be referred by his name.

Recognition came to  Sajjan and Karnail, when for two consecutively they were nominated to Golden Reel Award instituted by Motion Picture Sound Editors USA for the films India Daughters and Roar-Tigers of Sunderbans. The awards are one notch below Oscars. Sajjan was invited to Los Angles  to receive the honor. He won the award alongwith with Resul Pookutty for India Daughters. That was  an opportunity for him to understand  Hollywood and learn the additional skill. He was impressed with the professionalism of Hollywood.
   The Trio feels that it do not get the kind of recognition they deserve as work can not be visually visible on screen, it can only be experienced. Many production houses credit the studio to which they are attached when the screen credits roll. In some cases their  names  appear mostly with the sound effects team, almost as an afterthought, when the film is over. For Foley artistes to get their due, one has to first acknowledge the role of sound as performance and its unimaginable ability to change a visual. “In drama school, we were taught that if you don’t talk loudly enough , people will stop seeing.If the stage is kept dim for long, people will stop hearing. You can see something that is not there or not see something because of sound. Sajjan and Karnail have created a world of sound and yet live in gentle silence. It’s time for them to be seen and heard.