Vijay Raaz and Maria Goretti in a scene from Raghu Romeo

It started with a Daler Mehndi doll. When a button is pressed, the doll starts singing Dardi rabba rabba in the voice of the original.

Rajat Kapoor — the child-molester uncle in Monsoon Wedding and the benign one in Dil Chahta Hai — got the doll in Delhi. It became a symbol of the kitschy, make-believe world of entertainment, on small or big screen, that is the only reality for so many of us, including the eponymous hero of Raghu Romeo, a film scripted and directed by Kapoor.

Vijay Raaz, the “Pee Ke Dubey” of Monsoon Wedding, plays Raghu. The film will be released on Friday.

In the growing clutter of the shaadi-bhangra “crossover” films dipped in “NRI sensibility”, this film stands out as an emphatic reminder that our young nation is surrounded like never before by images from the media — that reality is mediated like never before. And if it is sad, it is very funny, too. Among other things, Raghu believes that “Neetaji’s” devarji on screen is plotting to kill her in real life because he happened to suggest so in one of the episodes.

Raghu Romeo also stands out because of the way Kapoor raised money for his film that no one from tinsel town was ready to pay for, virtually.

The film is on its way to becoming a signpost on how-to-make-a-film-on-a-small-budget. Raghu, a waiter in a dance bar, has a very tenuous link with reality, except for his protective feelings for Sweetie, a dancer in the bar, played brilliantly by Sadia Siddiqui.

What really matters to him is his veneration of the small-screen goddess “Neetaji”, who is the heroine of the biggest soap on air in the tradition of the bahus of the K-serials. Raghu’s faith in “Neetaji” is so strong that even after a brutal encounter with actress Reshma (Maria Goretti), who plays the screen idol — which could have knocked the blinkers off for many a lesser mortal — he keeps believing in Neetaji, bursting into tears as the serial comes to an end.

“I read in Graham Greene of a woman who was shocked with grief on hearing the news of his son’s death. But in the hospital, though she was hysterical with sorrow, all the words that she used were from TV or films. With all this media, it is easy to lose one’s grip on reality. When we see a tree even, we think that this is like the one we watched in a movie. That is what happens with Raghu and it all connects with the Daler Mehndi doll that is in Sweetie’s getaway, or Sweetie’s make-up, or so many things,” says Kapoor.

“But please, all this will make my film sound heavy. I want the audiences to laugh,” he says, dismissing his thesis.

He also tries to make light of the difficulties he faced in financing the film — which led to a first in the film industry. “I spoke to everyone for two years — everyone — and no one wanted to put in money. There would be a catch — either I would have to take a star or a big music director. The financiers from abroad want to make rubbish in the name of crossover,” he says.

“Finally in October 2002, NFDC said it would fund 50 per cent of the project that would require about Rs 1 crore. I had saved some money, but the rest I needed. I started asking friends through e-mail to buy shares in my film. They got in touch with some of their friends.

“I was interviewed by a newspaper and then by an online publication. Then I started to be deluged by mail. Perfect strangers who wanted to be part of my project because they believed in good cinema,” says Kapoor.

“A person called Jeetendra Sethi walked into my ramshackle office, was convinced I really needed the money and gave me Rs 12 lakh. A 21-year-old girl gave me Rs 10,000. Naseeruddin Shah gave me Rs 5 lakh. It has been amazing. I raised Rs 24 lakh this way from strangers and friends,” he says. “So there are 35 producers for my film now. It has been amazing. I stopped accepting the money after March 2003, because by that time I had raised the money,” says Kapoor.

Kapoor shot the film in 40 days and completed it by June 2003. Then Raghu Romeo did the festival circuit — touring 20-odd festivals from Locarno to Dhaka — and now it is ready for commercial release tomorrow. If the film runs for more than four weeks, the shareholders will make profits, promises Kapoor, saying he feels positive.

But he doesn’t know how the box office will behave, given the complicated, intense relationship between illusion and reality, as is evident in his film.