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.
