2009-07-23

We were watching ‘The Fountain’ by Darren Aronofsky the other day and my mom remarked how it reminded her of our first digital feature called Turjya. We made it in 2003 and it was about this guy with a map seeking immortality. Check out the trailer. We knew nothing about constructing a scene or blocking or editing. We just took the camera and began filming. Thanks to Pramida without whose support we could never have started or finished the project. The adventure started in Hyderabad where we did a lot of indoor shooting and a bit of the outdoors at the Kapra lake and then we went on a whirlwind tour of the country to shoot the remaining scenes. The team was Nishant Pant-line producer, Dev-DP, Asheesh-Lead Actor and Art -Director and I directed the film.

Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore-Metrupalyam-Ooty-Burliyar-Coimbatore

Our first destination was Silent valley national park. We didn’t go all the way but stopped about 40 km from Ooty at a forest guest house and decided to finish shooting the forest scenes there. We first went to Metrupalyam and took a bus up to Ooty where we hired a couple of motorbikes and spent the day in Ooty. The next day we started for the forest guest house and On our way we saw Nizam of Hyderabad’s summer Palace. We wanted to shoot the hospital scene there, but we were chased out of there by ferocious dogs. With our tails between our legs we carried on. The guest house was eerie. There was this guy called David who was the caretaker of the bungalow and he was also the cook. We got a lot of supplies from a neighboring village and gave it all to David who would whip up delicious dishes with potatoes and eggs and have a feast ready for us by the time we went back after a hard days shoot. The shoot itself was full of surprises. The Emerald lake, the Todas, the wild buffaloes and our encounter with a sambar on a deserted road, the leopards growling at night. It was one of my first experiences being in the wild. We wrapped up and headed to Burliyar from there. We took the toy train from Ooty and we wanted to film a shot there. But the conductor didn’t let us shoot and threw us out at Lovedale station. We then took a shared jeep and got off at this hotel in Burliyar where we planned our next steps. There was this stream right by our hotel and we hitched a couple of miles upstream and found a waterfall where we decided to do a little more shooting. We shot the wrist slitting from the climax here and after getting enough coverage we decided to take a dip. I had a terrible back ache throughout the shoot and this was the only place where I felt a little better after treating my back by sitting under the waterfall. Our next destination-Sikkim. It felt like we were on the train for a few years.

Sikkim, Metrupalyam-Coimbatore-Chennai-Howrah-New Jalpaiguri-Kalimpong-Jorthang-Yoksum-Tchoka-Dzongri-Delhi.

With numerous delays we finally reached New Jalpaiguri. In between we got off at Shantiniketan like Michael Palin got off in Pune because his dad had served there. I don’t know why I got off there. Maybe because of Tagore. Maybe because of Nandlal Bose. we reached new Jalpaiguri late at night and took a jeep. The driver was drunk as expected and after a near death accident and a fight with with the driver we decided to hitch. We walked to the nearby police station and the guys there kindly stopped a truck for us. We took the truck all the way to Jorthang. As soon as we got off at Jorthang the police there stopped us because we looked shady and interrogated us for over an hour, they looked at our equipment, our id‚Äôs and just wouldn’t buy our story that we were students. They eventually let us off but only later came to know that the information bureau was after us. More about that later. We took another Jeep to Yoksum which had one street with small guest houses and an eatery. This was our base from where we trekked to a camp from where we could capture the Kanchenjunga. It was a 2 day trek and we spent a night at a remote mountain village called Tchoka, with no electricity and two or three huts. We had a lot of tchang here. Tchang is fermented millet beer served in a bamboo mug. Fermented millet is first put in a mug and then hot water poured over it and then is drunk using a bamboo straw. It quickly gives you a high and you need to be very careful. The next morning we finally reached the deserted camp called Dzongri. Our DP, Dev got diarrhea so Asheesh and I went up the mountain to get the required shots. The rest of the day we just stayed there looking at the mountain in utter silence and awe. When we went back to our base we found out from our hosts that the Information Bureau was making inquiries about us. We got really scared and wanted to leave immediately but couldn’t since it was raining and we had to wait for an extra day. Since Sikkim is a sensitive area, not everyone gets permission to shoot there. And the permits were really expensive and since we were poor students we really didn’t have money to even think about paying the fee. To cut a long story short, we smuggled our camera in. So the news of the IB made us rethink our strategy and we hid the tapes in our underwear and all evening stayed in bed and avoided going out. The next morning we took the first jeep out to Jorthang. That was a close one! There was a landslide on our way to Siluguri and finally reached a day late. As expected our train tickets were on waiting list and we couldn’t get confirmed tickets because there was this huge group of school girls going to Delhi by the same train. We got on the train nevertheless and after bribing the TT, we got 2 seats in an already packed military compartment. We put all the equipment on the top birth and took turns sleeping. The train went through Bihar and UP and it was late and the boogie was dirty and several people got on with no ticket. Basically it was a circus and never again with a waitlisted ticket. When we got off at the New Delhi station, we were already tired and had several days of growth on our faces and our clothes were dirty. We were walking to a friend’s house to clean up when a cop stopped Asheesh and me and took us to the police station at Gulmohar Park because we looked suspicious. No amount of pleading helped. They finally took out our expired id cards and called our faculty at NIFT to verify whether we were students. It so happened that the faculty did not like us because we were rabble-rousers. They refused to identify us and even today I don‚Äôt know whether they were playing a prank or if they really wanted us in jail. One of them took pity and told the cops she knew us. They let us go and asked us to get a shave. The same evening we left for Jaisalmer.

Rajasthan, Delhi-Jaisalmer-Delhi

By the time we reached Jaisalmer, the train bogies were covered in an inch of sand. There was sand everywhere. Just like Shantiniketan, we got off at Pokhran, the site of the underground nuclear testing. We bought hot mirchi pakodas here to commemorate our arrival. The city was out of a fairy tale. Out of nowhere we saw this huge structure in the distant desert, beatiful in the glaring harsh afternoon light, We stayed in a haveli within the fort and that evening allowed ourselves the pleasure of chilled beers. It was brilliant.The next morning we took camels out into the desert. There were a couple of other tourists with us and whenever we made stops, we rushed off to get coverage. That night we slept on a dune, after listening to the camel riders sing. the food was tasteless and full of sand. But we didn’t mind knowing that there were only about 2 pages to be shot. Rajasthan was the only place in our shoot where we didn’t face problems. It could have all gone wrong when Asheesh with his long hair and a beard asked our hotel manager where the Air force base was. If the guy had raised an alarm we would have been sitting in jail today for looking suspicious!

Delhi

After coming back to Delhi we did the remaining shoot. our professor at NIFT, Mr. Chand Gupta gave us a helping hand by acting in the film and also giving us a lot of encouragement. There were several people who helped us and like most student films, the list of people we thanked was longer than the production crew. In Hyderabad, we got to shoot at Outswinger, the pub and Andy made it happen because he knew Shane, the then manager of Outswinger who is no longer with us today.