How the idea originated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC2CNyAS4UY&feature

The idea or the subject of this short movie is bullying and harassment of weak children in schools, which is a common malpractice that has always been in front of us but people seldom pay any heed towards it.

 The school I studied in was a convent school and because of that there was very little news of misbehavior with any student since the environment was pretty strict but since it was in a small city, modinagar, several incidents of bullying, harassment and other kinds of misbehavior always came into news from other schools and colleges.

 Uttar Pradesh is a state well known for its heritage but another well known fact of this state is the hooliganism and increasing crime among adults as well as juveniles which starts right from scholastic level. Students, normally form groups and stay together and when they start getting the feeling of power, they start imitating bigger goons they may have heard of somewhere. Everybody likes power but the strong and powerful always end up bullying and beating up the weaker students around them.

I have been born and brought up in this kind of environment and have seen all of this first hand. Children as young as 12 or 13, indulge in quarrels with one another over insignificant topics such as cricket matches or any minor dispute. These arguments then turn into big fights and as a result, a fight between 2 small children over a petty issue turns into a huge gang-war between two powerful “gangs”, and all this to emphasize their might. I always thought of writing a story or making a movie on this topic but never got a chance until my 

admission in JIMS.

In October 2011, as per university syllabus, our class was given an assignment to make a documentary, properly shot and edited. We were to be marked on the basis of quality; and theme of the video. It was a group assignment and was to be done by a group of at least 5 classmates. I didn’t know anything about movie making at that time and wished I could join someone else’s group as well as learn a thing or two. Unfortunately, everybody else in my class had formed their own groups and nobody volunteered to take me in; as a result I decided not to do the assignment.

Enter Ashish Sharma, my friend from primary school. Ashish and I are in the same class but he is in BJMC evening batch. He too was facing some problems regarding team work in his group. So, this one time, we were strolling in streets of Delhi when he suggested we should make a documentary together. I didn’t have any qualms about it, rather it was a good opportunity for me since he knew well about the nuances of video shooting and editing. The subject we chose for our documentary was about black magic practice in villages and small towns by local tantric babas and miyas. We planned to make it as an interview.

Around November 2011, we readied the interview script and started working on the details. We had already talked to a local baba who claimed to make people free from illness just by a touch of peacock feathers. That seemed interesting enough to shoot. On 15 November, 2011, we set up our equipment, arranged for the babaji and started interviewing him. Now this person, who seemed a little hesitant at first, as time passed, grew suspicious of us and eventually ran away without even completing the interview.

He never came back and we were left in the middle of nowhere. We had issued a VX2000 camera for 3 days and nothing of our assignment could be done now. At that time, I remembered telling Ashish about another story which I had decided to keep as a backup, a story that I had verbally narrated to him once, about bullying in schools, a story on which I had always wanted to make a film.

So now, we had one camera, two amateur film makers, one unscripted story, no locations, no crew, no cast and nothing else. That’s how we started VIKALP.