‘Anil sir would say: Tu bol ke dikha’

What the audience may not see but any personnel from the Indian Air Force would is how the left shoulder of the uniform is the fun shoulder ldquoYou can wear any badge you like there with the permission of your Commanding Officerrdquo Ramon Chibb tells us over a video call from Goa where he is holidaying ldquoThe right shoulder is for patches of the crafts you fly and the India patchrdquo Minni Squadron Leader Minal Rathore played by Deepika Padukone wears a fun lsquoDonrsquot Bug Mersquo one as opposed to Pattyrsquos Hrithik Roshan as Squadron Leader Shamsher Pathania and Bashrsquos Basheer Khan Akshay Oberoi lsquoFighter Foreverrsquo The lay audience may not register these details of authenticity ldquobut the Air Force didrdquo says Chibb gleefully and you can tell that validation is enough The screening of the movie for the armed forces ended with a standing applauseChibb coproduced the movie wrote the screenplay and served as second unit director for Fighter He also makes an appearance as Air Commodore Abhinder Bali Chief Instructor at the Dundigal Air Force Academy in Hyderabad where Patty is transferred Chibb served in the Infantry for five years after being unable to follow his father into the IAF due to compromised eyesight But he was incidentally at the commando training facility in Belgaum around the time Nana Patekar was preparing for his role in 1991 film Prahaar The Final Attack That movie and 1982rsquos Vijeta are the two movies he credits with diving deep into research and firm marriage to authenticity ldquoItrsquos what Hollywood gets rightrdquo he says ldquoWhen I see Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone I can see that they got the weapons he used rightrdquoChibb who later became a pilot and has a home next to the flight school in Hadapsar Pune wrote the story in 2015 and took it to director Siddharth Anand in 2016 ldquoHe said it wasnrsquot massy enough lsquobut letrsquos work on it together to make it into a film that could be understood by the audiencersquo Siddharth is a true cinema guy he has a large visionrdquo Pulwama and Balakot were added later as was Minni because women were allowed to serve as fighter pilots only in 2015 Chibb drew up a career sheet for each character The posts they held the medals they would have won the crafts they would have flown and the wars they would have fought in to become the best air fighters in the country to be included into the Air Dragon team It couldnrsquot be just because they were box office superstarsSo Minni would be an allweather pilot a member of Sarang Aerobatic Display team and be decorated with the Vayu Sena medal for an act of courage to be included into Group Captain Rakesh Jaisinghrsquos Anil Kapoorrsquos Rocky dream team She would have been commissioned in 2010 have 1500 hours of flying under her belt and served in Bikaner Leh Siachen Ambala and Hakimpet Similarly ldquoFighters are split into two categoriesrdquo explains Chibb fuelled evidently by enthusiasm ldquointo those who fly Russian and nonRussian aircrafts since we have a huge inventory of the former Patty would have flown the Kiran Pilatus PC 7 Mig 21 and 29 before coming to the Sukhoi 30mdashthe first with a twocrew cockpit ldquoItrsquos telling of his personality as a lone ranger and only childrdquo say Chibb and it is also integral to the plot to have both protagonistsmdashRoshan and Kapoormdashin the climaxldquoWe had the blessing of the IAF from the beginning and shot at Tezpur Dundidal and Pune air bases Kudos to Siddharth that he let me run away with the details lsquoThis is your worldrsquo he said lsquoKeep it realrsquo So even the walls of the houses are typically faujimdashdecorated with every photograph of the charactersrsquo journey from being cadets to officers with medals emblems swords of honourrdquo of which we catch a glimpse in Bash and Pattyrsquos homesThe IAF control room built to be closely authenticThen there was the internalisation of fauji codes That there is a hierarchy that you obey without questioning and manner of speech Patty obeys his fatherrsquos orders to get tea for his friends more easily than he does his superiors He asks for permission to speak from his superiors ldquoHrithik bought into these nuances impeccably He wanted to know all these things hersquoll make a great filmmakerrdquo says Chibb They also drop in easily into a peerrsquos place as they do at Pattyrsquos Jammu home when a training gets cancelled There are impromptu picnics and gatherings ldquoThis is what I saw when growing up People would land up at any time and say lsquoMarsquoam khana khila dorsquo There is always the fear that one of them might not come back so they party harder We wanted to build all this into the film and not just go thakthakthak from one action scene to anotherrdquoSo if you pay close attention to when we first hear Group Captain Jaisingh speak to his team itrsquos in staccato ldquoThatrsquos how officers brief Anil sir would say to me lsquoTu bol ke dikharsquo and then repeat the dialogue lsquoAb main bolta hoonrsquo He shadowed the Squadron Leader at Tezpur to get the mannerisms rightrdquo he says Squadron Leader Rathorersquos character was based on all the women at flight school who were better than Chibb and ldquonever let us hear the end of it I always thought they made good pilots They were more focussed learned faster and of course were not bogged down by us clownsrdquoChibb may not have realised his childhood dream but itrsquos evident when we speak to him that he has been happy to do the next best thing ldquoI flew in those planes shot them and even rigged the camera on to them for some shotsrdquo