Growing up across Rajasthan meant filmmaker Suruchi Sharma met and absorbed myriad subcultures and folk traditions that the state offered. “The milieu of Rajasthan is what I relate to the most, and I’m interested in documenting or understanding more of that world, understanding my roots. Now, I’m kind of drawn towards it more and more. There’s so much more to discover every time,” says Jaipur-based Sharma, 34, who did her master’s in filmmaking from National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. She has been making documentaries on the heritage and culture of Rajasthan for some time now. “After a series of documentaries, I’ve directed this OTT docu-series called Equals. And after all of this non-fiction work, I really wanted to do fiction. I wanted to come back to that. So that’s why Gagan Gaman (Skyward) happened,” says Sharma, from Alpavirama International Youth Film Festival at NID, ahead of the ongoing MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, where her short film, co-produced by musician Kanika Patawari, is showing in Focus South Asia package.
From watching mand performers to chang dancers (during Holi celebrations in Shekhawati), Sharma developed a natural affinity for the folk world, which, she says, “is very organic and spontaneous and very welcoming of all forms. I really enjoy how myth and facts come together in it and it’s a hodgepodge. I see folk as the subconscious that comes naturally and organic to us while the classical form is the conscious, where the human effort is put into refinement.”
The short fiction, Gagan Gaman, has at its heart a quest for freedom, as a married woman (Subrata Parashar) sets on a journey, in her hometown Jaipur, of finding the answer to a riddle that she has been given. Her destiny card has been stamped by the elderly Bemata and she must solve the puzzle: to find a two-door stepwell with thorns and turn them into flowers with her touch. The film tries to wrest the image of Jaipur (Rajasthan) from a tourist destination and takes us into its innards, literally and metaphorically.
Sharma’s first film was the no-budget Utsav, an observational documentary on a mela (village fair) in Rajasthan. Her documentary Meen Raag (2020), produced under her banner Studio Ainak, bagged the National Award for Best Location Sound Recordist in 2023. Excerpts from an interview:
Tell us about Meen Raag for which you won the National Award (Silver Lotus Award) for location sound last year.
I’ve been doing these films on understanding folk. That was my quest. It started with Utsav. There, I understood the world a little bit, which led me to make Of Love and Artistry (2017), where I spent more time with the artists of Rajasthan, visited their homes and discovered their stories and music. After that, I got married into a Meena family. I’m married to Ashok Meena (cinematographer). When I got married, on the first day, the women welcomed me with their songs, and I was like, I have travelled all over Rajasthan and discovered folk songs, but this was so unique. Then I got to know about the musical traditions of the Meena community. I applied for Sahapedia fellowship to dive deep into this world. For that, we travelled and met these artists who hosted us. This was the first time the diversity within this community was put together in this form. It’s a very simple documentary film.
How did the seven-part docu-series Equals, exploring India’s music traditions, for JioCinema come about?
So, Equals is a property of the NGO Anahad Foundation, it was their idea. They had liked my film Of Love and Artistry. They had already done a pilot episode earlier of the song called Nasha. So that was already a very popular song. Then, they wanted to do this kind of a programme series in a larger format and were looking for a director. It was a very nice culmination of this journey of understanding folk from these independent documents to now being able to put all those resources and learnings into a project like that. It was a very good marriage. We got a Special Mention at the [International Documentary Association’s] IDA Documentary Awards last year for Equals, and I was very touched by the jury note, the fact that our content was produced and put out in the mainstream in itself is a very interesting act and we need to support more and more of that.
ALSO READ: Review: JioCinema’s Equals is a delightful survey of India’s undernourished musical traditions
Is Gagan Gaman/Skyward your first fiction work?
It’s not my first fiction. I made other fiction films while I was at NID. I made a short film, Aaje Waagh Nahi Aave (Tiger Won't Come Today), 2014. It was a children’s film and went to certain student and children festivals at the time. Then, after that I made Sandhya, a 30-minute film with my mother in it, which was my graduation project for NID. It was kind of autobiographical. After that, I’m only doing a fiction now, after seven-eight years.
Gagan Gaman falls in the same league as Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (1973) or Shah Rukh Khan’s Paheli (2005), there’s Rajasthan, a woman and a paheli or riddle. How did your story come to you?
It was an idea which I had when I was doing my diploma film long ago. I had thought of a documentary that would be set in Jaipur, where I would travel the streets and see the inside of the city. Then I had a separate thought of a foreigner getting lost in the city and going through a difficult time, because it’s always like romanticised otherwise. And finally, I had a brainwave in 10 minutes when writing the script to make it about a woman on this quest. The detail, imagery and the depth in that thought/concept came over time. I took a lot from my personal experiences and my life in that moment.
And the puzzle, does it exist in local lore or it’s something you created for the film?
Oh, so the riddle that we say is about a stepwell with a lot of thorns, and if you touch them, they will turn into flowers. That’s what the Bemata says. So, this is something that I put together at my end and I took help from my assistant Naresh Prajapat, who’s a poet himself. There are two other riddles which are existing riddles that we have taken, which the librarian tells in the film. So, the idea was to bring in that whole reference to the rich Rajasthani literature that exists, and the playfulness, even the riddles are something which the women would tell each other. I’m trying to use that element of riddles and say my own thing. Taking the existing heritage and transforming into some modern quest.
Is Bemata a goddess?
She’s an existing goddess. And so, we do have a tradition of listening to stories on festivals, like Sheetala Ashtami, so there will be one story for that. There’s one for Karwa Chauth, which I don’t like, because most of such stories are instilling fear and telling you, if you don’t do this, you’ll be the culprit for what befalls you. But I like the one for Bhai Dooj, where the woman is rescuing her brother. And I have often witnessed Bemata, when the narration happens, people would say, Bemata was standing beside the well and she tells the truth to the person narrating. So, I brought that element to this film and brought Bemata into life.
Your protagonist, played by Subhrata Parashar, the chosen one who has to find the answer to the riddle given to her, seems peaceful in her marriage but maybe not happy, and is on the lookout for something. Is there a gender angle to this riddle-solving?
I don’t see so much from that lens. Even though I’m living that life as a woman, I don’t categorise it from that lens because if you see in the film, even though it’s a smaller part, the husband also has his own side of story, which we might delve into whenever we make a feature-length film on this later. It’s more like human to human connection and what a person wants and what is one stuck with? And, of course, being a woman is very important part of it because there are so many references to being a mother. So, it is very innate. When I’m doing my work, the idea of femininity is part of it, and yet I don’t want to specifically work from that lens, and let it come more naturally.
She is modern as well as traditional. She does solve the riddle. She finds that wall and then enters the stepwell. It’s more like the quest doesn’t end with the discovery of the stepwell, and there’s more to it. She’s entered another puzzle, and this ride can go on, just like my life is also ongoing and there’ll be more adventures. There’s a saying, when you feel you’ve done enough, you do a little bit more. So, when you think that you have reached the climax, there’s more. There’s further discovery and uncovering, of emotions and memories.
Talk about choosing the sound design for Gagan Gaman.
As for the location sound, I wanted (folk singer) Ramji Lal to come and do this dhancha performance that they do. That’s coming from Meen Raag, I had met them then. I wanted to bring them into this space at night, in this film. It’s basically an improv poetry that they do in the moment. They talk about freedom in by-lanes in the night. For sound design, I collaborated with Ajit Singh Rathore (ASR Films). He’s done sound for [Amit Dutta’s] Nainsukh (2010) and Pushpendra Singh's films Ashwatthama (2017) and Laila aur Satt Geet (2020). He’s coming from the same sensibility.
You bring the octogenarian folk singer Gavari Devi Rao into the film. Is she related to the more famous mand singer Gavri Devi who died in 1988?
No, they are separate women following similar tradition. Interestingly, even the one in my film is a folk, mand singer herself. I was looking for a woman who could play Bemata, I had seen the women around on the streets and I had those references.
You direct music videos, too, and your music video Reproduction is now been sent for the Grammy selection? Tell us about that.
I direct a lot of music videos, and bring in conceptual art through them. My music videos are also very much concept-driven and abstract. Reproduction is a music video I did with vocalist Shilpa Ananth (Berklee College of Music alumna). We’ve been collaborating with talented artists. This is the third in the series that we’ve done with her. We shot Reproduction in Kerala, and feature this amazing Mudiyettu art form, which is a depiction of the Kali that we kind of brought into the music video, which is very contemporary and is an English song but we try to blend everything together. It is currently made it to the consideration for Grammy list, which is like Step One into the Grammy nomination. It has been chosen for six categories, including Best Music Video. So, we are very excited.
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