First Person
Bela Negi - Editor, Writer, Director
It started with a news piece about a poor man in Assam winning a massive lottery. It set
me thinking about the happy and not so happy repercussions of this windfall. Of how his
expectations from life would be turned around and how he would try to acquire a new sense of
respectability in the eyes of the world. So in the film the poor man has become a disillusioned
poet who is trying to do something with his life and the lottery is a car. And the road to
respectability becomes even more tenuous because of the incongruity of a bright red luxury car
in a mostly roadless landscape of Uttarakhand.
Of course, the basic premise of the story could have also played out in the cityscape, since the
fundamental concerns of people are the same everywhere. Yet the attitudes by which we address
those concerns, the consciousness within which we frame our experiences, differ. And it is this
unique worldview that has evolved in this little corner of the world, my homeland, which I hoped
to evoke through my film.
It was also this context that allowed me to touch on certain issues (albeit in a light and humorous
manner) of unemployment, brain drain from the hills, alcoholism, of a people still hoping to find
their voice in the world. And of the stark reality that an average Uttarakhandi struggles for self-
respect, his hopes and enterprise restrained by a lack of self-confidence.
At a more personal level, the driving force of the protagonist, the need for recognition and the
limited vision of looking at himself through the eyes of other people, are the complexities that
exist in most people, in me. So Ramesh Majila (the protagonist) is comic, absurd, helpless, sad,
struggling with his own sense of personal identity. But there is a genuine need in him to make
a difference, to reaffirm his sense of dignity. Surrounded by the mud-and-wood houses, with a
cowshed in his basement, the heroism of it all cannot be overemphasized.
Deepak, Manav and Badrul are the only professional actors from Mumbai in the film. The rest of
the cast is all local, some of them involved in amateur theatre but mostly villagers who are facing
the camera for the first time. I didn't want actors from Mumbai pretending to be Uttarakhandi
villagers.
The cast and crew held together, put their faith in each other. It was a tough shooting schedule
- 48 days at a go with very limited resources at hand and a mostly outdoor shoot in the
unpredictable weather of the hills. Even the city bred crew of the film did the long uphill walks
almost everyday to get to location. There was no time to look daayen ya baayen, only to look
ahead.
Amlan Datta - Cinematographer
It was my first 35mm feature film as well. I was surprised when one fine evening Bela asked
me to shoot the film for her. She woke me up from my slumber. Mountains were calling. After
twelve years since FTII, I came out to do something which I love the most - cinematography.
I drove our glamorous heroine of the film the red Chevrolet Optra magnum from Nainital to the
village in the mountains of Uttarakhand, the main character of our film. Next two months I have
been part of a classical love story from purbarag to shringar, from pratiksha, to milan, from
vismay to bhakti.
On the road it's daayen ya baayen and on the sky it's dhoop ya chhaon. Either he's there or
he's not there - the sun! Like the flight of the kite in the sad song I glided through the light and
shadow trusting the winds to carry us. I have been meditatively shooting documentaries for the
last five years and I have learnt how to trust nature, how to submit. I have learnt to intermingle
with the reality where I become invisible. Where my camera is no longer an intruder to my
subjects; actors, non-actors or the nature itself. I have tried to translate my faith into those
images, not a mere recording of a reality but adding that feeling of a reality to a recording, that
life into an image, which can feel.
My flight had been following a little girl in the valley picking up small flower like stories in her
basket, Bela's childhood, which gave her the driving lessons to script for such an original road
film. Well, I call it a road film, and a new road indeed!
