Anyone who cooks at home on a daily basis is a chef, comments Shruti Nayar, head chef at Kochi-based French Toast Bakery, Kitchen & Studio, in The Otherside, a documentary film directed by Hyderabad-based Anusha Didige. The 92-minute multilingual documentary presents stories of women in the food and beverage industry in South India. The film does not limit itself to documenting the journeys of those who founded or are associated with upscale restaurants, bars and kitchens; it includes a floor manager at a chocolate factory, canteens and mess owners across Hyderabad, Kochi, Ernakulam, Bengaluru and Puducherry.
The Otherside was screened for a select audience in Hyderabad recently and plans are on to host screenings in different cities and reach out to those in the food and beverage industry, including hotel management institutes. Anusha and her team are also in the process of submitting the film to international film festivals and pitching to digital streaming platforms as well as travel and food television networks.
Straddling cinema and F&B
Anusha has had a taste of cinema and the F&B industry for more than eight years. She worked as an associate production designer with Lata Naidu for Telugu films Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi and U-Turn, and later pursued diploma in direction at Prague Film School. “I knew that whenever I direct a film, I would like to look at a film from an art director’s point of view,” she says, and mentions iconic names such as Wes Anderson and Sanjay Leela Bhansali as an inspiration.
From Hyderabad’s sushi restaurant Hashi to a mess in Kochi, ‘The Otherside’ delves into the stories of women who founded or are working in the food and beverage industry | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The Otherside takes viewers into kitchens of restaurants, bars and canteens to give us ample behind-the-scenes perspectives. Anusha concedes that the idea for the film emerged when she watched the 2018 Canadian documentary The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution and resonated with what the women chefs had to say. Anusha has had a first-hand experience of the F&B industry when she worked alongside her brother Rohit Didige to partake in the operations of a bar and kitchen named ‘The Otherside’, in Jubilee Hills. “He wanted me to take decisions and never treated me as a secondary entity. However, those around me would say that I was helping my brother. Such comments would make me feel that women in this industry need to be given more credit.”
The Otherside bar and kitchen wound up pre-pandemic and Anusha reckons it was heartbreaking for the siblings. She was in her mid 20s then and it had been one of her passion projects. Soon, she took a deep dive into her other passion — cinema — and worked on documentaries and advertising films.
The starting point
In August 2020, Anusha thought it was time to do her own documentation of women in the food business. She had a few caveats — that an establishment should be at least a year old and she did not to only focus on high profile restaurants and chefs. She also stayed clear of the vast baking segment: “I did not have the bandwidth to delve into it at that point.”
The Otherside, directed by Anusha Didige
The film went on floors in Hyderabad in November 2020 and eventually expanded to include women in the food business in other cities. Friends in Puducherry, Kerala and Bengaluru helped her forge connections; her pitch video acted as an ice breaker.
As the cameras began to roll, the women began opening up and sharing their journeys — what prompted them to set up business, how they hired workforce, navigating processes such as licensing, and how they scaled up. The largely women-led crew made the interviewees comfortable. The Otherside was filmed by cinematographers Sraiyanti H and Premkrishna Akkattu, edited by Meera Sankar and Pooja Sampath worked as the executive producer.
“The film is not about the fun and glory of the industry but literally the lesser known side,” says Anusha. Arati Rao Shetty of Bengaluru-based B Flat discloses how they were initially making losses and yet strived to pay musicians who performed at the bar; she mentions how newspaper event listings and previews came in handy to spread the word and gradually music bands began to directly get in touch with her while planning their India tours.
Thankamma Williams (in white, seated) of Judith Caterers, Bengaluru, with her family | Photo Credit: The Otherside/Special Arrangement
‘Chechi’ Thankamma Williams of Judith Caterers in Bengaluru shares her journey of packing lunches for offices, a few at a time, to catering to students and staff of Mount Carmel College and scaling up the company to employ more than 85 and cater to campuses and offices in different locations.
Nishita, founder of Hyderabad-based Hashi, talks about the irony of running a sushi place while personally not enjoying seafood. She also recounts how she saw a few regular customers developing a taste for complex flavours of sushi with time.
All in a day
Rosie, who runs a mirchi bajji and bread pakoda stall in Secunderabad, details having to rough it out in the initial days; one of the challenges was staving off drunk men who would try to create nuisance near the bandi.
The F&B segment, says Anusha drawing from her experience, can get extremely lonely as one clocks in 14-16 hours a day at work. As the filming progressed in 2021, when the restaurant business began to see a revival of footfalls after intermittent lockdowns, Anusha decided not to film during lunch and dinner hours. “The industry had taken a beating and I had to respect that they needed to be focussed on their clients.” She could pause filming given the freedom that the documentary was self-funded.
As she heard the different stories, Anusha was inspired to be a part of the food industry yet again, at the same time not losing focus on cinema. “I am now a silent partner at Aroma of Dakshin at Khajaguda.”
Her immediate focus is to take The Otherside to as many people as possible. The journey has just begun.
