Meet the Woman Who Created the Grand Sets of ‘Kalank’

Art director Amrita Mahal Nakai talks about recreating 1940s Hira Mandi in Kalank.

Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan on the sets of Kalank. 

(Photo courtesy: Dharma Productions)

One of the striking features of Kalank, from what we’ve seen in the promos so far (apart from its star cast of course), has been the grand and elaborate sets.

Thanks to the scale and beauty of the massive sets, director Abhishek Verman's magnum opus — set in the pre-Independence era — is being compared to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's production style. Instead of relying heavily on the VFX in post-production, Verman went the whole hog by building massive sets, adding a lot more character to the period film.

Kalank set. 

Kalank art director Amrita Mahal Nakai, who has earlier worked as production designer on Karan Johar's directorial Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Verman's 2014 film 2 States, among several others, says it has been her biggest challenge so far.

“To make Abhishek’s vision real was a challenge. In today’s day and age, people are hardly putting up grand sets. They rely more on VFX to make sets look grand, but we built a set to give it a more real look. Of course, the makers will be using visual effects to enhance scenes, but we have kept it as real as possible. This would probably be the largest set I have ever designed,” says Nakai.

Kalank art director Amrita Mahal Nakai.

Starring Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Aditya Roy Kapur and Sanjay Dutt, Kalank is set in pre-independent India.

For the film, Amrita recreated Hira Mandi — the famous market of Lahore — in all its glory, albeit with some creative liberties. "Our set of Hira Mandi is a rather fantastical version of Lahore in the 1940s, though we have retained the essence of the city as it was back then."

Set of Lahore’s Hira Mandi in Kalank. 

Amrita started work on the design at the end of 2016, while the shooting began in 2018. It took several man hours and research to make the sets look as authentic as possible.

But one of the artistic liberties the makers have taken is the extensive use of the colour red in the sets and even the costumes, lighting and props against a chrome tone.

Kalank is a dramatic love story that unfolds amidst the communal tensions arising during the time of partition, and red represents the love and violence that’s intrinsic to the plot and characters.

Madhuri Dixit in a scene from Kalank.

“We have shown restraint in the use of colours, so that it doesn’t look jarring. We have taken our liberties, but well within the canvas of the film. Red colour has been used extensively in Kalank. It’s a strong colour and is pretty much there in every frame of the film. We used various shades of it. Hira Mandi is the most vibrant of all the sets, so we used colours depicting the same.”

The sets of Kalank sprinkled with red lighting.

Produced by Dharma Productions, Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment and Fox Star Studios, Kalank releases on 17 April.