 The film, Sacha, which we made in 2000, was born out of a kind of angst, a kind of questioning of the city of Mumbai, our relationship with the city. And the rapidly changing space that we were almost sort of feeling lost within as a whole lot of events from the 1980s onwards were kind of moving the city in a direction that was making it almost an unrecognizable space. So you have the textile strike in the early 80s, you have the rise of right-wing political parties, you have the trade union movement that is sort of getting decimated and the kind of cosmopolitan secular energies that for us was something that drew us to the city because we are first generation migrants to the city, that was somewhere getting dissipated. And we wanted to explore this space of the city and somewhere to explore it in collaboration with other artists. So the film actually brings together the poetry of Narayan Surve who is what he calls himself a working class poet, somebody who was abandoned on the roadside by his mother when he was an infant, picked up by a mill worker, became a child labourer in the mills and then became a part of the left movement and without much formal education rose to be one of the most powerful Marathi poets of our time, of all times I would say, and the precursor of Dalit poetry. And on the other hand you have Sudhir Patvaldan who is a doctor, a radiologist coming from a very different social location and yet kind of relating to working class life in a very interesting way, in a very self-reflexive way. So in the film we bring together this poetry, these images and our own experience of the city in terms of how we imagine it and in terms of trying to maybe at one level hold on to a city that was disappearing, look at spaces that which were very much a part of our growing up in the city. So that's how this film brings together these three different strands, the poet, the painter and our images of the city. So when we kind of wanted to document the city there were a lot of dilemmas. Bombay is a city of contrast, city of so many antinomies, our experience of the city, our imagination of the city and our ambivalent relationship of the city, at one level we love the city but at the same time concerned about the way it was changing and both the poet and the painter are concerned about this as well. So how does one bring the beauty of the city and the grime of the city? So we were wondering how do you bring all these complexities together? The idea of a loom kind of became very handy to kind of bring together these antinomies. A loom, for example, not only represents the city because much of the wealth of the city is generated by the textile industry, its architecture, its food, its street culture, all that is informed by the people who worked, the qualitative who worked for the textile industry. There is the warp and the weft which make possible the larger fabric. So they look like as if they are moving in different directions but they all bring the city together. So it's multicultural fabric, so to speak. One of the most interesting collectivity in the city was the trade union movement. Mumbai is the birthplace of Indian trade union movement. So it was informed by this very robust progressive working class culture. So with the textile strike and a subsequent closure of the mills, that kind of culture kind of died down. But how does one then talk about this change at all at a micro level and also at the macro level? Which we have kind of shot the film in many different ways. One of the examples that I can cite is a woman selling tomatoes in the beginning. So it's a very macro fact image when she appears. I mean this is a figure that you pass by. Though they are builders of this edifice of this grand city as Narayan Subway puts it. We pass by, we don't even give a second look. But there is yet another space at which this image occurs when there is a downpour and she's trying to kind of sell these tomatoes and it's become a very turbulent image. It kind of represents the threat to livelihood of common people or the poor people on the street. That's kind of the shining new city doesn't take on board. If you looked at the Urani restaurant sequence which we kind of had great fun putting together in the beginning. It's a very carnivalous kind of space. There's music that is, you know, it's a space which is very nostalgic. But then it recurs later in the film. It's a kind of the commonplace image. The music is gone and the lights have fled. It's a kind of everyday image. Look at the marine drive. In the beginning when it appears it's like there is a Bheil Puriwala who sells and that's kind of focused on the film in that entire sequence which is an everyday image. And of course when it comes which is we kind of bring it back when we talk about the 1990s. It's a very dark turbulent image which is kind of beautiful but at the same time brooding and disturbing. These are some of the ways in which we tried. Tried is an operative word here to kind of bring this concerns that we had and kind of trying to kind of embed within the film the kind of changes the city has gone through. The painters working with, you know, one kind of register of the city and the poet has a very different register or several registers I would say and then we have our images so how do we bring these disparate ways of looking at the city together. For instance I can think of one example which is the painting called the train where there is a particular kind of grill that is there on the railway, on the staircase and we actually went from station to station looking for where we would find that grill because we know that the way Sudhir paints he would have definitely seen it somewhere and we found it at the other station and we kind of moved from the grill in the painting to, you know, the grill on the platform. I think the gaze that we bring to bear on the city. In fact that all three sets of artists bring to bear on the city probably has something in common and that is that in a sense we are looking at our own space and I think when you look at your own spaces there is definitely a lot of affection that you have for your spaces a lot of little things that you notice because it is your space and I think that kind of detail is there in Sudhir's work. It is there in the poetry of Surve, the little metaphors and that was something I think we tried to bring out as Jaishankar sometimes calls it the secret life of things, you know, a drop of water on a table tells many stories. The reflection on a jar of jujubes as a car passes by kind of evokes memories, it evokes so many things. But of course we are also looking at somebody else's life because you are looking and this is something that Sudhir is acutely aware of, the whole politics of representation. So as a middle-class person he is looking at the life of the working class and he very reflexively and critically explores how his relationship with this life changes over a period of time from initially kind of seeing himself almost as a spokesperson for the class and which I think many of us who were Marxists or influenced by Marxism did at one point of time to moving more towards being a participant in one's own space. So he gives this wonderful example of how he decided to sit in public spaces in his own locality and paint and how children would come and ask him what he was doing and he would start conversations around the space and he felt that that gave his work a different dimension. All filmmakers doing ethnographic work are aware of and we often think about what is this relationship that we have with our subjects, what is the kind of relationship we have with the space. And both the work of Sudhir as well as Nara and Surve give us to kind of take this ethnographic project forward in some sense because of the reflexivity that is embedded in it. And Sudhir's work is evident from the multiple perspective that he brings. He kind of problematizes what he is seeing, problematizes what is reality and also Surve kind of in its social critique of what he is writing about also problematizes the social practice of what the reality of what he is kind of talking about. So in that sense ethnographic methods did help us in kind of conceptualizing this film. Sudhir is a radiologist. So in fact I have this term his work is critical social radiology, a radiological image is the picture of the real but it's a picture which is very different from what you see. So when he looks at a space he cuts down through the tissues into the sense of the city. So thereby he sees reality in a different way. He can see what is essential, what underlies the city, what makes the city possible, the structure, the kind of working class vigor, the robustness of these everyday happening in the city. And also what he does is to kind of bring into his image. This is the idea from multiple perspective. So he doesn't privilege one perspective. I mean he brings into one frame different aspects of that frame. And what he also does interestingly is that you know his paintings carry a story. Though it's just one frame as you look at it it unfolds. And then there are many stories that you realize there are many stories that are being narrated within the frame. One woman bathing and or somebody look gazing into the frame. You know all kinds of thing that happens in this. So that's something that we have tried doing it. So talking about Surveys poetry, since it is so powerfully kind of affective, it's something that sort of hits you in the gut. I think in some way we also try to use the image in that way. Not in a descriptive way, not to look at the city in a descriptive way. But to look at the city very up close and in a way that is visceral that kind of affects you. The way we've used texture and color and reflections. And also we were shooting a lot of it during the monsoons where I think the city gets a different kind of haunting beauty. Which also can be quite disturbing at times. So I think Surveys poetry offered us that space to engage very poetically and lyrically with the image. And to look at the city through new eyes. Though it was a city that we are very familiar with. But to rediscover the city in new ways. This city is like the Kalandavi village of Unadpur. In the 8th century, in the middle of Mahjathir Dhasdastapur, the land of the Tuk-Tuk-e-Kaya Potrich-e-Sanayu, the water of the Pannarya Paulansha, which was on the banks of the river, was flowing. The water was flowing on the banks of the Fansasharkha river. We didn't try to describe what he was saying, but used it in very many different ways. So sometimes it's used in a kind of playful way. So there's this poem called Asagami Brahma, Dasaayam Brahma, and you're talking about the universe and all, and we've shot it in a fish market, which is a very common place, but we've shot the market also differently. So with a woman in focus, and it ends on the eye of the dead fish. Dhalinami Saryabrahman Dasa Pati, Soda Vinagati, Dikalanchar, Vishwache Gokula, Khele Maha Dari, Vishwache Gokula, Khele Maha Dari, Surya Chi Lagori, Tichabinam, Dhagan Chagahati, Bandhinami Dari, Dhagan Chagahati, Bandhinami Dari, Bherenagha Gare, Amrutanam, Varyachi Bhingari Angani Chafire, Svargaachi Gopure Tiramire, Ube Karinami Vakalya Abhada, Ube Karinami Vakalya Abhada, Shikshaktiri Chala Dandamina, Rai Cha Parvat, Parvatachi Rai, Goni Mazathai Sangawali, Aishagami Brahmah, Aishagami Brahmah, Vishwacha Aadhaara, Holi Shralachara Hakkacha. It in some way kind of evokes the poem, questions the poem, laughs with the poem. I mean it's doing a whole lot of different things because Surve is a free spirit, because his poetry has so much power. I think it gave us a very interesting space to experiment with the image, to use the image in very many different kinds of ways to use it completely non-indexically. Some of the images do not really indexically link to what you are talking about. There is a moment at which Sudhir is talking about the expression and a mark that he makes on the canvas. And then the image is a barber actually making a mark on somebody's face. I mean for us it was a more humorous deployment of the image, but it's also talking about another mode of artistry in that sense. It kind of blurs the distinction that we have between certain kind of art and certain other kind of craft. So it's not directly linked but it has, it kind of expands the meaning of both. In my view representation, any representational work, you know there are three, I mean roughly speaking, there are three elements that go into a work like this. And first of course is observation, what you see around you and your need to depict what you see. Along with this is of course the conventions that you will use to depict what you see. Those conventions will affect how much you can in fact see what you will see, what you will edit out. The second aspect is the mark that you make on the canvas, the expression, the kind of emotional charge that you can give to your activity on the canvas. So these two M&N people who are kind of trying to climb the mountain from different direction kind of did help us in a very interesting way. In fact when the film was completed we took it to Surveys house and showed it to him and then Sudhir came to our studio and saw the film. We wanted to make sure that they were happy with whatever was there in the film and that to us meant a lot because we saw it actually as a collaborative project. It is not our film on the city, it's all three of us who are trying to understand all over again our relationship with this changing city. The other thing for us was a very interesting experience while making the film is our engagement with the music of those times. So we managed to find this group called Shahir Amar Sheikh Kalapatak. So Shahir Amar Sheikh is a very well-known bard of the forties and fifties kind of left poet who has this amazing body of work and this was the troop that sang with him and now they were all in their sixties and sort of somehow struggling to make a living because those times had passed. So we actually sat with them and recorded a lot of the songs of the forties and the fifties particularly there is this interesting song called Sutla Dhota Sacha Madun. So it is a strike song of the nineteen forties you know the shuttle has flown out of the The engagement with the visual, the engagement with the aural allows for that many many layers of meaning and as an audience you probably pick up those things that appeal to you or you kind of build your own meaning through the text. What Suzy was saying and it expands the meaning of what you are seeing. So they kind of work together in a dance so to speak. So basically a dance or a rhythm music which music the image and the sound kind of work together. Now one of the ideas that we keep in mind is the idea of affect than effect. So effect is a very inferior mode in which you know you kind of indexically try to kind of bring about as a desired effect and with that film but its more affect is more embodied kind of feeling. Its kind of more pleasure oriented. Its not very unidirectional but it can take you in many ways and you kind of relate to it in your own way. So you know those kind of connections is what we have worked with. You know when you are from a space and you are trying to represent it there is probably a tendency to take for granted that space and so not to engage with it in critical terms with new eyes but somewhere I think we try to also while it was a familiar space we try to you know de-familiarize ourselves and look at it as Daeshankar said from multiple perspectives little parts, the little stories that perhaps you have to discover as the audience. Even in Sudeep's painting or in our film I do not think we tell all those stories. Those stories are there, they are lurking in the interstices of that space many stories and its for the audience to pick up those stories and to tell them in your own way because you would come to the film with your experience of the city or perhaps experience of another city or no experience at all. For us ethnographic film is a very open-ended text that you know you as an audience insert yourself into and you know make your own stories you know it should be a text that allows you to sort of empathize with your subjects and spaces and you know in that process you know kind of also insert yourself into that space so I think for us ethnographic film has always been that kind of a space a space for you know interpretation and discovery rather than a space for description of something that is. So what isn't is or what we don't see or what we partially see or the absences are as telling and as important as the presences.