One of the D3 Commando Force participants. Picture by Sudeshna Banerjee

Welcome to our sauna, steambath and tanning salon, host Vivan Bhatena breaks into a grin. He stands not in a deluxe spa uptown but under a tent on a beach about 150km from Panaji in Goa. It is high noon, the temperature is 40°C plus and one has just had to trudge over the hot sands to reach the tent.

The trying conditions are only a part of what the 14 contestants — eight men and six women — in the third season of Dadagiri on UTV Bindass are having to face. This edition, christened D3 Commando Force, is branded “Dadagiri against terrorism”.

“The premise of Dadagiri was to overcome fear. Every season we take that to the next level,” says the channel’s business head Nikhil Gandhi. The commando connection is unveiled as the troika of Albert Louis, Kshitij Sharma and Dharamveer Singh, retired captains who have served in the Indian Army.

“What do you do in case of a terror attack other than blame the system? The idea is to be ready if something goes wrong,” explains marketing chief Kanika Saxena.

To see the “commandos” being trained requires a trek up a rock-face about 1,000 ft high. “They do this every day,” smiles Louis, handing participants the M4 carbines, which are lighter and short-barrelled versions of the more famous M16s.

Arms training (with paintballs, not bullets) seems to be a piece of cake compared to the rest of the schedule. “The first thing we do is break their body cycle. They can be called for exercises even in the middle of the night,” says Sharma. Their activities involve the water-face, the rock-face as well as the jungle, justifying the choice of the spot.

The participants, picked through endurance and IQ tests in Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow, were trained for 10 days before the shoot started. “It would have been unfair to put civilians through this without preparation,” says Singh.

Atop the rock-face, lying on their stomachs, body weight on their palms next to their chests and clad in battle fatigues, the participants look worlds away from the acting, modelling and blue collar jobs they have left behind. “Who’s 007 here?” asks a miffed Sharma. “You, sir,” they chorus from the position. “Will you talk again without my permission?” “No, sir,” comes the reply. “Couldn’t hear you,” he turns away. The answers now come straight from the lungs.

Life in the camp is hard but there is the joy of picking up new skills — rappelling, navigation training, both aided (with maps and compasses) and unaided (following the stars), camouflage, raiding, ambush, unarmed combat….

The skills come for a price, though. Priti Kathpal holds up her palm to show a gash. “I slipped on the obstacles course. But now my hands have become tough,” she smiles, after their officer gives them the nod to speak. Deepika Pant, an MBA student, has bullet marks on her arms but laughs it off. Nazneen Batliwala, a 25-year-old HR manager with Reliance Entertainment, speaks for the pack when she says “Kaafi chotein aayi hain. But if we are asked to sit on a tree all night to keep vigil or do push-ups on any surface, we can do it.”

There is also the satisfaction of a dream realised. Tonu Chetia, a 23-year-old tattoo artist from Arunachal Pradesh, wanted to join the Army but missed out. “My father is a policeman. Everyone at home is proud of me now.”

The girls have not seen a mirror in 15 days and do not care about the sunburn; the boys are accustomed to being in thick uniforms in the heat. “They came to be on TV but now they do not think of the Rs 10 lakh prize,” smiles Sharma.

The show, being beamed on UTV Bindass every Saturday at 7pm, will throw up one winner but everyone will take back oodles of confidence.

Hope they take back the plastic junk the shooting team is dumping on the virgin beach too.