Invisible in plain sight

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Anamika Haksar's Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon (Taking the Horse to Eat Jalebis, Hindi, Urdu), is a unique, inventive voice in Indian cinema. It's been a long time since anyone in Indian cinema paid attention to the lives of real people living off the streets. But Haksar weaves a fascinating tapestry through four men who eke a living on the streets of Shahjahanabad, Old Delhi, evoking their dreams, hopes and fears (realised through a survey), and tributing their resilience in an exciting experimental film that is part-documentary, and peppered with magic realism, surrealism and animation. It released in theatres on June 10 in five cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Lucknow and Jaipur, and is available on bookmyshow.

In a nation producing the most films in the world (2,446 features in 2019), that has only six per cent women directors, every new woman director is a miracle of existence, especially for a woman who directed her first feature at 59 (in 2018). The film was at the Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival of Kerala and Mumbai Film Festival.

Haksar follows four street characters who live by their wits - Patru (Ravindra Sahu), a pickpocket, Chhadammi (Raghubir Yadav), a snack vendor, Aakash Jain (Lokesh Jain), a local tourist guide, and Lal Bihari (K Gopalan), a labourer-activist, along with hundreds of non-actors. Patru ‘steals' tourists who are clients of tourist guide Aakash Jain, and shows them ‘apni Dilli,' how people live, work, and die in its streets. Later, a firangi tourist, who asks for ‘folk stories' - and has a tea vendor relate how her son died after falling into a well - cannot handle what she asked for. Chhadammi finds his dreams of prosperity invaded by the left-wing dreams of Lal Bihari, a labour-activist, who, in an animation sequence, towers over buildings, waving a red flag to the tune of the Internationale, the former Soviet national anthem. What a magnificent idea - the invasion of dreams! Aakash Jain, who tells his tourist clients of India's secular, Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb in flowery Urdu, is taunted by right-wing Hindus for speaking in "their language and walking in mini-Pakistan". The film is more keenly relevant than ever, for celebrating India's secularism, and also paying attention to the poor, who are now all but abandoned by the state.

Haksar is, of course, a veteran theatre director; she trained with Badal Sircar, the National School of Drama and at the Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts (later Russian Academy of Theatre Arts) in Moscow, and has directed a number of plays. She is also from a Kashmiri Pandit family; and daughter of the late PN Haksar, former Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi. This may not have been relevant, except that her film is befitting, if unintended riposte (it was made in 2018) to the desperately right-wing Kashmir Files, that is backed by the state, through a film that celebrates India's secular culture and Islamic heritage, and has a genuine concern for the poor - both of which seem lowest in state priorities.

Haksar brings a refreshing inventiveness, as a newcomer to cinema. There are unforgettable images like the corpses, shrouded in white, suspended in mid-air in a home; the tourist guide reading poetry, lying prone on a donkey led through narrow gullies! Haksar's reading of poverty is a far cry from Bollywood's melodramatic poverty, say in Coolie (1983), as well as the obsequiousness and rage of the poor in Ramin Bahrani's White Tiger. Her spirit is closer to the empathy of Chaitanya Tamhane's Court and Shaunak Sen's documentaries All That Breathes and Cities of Sleep, but she remains an original voice.

We are moved by the dignity of the exploited; yet Haksar does not spend long enough with any one character for us to remain emotionally invested in them. Her screenplay, a stinging satire on the government, corporates and intellectuals, unfortunately also meanders. She encourages us to consider a society beyond religious boundaries, unbridled capitalism or communism. Ravindra Sahu is lively; Raghubir Yadav and K Gopalan are effective. Cinematographer Saumyananda Sahi is superb, as is Gautam Nair's sound design. Kudos to Anamika Haksar, also woman producer with Gutterati Productions, and distributor Platoon One Films.

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com