Sita at Alibaug

In a city, far from my dreamland and farther from my homeland, it happened as if I am re-living a few adorable moments of my past.
Today, being the first weekend, after joining TCS-Trivandrum, we - me and most of unknown people from my batch, left the TCS Hostel for Kanya Kumari(KK) , the southern most point of main-land India.
Around a year back, we – me and all of my friends from MCSA batch, had gone to a memorable trip to a place called Alibaug, Maharastra.
And around four years back, we – me and all of my friends ( Ravi and Srideo missed it ) from BCA batch, had gone to an equally memorable trip to Sitamani, Allahabad, UP.

We were at the sea side in KK by 5:30 AM to welcome the sun. At around 6:30 the shy sun arrived from behind the clouds, red- faced (may be it was afraid of the welcome crowd). After sometime we went to board a Ferry to Vivekanand Smarak.

From here, it seems, I boarded a roller-coaster, which moved from one moment to another and from there to yet another moment in fractions of seconds, making the world around me a Nostalgia park.
At around the same time a year ago, we were running around the Gateway of India, in the midst of thousands of pigeons, to board a Ferry to Alibaug. Standing on a side of the ferry, I just hoped, from somewhere, a whole lot of seagulls will appear chasing our ferry. But none did. I hoped, from somewhere, my only Girlfriend in MCSA will appear and call out “Hi Motu!” But she didn’t. I wondered if at all we can play the game of cricket again. And I knew we cannot. Neither can I eat those strange sandwiches again. Not even we can play that game of Dumb-charades.

When running from one temple to another, it felt like we were running from one hut to another in Sitamani.There’s a point where you can actually sea the Arabian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean meet. Standing at that point, I could feel the same aroma which I felt when we went to Sangam in Allahabad. And I just hoped if we could be together all over again.

The breeze at the smarak was so strong that you can get carried way if you are standing loosely at the side of the rocks. And from me, it swept way all the hopes. Probably I was a little loose, emotionally.

KanyaKumari, to me, means Sita from Sitamani statue-ed at Alibaug beach,with a Monalisa smile. And I could figure out hope in that enigmatic smile too.

HOPE is a big thing. It makes life easy. After all this missing-those-days moments, what Hope gave me was a smile on my face and a sense of satisfaction that I have some amazing friends. I know life does move on but memories do not. And they should not as they generate the strength for life to move on.

And I hope, just hope, someday, I will move from this city of anonymous existence to my dreamland, to the people I love most……And to an existence which speaks of my identity.

A day of Filmmaker’s Life

It started as a crazy idea... An idea that originated from a childhood dream and got into a shape by the opportunity provided by ‘24x7 Making Movies’.

That was a quite afternoon and in SIMSR Library I was reading the monthly magazine ‘Outlook’ when I first saw this opportunity. This was an event organized by Mr Dev Benegal with a concept of 24. The movie was supposed to be made in 24 hours by people less than 24 years of age for duration of 24 seconds to 24 minutes. Then, I wasn’t sure whether I will participate in this contest.

But I did. After looking into my book of poems and stories, I selected a poem and a story to send as my entry to the contest in February. I waited and looked into the site ‘24x7makingmovies.com’ for some time. They had extended the closing date to sometime in July. By then I had already forgot that I had send my entry to such a competition. But one day in August, I received a call from Mr. Sharat Rao that my entry has been short listed in ‘Top-35’ out of some 300 entries. And I was already over-excited.

The participants had a one-to-one session with Mr. Benegal and Mr Sopan Muller where we discussed the story, the script, and the basic concepts of film making. Things were happening on their own, as if!!

When I reached the studio for the session, I wasn’t very sure whether I will be doing this. Every participant was there with his/her team. I had gone alone. And of course I looked like a fool who was about to do everything by himself. The person responsible for the I-Cards even asked me whether I was really going to do this all by myself. Then I had nodded in Yes as I just wanted an entry inside the studio to have a look at the place where dreams are carved into objects.

While leaving the studio, I knew I am going to do it, not knowing HOW.

I called up my friends, who of course didn’t believe me for the first time. But when they did it was excitement and a kind of weirdness because none of us knew where to start. We started digging into our contacts to find out if we knew someone who could guide us. And, thankfully, we had many. From here a writer turned into a project manager. I had to get my resources.

By now ‘My Dream’ had graduated to become ‘Our dream’. Everybody took a particular role and tried playing that to the best of their capacity.

The D-day was approaching. We had 4^th as our shooting day and we did not had our actors with us by 2^nd even. Tension. Restlessness. And what not.

But then God exists. And we were almost ready to shoot on 4^th.

Our ‘24 hours’ period was starting at 11:30 AM. I and Junaid had to reach the Fame, Inorbit to register. We first went to Siddhivinayak. Hitesh was on music. Aditya and Veeresh were arranging every thing required at the set. Anooj was working on the credits. Nishith was doing and re-doing the script. Amol and Dr. Patil, the actors of our team, were working on their dialogues. 24x7 had provided us with a volunteer who was supposed to monitor the shoot. So we had Surjeet with us. And he turned out to be a help rather than an observer. We started our shoot by around 3:00 PM. Umesh bhai handled the Camera for us…and things started rolling. We also received a great help from Deepak, Devesh, Tulika, Charishma, Suman Aunty and Anand Uncle.

Lights. Camera. Action.

And by 9:30 we wrapped up. Now it was time to run to Malad from Thane and start editing. By the end of the 23^rd hour, ‘Mritak(The Dead)’ was born.

When Mr. Benegal reviewed it, ‘Nice, Very Nice’ was all he said. And we had already won.

29^th was the prize distribution day. I did not win. But WE did.

After a month when event is over, now I know if you believe in them, dreams do materialize.

Thank you, everybody.

Rohit..