As young filmmakers are scratching the ground beneath their feet, international acclaim is pouring in. The latest is Neeraj Ghaywan’s “Masaan” which won the prestigious critics’ prize in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Releasing this July, the film, set against the backdrop of the city of death and salvation, talks about the young generation’s struggle in small towns to break the barriers of caste and social divide. “The title exemplifies the cycle of life. We often take cremation grounds as dead ends. They also signify new beginnings after casting off the dead wood,” says Neeraj who has degrees in engineering and management. While working in the management department of a newspaper, Neeraj’s friend Vivek narrated him an idea about a film on Dom community who eke out their living by working in the cremation ground. “I liked the idea of how one can become emotionally immune to death. I wrote a story around it but it was sketchy.”
As Neeraj’s fascination for cinema grew the idea stayed with him. During the making of “Gangs of Wasseypur”, where he was the assistant director, he spent time in Benaras. But being from Hyderabad and having studied in Pune, he still didn’t know the city well enough. In the meantime he came across an insider – Varun Grover, who wrote the lyrics of “GOW”. He studied engineering at Banaras Hindu University. “I reached out to him and we were on the same page. I had a sketchy story and needed somebody who could imbue life into it. We stayed in a hostel room for one and a half month and spoke to a variety of people in the city and recorded their conversations. It is from these voices that the screenplay took shape.”
It was also the time when Narendra Modi was pitching for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat. “The ghats were getting cleaned and it created a problem for us as in the generator’s noise it became very difficult to shoot in sync sound.” Beyond the technicalities, Neeraj says Benaras is a layered city which usually doesn’t come across in the national media and political discourse. “We steered clear of the exotic side which demands meditating sadhu and ganja. Between the layers we found a side of Benaras which is religious and rational at the same time. There are priests who can explain to you the scientific significance of astronomy. Like how a feeling of déjà vu can be explained in scientific terms.” Talking of divine intervention, Neeraj feels this is the right time to release the film because this year the critics and audience have often been on the same side.
Moving to nuts and bolts, three strands form the narrative. Young Devi wants to break away from the shackles of morality and virginity by making love with her boyfriend. But the boy develops cold feet during a raid leading to police blackmailing her and her father, a Sanskrit teacher who works on the ghat now and collects the offering made after cremation. Then there is Deepak (newcomer Vicky Kaushal), a boy from a low caste who feels education can make him break the caste barrier but finds not much has changed when he falls in love with a girl (Shweta Tripathi) of higher caste. “Then there is a little boy who jumps into the Ganga to take out the coins offered to the river. We have fictionalised it and turned it into a betting game where people put money on how much a particular kid will fish out from water. The kid sees the teacher as his mentor but things change when he is used by his mentor for his personal benefit.”
Inspired by Dardenne Brothers, Neeraj says he likes their tales of working class and people on the margins without making social or political comment. “They rather like to deal with the existential moral crises that these people go through. I have also this penchant for social realism. I didn’t want to “objectify” the small town and its people.” No wonder French production house Pathe International, which backed “Slumdog Millionaire”, pitched in at the scripting stage itself.
Having dealt with numbers and statistics in his previous profession, Neeraj, fond of documentary style of filmmaking, says he wants to explore a cinematic terrain where research-based cinema in not boring. “We didn’t want to have visuals of a man looking into the horizon for five minutes. The idea was to keep it engaging but at the same time absolutely real. So much so that the characters speak in Kashika dialect, which is a mix of Bhojpuri and Hindi.”
Neeraj feels Sanjay Mishra’s character Vidyadhar provides the fulcrum to the story. “And in a way provides the audience’s point of view. He considers himself a liberal in the society he lives but after the public shaming he has to revisit his values and it leads to moral degradation.” We have just seen a father-daughter relationship in “Piku” where the father is cool with the fact that his unmarried daughter is not a virgin. “Yes, these are interesting times and both fathers are real. In ‘Piku’ what we saw was the morality of an educated and liberal section in big cities. Here it is the father of a small town who also considers himself a liberal till he comes across something he is not ready to handle.”
As for Devi, played by Richa Chadha, Neeraj says she is a complex character and represents the repressed girl from a small town, who is yearning to break free. “We often say that the urbane girls are much more liberal and open-minded but what is happening in small towns is that they have been repressed so much that when it bursts the sense of right and wrong goes a little haywire.” He reminds of Satyajit Ray’s “Charulata” which dealt with the life of lonely, secluded wife. And what happens after your dive into the supposed free space goes kaput is emotionally draining. “Absolutely. In the focus screenings the women cried a lot while watching the scenes between father and daughter. Some said it made them understand their fathers better. For me the biggest satisfaction was when Swanand Kirkire, who has written the lyrics, came out crying after watching the film. He said he hasn’t cried as much in recent times.” For some reason, Neeraj points out, we have told ourselves that only a comic form can sustain audience interest.
“Gangs of Wasseypur” turned out to be his film school and in the process Neeraj found a mentor in Anurag Kashyap. “I learnt all the technicalities on the sets of the film.” Like his mentor soon he is also going to face the problems of moulding individual voice to suit bigger budgets and bigger stars. “I believe there is a lot of negativity that is surrounding him after ‘Bombay Velvet’. After ‘Wasseypur’ he wanted me to assist him on ‘Bombay Velvet’. After two days of shooting I told him that I want to work on my film. He kissed my forehead and said, go! In an industry where spending six-seven years as an assistant is normal, it takes a very secure person to let go of an assistant whom he really needed. Films fail but people remember you as a person.”
