Movie Murmur

I was sitting on the bench in front of the intensive care unit of a hospital. A close relative was inside. He had just had two attacks of convulsions, he was restless, had no sense of space or time, did not know what he talked nor could he relate to anything told to him. The doctors had opined – it was an imbalance of a chemical in his body – a chemical called Sodium. I had hated chemistry in my college. 36 or 37 percentage was all that I could ever manage in that subject। Beyond H2O and HO2, nothing would make sense. I remember of even swearing that I would never touch chemicals and chemistry again. Alas, how wrong was I... As I was wondering about the kind of destruction a chemical imbalance can do to a human body, a young man, whose relative too was inside the intensive care unit, struck a casual conversation with me. When I told him about the chemical issue, he got angry. ‘Does he eat a lot of fruits? These days they inject a huge amount of chemicals into fruits and vegetables so t...

Those of you who are intrested can catch up with Paromita Vohra's piece called 'The one billion rupee home' published in the book 'Mumbai Meri Jaan' (Mumbai, my love); edited by Jerry Pinto & Naresh Fernandes. It is an exhaustive article that deals with her experiences during her stay in the PMGP colony.

Initially, the agent who had helped me purchase the flat had stared suspiciously at my unkempt beard and had warned me, ‘You are welcome to stay here…. But don’t do anything ‘ aise-waise ’ (This and that) with our girls.’ I was a bit surprised. Did I look the kind who would do all sorts of ‘ aise-waise ’ with anyone at all? Not taking any chances, I started to trim my beard and comb my hair regularly. The original alloties of the flats in PMGP colony treated their film and media neighbours as ‘outsiders’. But the ‘locals’, as we used to call them, were as depended on us, as we were on them. The software boom was yet to arrive. We, therefore, were the neo-rich professionals. And we had the cash. A journalist from New York once wrote an article on India and the transformation that it was going through due to globalisation. He did some exclusive reporting on PMGP. All of us were branded as 'young Indian yuppies' living in the gettos of Mumbai. I should thank my stars that my uncl...

The original inhabitants of PMGP were a part of a rehabilitation scheme – The Prime Minister’s Grant Project or PMGP. They had been displaced from their earlier habitat, thanks to a road project that linked two suburban centres in Mumbai. Most were migrants from other parts of the state of Maharashtra. I had made my purchase from one such lady. It was only much later that I came to know about her profession. She brewed and sold country liquor. Her husband had apparently hanged himself to death and the rumour going around was that his wife was too ‘hot’ to handle. My building society secretary, with grave concern, had once whispered that the lady was seeing a young but corrupt police constable, even before her husband’s death. I dared not mention any of this to anyone. ‘Budding filmmaker buys flat from a possible adulterous liquor lady’ – this also did not sound good. But all said and done, my ground floor ‘ Kholi ’ was quite an ‘ adda ’ by itself. It had a TV set and so, people gathere...

It was a 180 sq foot ground floor flat that I had purchased during my early days in Mumbai. It was just a stopgap arrangement, before I moved on to a bigger flat. I had planned to stay there for exactly two years. It took me more than thirteen years and a whole lot of persuasion to get out of 13\3, PMGP Colony at Mahakali, Andheri (East), Mumbai. Initially, when I brought the place, well-wishers had warned me that the number of the house was unlucky. But for me, the purchase was a huge accomplishment – acquiring a roof akin to making a film. In fact, my friend and classmate from the film school, Rajiv Katiyal did comment in jest, ‘Ram could not make a film, so he purchased a flat’. Yes, technically it was a ‘flat’. It had a living area, a tiny kitchen space and an attached bathroom cum toilet. Back home, my relatives were surprised and even impressed! This black sheep of the family had the presence of mind to buy a flat and that too, within a few years of moving into the city. But only...

In the numerous Saas-Bahu (mother-in-law / daughter-in-law) serials that are currently on air on Indian prime time Television, it normally is the woman who does all the sinister scheming. In one particular serial ‘Pallavi’ is the scheming sister-in-law and ‘Parvathi’ is the wife who effectively counters her sinister designs. The point of contention is normally a man, Om Agrawal in this case; who is portrayed as a dumb and ignorant gentleman, oblivious to the overt plotting that happens around him. The other day I happened to watch ‘Jodha Akbar’. In the film, Mogul emperor Akbar’s Hindu wife Jodha steps out of her palace in the middle of the night to meet her brother. Akbar’s scheming foster mother makes this encounter look like an adulterous liaison. Akbar believes and within a fraction of a second pronounces Jodha as guilty. She is sent back to her father’s place. It looked odd to me that the emperor of India , who usually is so alert to all the political schemers around him, ...

When an adulterous husband finds out that his wife and kids have left him for good, he undergoes pangs of guilt, gets depressed and in a mentally unstable condition attempts to kill himself, only to be saved just in time by the return of the dutiful wife. Needless to say, there is a family reunion. There is nothing in this plot line to suggest that a film based on it would be different from the rest of the films that the formula based mainstream Indian film industry churns out day in and out. An erroneous husband is tamed; the institution of marriage is eventually upheld. The lady in question is a typical understanding ‘Bharathiya Naari’, who despite being ill-treated, loves her husband, takes care of her family and performs her household duties to perfection. This could well have been one of those ‘sentiment’ oriented ‘weepy kerchief films’ that the South Indian Film Industry is so adept with! For some reason or the other, I missed watching ‘Yaadein’ – the Hindi film made on t...

In the first screening schedule of my Tulu language digital feature film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) that was held in the villages of Coastal Karnataka a few months back, I had traveled to various schools and colleges. But for the second and the third schedules, I decided to target the general public. This automatically meant that the screenings had to be held only in the evenings. Yet, I managed to have two screenings a day, for during the day time I continued showing the film to interested college students. After having written to almost all the Gram Panchayats (Village Governing Bodies) in the Tulu speaking areas of the State of Karnataka and after having hobnobbed with various governmental and non governmental cultural organizations requesting them to take the initiative in hosting or arranging the screenings of SUDDHA in the villages of coastal Karnataka; and having failed to evoke any response, I decided to individually contact grassroots level groups that have engaged thems...

The magnificent Ararat peak greeted me when I first landed in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia - a country that was once a part of the erstwhile Soviet Union Bloc. The snow peaked mountain was just majestic. I just could not take my eyes off it. I was there in Yerevan along with my feature film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) to attend the Golden Apricot International Film Festival that was held from 9-14 July 2007. With me in the vehicle was Ms An Cheong-sook, a film critic from South Korea . Her gaze too, was on the Ararat. Mount Ararat is one of the tallest of the peaks in the area. Armenians often boast that that it can be seen from anywhere in their country. It is presently located just beyond its borders, in the Turkish territory. It is said that during the Biblical times, the Noah’s Ark had landed in Mount Ararat . Some archaeologists quote satellite images and swear that the remains of the Arc are still buried somewhere in the snow peaked mountain. Some others say that...

A few months back I had approached Mr. T.A. Srinivas of Chitrabharathi, to distribute my Tulu digital film SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) in Mangalore. Tulu films have a history of just over thirty five years. On an average, one Tulu film is being made every year. In the two districts in which Tulu language is spoken, Mangalore is the biggest center for such films – followed by Udupi and Putthur. A four weeks run in each of these center is enough for a Tulu film to be considered as successful. If the production costs of the movie is kept to the minimum and if it is intelligently publicized, Tulu films do recover their money. Some producers even swear that profits can be made. Srinivas is from Mangalore. He has made a career out of distributing the Kannada films of Dr. Rajkumar in Coastal Karnataka. His love for his native Tulu language and his fascination for the film production bug, has seen him venture into the making of a couple of Tulu movies which, by his own confessions, were ju...

There is always is a strong stinking sense of incompleteness if the film that you have made does not get the opportunity to be viewed widely. The mainstream cinema is lucky to be having a business model in its production-distribution-exhibition chain that facilitates this process of dissemination. But it has its own set of unwritten rules that defines the likes and dislikes of its audience. Unfortunately, in the little interaction that I have had with the harbingers of mainstream cinema, my Tulu language digital feature film SUDDHA has been branded as a film that will not be accepted by a ‘wider audience’. It has been portrayed as THE ‘eternal truth’. While I do accept that it is becoming increasingly difficult for my film to find a wider audience within the well entrenched production - distribution - exhibition system that the mainstream cinema can boast off, it is a total myth that films like SUDDHA cannot lend itself to a wider audience. There are quite a number of people who wo...

At 1.00 A.M this morning, I had one of the strangest screenings in my life. An audience of around 650 Tulu speaking hotel laborers watched my Tulu digital feature film, SUDDHA (The Cleansing Rites) at the Vishweshwaraiya Auditorium, Matunga run by the Karnataka Sangha, Mumbai. Karnataka Sangha is one of the premium Kannada organizations culturally active in Mumbai. Mumbai, as many of you are aware, is the home for ‘Udupi Hotels’ – eateries that provide cheap and affordable food stuff to the city’s population. Most of the management staff as well as the labor force in these hotels are migrants from the Tulu speaking coastal belt of Karnataka. Over the years many of these hotels have graduated to being Beer Bars and are often kept open, till late in the night. The Karnataka Sangha, apart from being responsible for thought provoking programs relating to music, literature and theater, also caters to the entertainment needs of these migrant hotel workers, by letting out its premises to e...

Recently, I had the fortune of attending an electronic media workshop held in Shimla. It was conducted by the Cardiff based Thomson Foundation as a part of the European Union–India Media Initiative on HIV-AIDS. The workshop director was the inspirational Arwel Ellis Owen, also from Cardiff , UK . Arwel is the chairman of the British Academy of Film and TV Arts in Whales and in his distinguished career spanning over many decades, he was also the program head of the BBC in Northern Ireland . There were eight participants in this workshop – people ranging from TV news reporters and news editors, radio programmers, documentary filmmakers and graphic artists. During this workshop, we had a chance to reflect upon the kind of coverage the electronic media has been giving to the HIV-AIDS issue in India , which I must say is not encouraging. Around less than one present of our population is estimated to be having HIV, amounting to a very sizable number of around 5.7 million...

Way back in 1991, after having graduated from the F.T.I.I., I shot a self-financed short film, in 16mm, called ‘The Hot Shot’. I had made the film the way I wanted to and with my own money. The film went to a couple of film festivals and nothing came out of it – except the fact that I had lost around 25,000/- in the making of the film. For the next twelve years I immersed myself into TV work and had almost forgotten what filmmaking is all about – till one fine morning I woke up with a realization that I had not done anything worthwhile in all these years. I had forgotten the very context that I had set on my own life! It was time to shake oneself out of one’s guts. It was in 2004 that I brought my digital video camera. Though the idea was to hire it out so that I repay back the loan that I had taken for its purchase, the other motivating factor was that I could make my own digital films. Initially, I decided to make some shorts. There was still no market for the short fiction film in ...