Shrink Tales #5: In Which We Spoke About Escapism

That was the day i whatsapped Florence saying that D Jeet wasn't available till next week. I asked her to give an appointment for interview the following week. She didn't reply me. Whatsapp's blue check marks went in like swords in my head. I decided to drop out. Asked D Jeet to find a normal person to work with.

When i told Ms Mullick of that decision in the evening she said 'Whoa! where is that coming from!' She asked me what i was going to do. I said i was going to work and be financially independent. 'You are going to get a job which pays 15k a month. Then after some months of being there you would quit that too. You will come around to cinema gradually and by then you would have lost many years in the field.' She made a lot of sense. I made none.

She said i was trying to escape from the situation and was trying to justify my escapism with logic. It was true. I was running away.
She said that i had one of the cognitive dissonances in which i made myself believe that there were only two sides to anything. Either i have it or i don't have anything at all. Either i made the film i wanted or there would not be a film or even me at all. From what she had heard from Sethuvamma of my childhood i had already undergone a great amount of stress. [I had no clue what those tales were because i had no memory of stress in childhood] My mind and body didn't want to go through that kind of stress anymore and was asking me to turn my back to such situations.

I asked her what i should do. A break perhaps? She then spoke of the time when she was in a similar situation. When she broke ties with her mentor and went out of that place. How she decided not to use any of her mentor's contacts and had to struggle to find a place where she could practice. She had given herself 6 months and all it took was 3.

She said i was intelligent enough to know that my plan of quitting and working somewhere else was a load of crap. It was.
She talked about the people who worked at the hospital. All those young women in sick green attires. They made a lot of mistakes, she said. She had asked them to remove Dr. from her name and they hadn't done that yet. She asked me if the her name board outside the room still bore Dr. It did as far as i remembered. She shook her head in resignation.
None of them were going to quit the job because they made mistakes.
All of it sounded true but i was unable to think that way when i was under stress.

She spoke with Sethuvamma and asked me to wait outside. I had a smoke and when i came back i saw that there was no Dr before her name on the board outside the room. When she called me in to ask me to stay calm and think a lot before taking decisions and asking me to let her know what Florence's reply was because she would be concerned i told her that there was no Dr on the name plate. She smiled. I did too.

In the evening screenings Antonioni was playing. He was one among my favourites. I rushed to the theatre five minutes before 6 and realized it had started much before. They had changed the time of screening to 5.30 that day. I came out and called Florence. Another voice picked up and said she was her sister. She asked me what they would get out of the documentary. I was taken aback. I was not prepared for that kind of talk. I mumbled something about them getting wider exposure. She didn't seem convinced and i understood she had only money in mind. I said we were all students and that we couldn't afford much. She asked me to quote a figure. I asked her to quote a figure. She said that she was not doing that because we were students. I was trapped. Money and i had nothing in common.

I told the matter to D Jeet, NN, Sethuvamma and her.
Told Florence's sister that i would call back the next day.
I hope i will be able to buy my film from them.
This is why there has to be a producer in a crew. Venky was in Mumbai and i didn't think he could help anyway. I turned to her. In the end everyone turns to her. She complains that she has no her to turn to. Well, there can only be so many hers in the world.

I decided to wait till 12th when D Jeet would be free and then think of what to do with my life. NN was leaving for good on 20th. I decided to do a little reading and writing and forget about cinema for a while. I wish that was possible because Antonioni is calling me again. Have i told you about how 'Passenger' changed my life? Well...

Documentary Diaries #17: Typing...

16th March 2015

Decided to give the DVD to Florence. When i got off at Chandni metro station i whatsapped her asking if she was at home. I was not expecting a reply.
There are certain things which you see everyday and would never think were capable of making you happy. The header of whatsapp was one such for me. All throughout the shoot when i was sending her messages over it trying to explain how important it was that she spoke to me the header was immobile. I hardly used that app. That day when it showed 'typing...' i felt indescribable joy.
She told me that she wasn't at home and asked me where i was. She said she was near Mother House, AJC Bose road again.

I took a cab.

She was smiling less than the day before. It was a brief meeting where i only gave the DVD to her. I asked her when she was going to watch it. She said she would that night. Took a cab back to Esplanade where Sethuvamma was waiting to have Nahoum's' brownies. I was irritable and sad. I was worried what she was going to say after watching the film. (pseudo film). I was not optimistic. Felt she would tell me that she was not interested in being a part of it.

Back in the institute i messaged D Jeet asking him when his shoot would be over and when he could shoot for me. He said he would call me when he was back which would be around 3 a.m. I started panicking. I asked if he was going to tell me that he couldn't work with me because i was hyper. He said it wasn't that. Till the time he said that i was restless and edgy.

After taking my lithium i decided to wash clothes. So at 1 a.m i went to D7 where Sethuvamma was and took the detergent packet i had lent her. Washing clothes helped me. By the time i was done D Jeet and the rest of the crew was back in the hostel. Prakar, our senior asked if i could lend them some sugar. When D Jeet came to my room to take it he said that he was very worked up in his mind and was unable to do so many things at once. He was assisting in a lot of projects, doing his lighting practice at the institute and there was hardly any time to shoot for me. I was sad, but said okay. There was nothing i could do. If i forced him to shoot i felt it would affect the quality of work. I didn't want that. Let the artist be, i thought.

At 4 in the morning we played badminton. Prakar made us coffee and we sat in his room for a while. After D Jeet went back to his temporary room in the hostel (he was a day scholar) i tried sleeping. Nada. My mind was still restless. I asked D Jeet if he had slept. When he said he hadn't i went down and asked him to go out with me for tea. He refused. So i sat there and kept talking to him till he gave up and said yes.

Thus after tea and some more of our discussion of our own misery i went back to my room and hit the bed. It was 7 a.m. Sethuvamma woke me up after four hours and i started thinking of Florence as soon as i was aware of my own brain.

17th March 2015

Woke up at 11 a.m. Scanned the newspaper and saw that there was yet another funeral. I was sure that D Jeet wouldn't be able to shoot so dumped the weight of the newspaper in the corner of the room.
Whatsapped Florence thus

'Ma'am can we see you on 30th march? My camera person has gone to US for some work and will be back only then.That's why.'
She gave her bland 'K' as reply.
I wrote thus
'I will ping you once on 29th and confirm. Thanks a lot. :)'
She said
'K wlcm'
'Bye'

The 'bye' that she wrote sent a chill down my spine. I didn't want her to say bye to me ever during shoot. I was worried sick about her changing her mind once again.

On 17th March Florence's whatsapp status again went back to 'my ego is more than me.'
I loved that woman.

Documentary Diaries #16: A Vision called Florence

On Ides of March the newspaper person was late. I asked Sethuvamma to get a copy of the Telegraph to confirm if there was a funeral that day. There was. Florence had, on the previous day, told me that one of her aunts had passed away and that she wouldn't be able to meet me since she had to attend the funeral. That was why i wanted  to know if there was a burial and where it was going to be. Internment at Lower Circular cemetery, told the newspaper.

I went to my dear google and found out that i would have to get off at Park Street metro station. I thought it would be better if Sethuvamma came with me. D Jeet was away on a shoot. Sethuvamma could put in some grown up quality around me. If you didn't look very old people took you a little less seriously. Pertinent problem of aspiring film makers. Lack of the look.

We left the institute around 2.30 p.m. The internment was at 3.30 p.m. By kolkatan ways it wouldn't happen till four. Yet i started panicking when the metro failed to move for an unusually long time from Kavi Subhash station. We reached Park Street just in time to take a cab to the cemetery. Only we didn't know where it was. I didn't have balance on my phone to check it online. When i said the name of the road a taxi driver seemed to know it. We jumped in. Only he was pretending. He neither knew where the road was nor the cemetery. After asking the way to several people we managed to reach Lower Circular road. There was no cemetery there, the shopkeepers told us.

Sethuvamma got in action. She called the pastor of the church she was going to here. Yes, believers do that when they stay at a place for a long time. Came quite handy, i must say. The pastor told us that the cemetery we were looking for was at Mallick Bazar. Another cab and some 'thoda tez chalao dada's later [faster! faster! to the driver] we reached the cemetery to see a lot of people in black. Prayers were being said. I started looking for Florence's face among the people. I couldn't find her. My heart sunk.

We stayed for a little longer till the coffin was taken to the grave. Even though i was upset that Florence was there i felt a strange happiness in attending funerals of people i had nothing to do with. I asked to one of the family where the body was kept. They said it was at Peace Haven, the other undertakers in the city. [The previous week Mamata Banerjee had inaugurated yet another one. There were three in the city now] That meant that the Madeiras had nothing to do with the dead.

We returned to Esplanade. I wanted to be alone. I asked Sethuvamma to take a metro back. She was reluctant. I was melancholic. I walked around New Market with a blank mind. When i reached the metro station again i sat down near a lamp post and decided to try once again. I texted Florence asking if i could meet her and saying it was urgent. While i sat there Sethuvamma called me to say that she hadn't left and wanted to hang around the place with me. I said okay. We then tried finding each other. We were at two different gates of the metro station. While asking her for landmarks near where she stood the call got cut and i saw a little letter of happiness in my phone. 'K'. I hated it when people wrote 'k' for ok or okay. But this time i loved it. That was Florence's reply. She was ready to meet me. It was too good to be true. I asked her where i should be and she said 'Mother House' in AJC Bose road. Mother House it was. I took a look at my wallet to see if i had money for a cab. I had. I asked Sethuvamma to wait and jumped in the first cab which stopped.

At Mother House an elderly lady greeted me with a smile and led me in. 'Seek mother's blessings' she told me. I royally ignored all the nuns and started inspecting all rooms. There was no Florence. I went out and was about to sit at another lamp post when the woman who led me in asked me if i had come looking for someone. I nodded like a wound toy. She pointed towards the door. I don't remember walking. I spotted her car and floated there. There she was, like a vision. She was smiling. I was still floating.

I lied through my teeth. I was a liar first and then a film student. I told her that the film had been selected to compete for a national award. The only problem with the film was that it didn't have her interview in it. She said that she was hurt by the way i had behaved. She felt that her privacy was violated. I apologized and said that i thought that was part of my work. I shouldn't have done that. When i said i wanted her to watch it with me she said that she wanted to watch it with family. Family it was. I asked her what if she felt that the film was bad and refused to give me her interview. She smiled like how she smiled the first time i saw her. She said that once she became friends with a person she was unstoppable. A fireball ran up my chest. I promised to give her the film the next day. We said goodbye.

I said hi to my life which i saw peep out from a corner in A J C Bose road. There was only one happy woman in the whole of Kolkata then and that was me. I walked roads which i didn't know. I saw a tram and jumped in and asked them to take me to Esplanade. They said it didn't go there. I asked them to take me where it went. They asked me to get out and i did happily. I hopped into an auto which went to Esplanade. I asked Sethuvamma to wait at Nahoum's. I floated there and laughed when i saw her. I laughed when she said that Nahoum's was shut. Laughed when she complained about the unhygienic kulfi shop i took her to. She had kulfi for the first time. We bought a lens frame. I had a lot of Florence Madeira to see with my myopic astigmatic eyes. When we walked back to the metro station i saw this building. There were colours around me. Inside me was a film.

I smiled like an imbecile all the way home.

Documentary Diaries #17: Typing...

Documentary Diaries #15: Cinema is Powerful

14th March 2015

It had been more than a month since we went to Madeira and Co in Bow Barracks, Kolkata.
D Jeet had hit a cinematographer's block. He was least interested in shooting. I had become a stalker and was always following him on campus asking him to shoot. Two days earlier after i followed him to hardworking's (my favourite tea shop near campus) and walked to another tea shop for my nth tea that evening we met Partha. Partha was our senior in institute and an award winning sound designer. I respected him a lot from the time he gave us a workshop on 'sound in documentary'.

We spoke over tea.
When D Jeet mentioned our losing a day's footage Partha recounted the time when the same had happened to them during the shoot of Bishar Blues (a brilliant documentary). My immediate reaction to ask what the director had felt. I asked Partha 'Did you see his face? What was it like?'. He said that the director was 'cool'. I sighed. Partha asked us how our project was going. I talked about our problem with our protagonist. I spoke of the mistake i made of talking to Florence's neighbours before i spoke to her. He said that it was not about the film. It was about the person. I said that it had stopped being about the film long time ago. I was only worried about Florence Madeira. I only wanted her to speak to me. 'Then it will definitely happen'. He said.

That was all it took. I found some energy to pursue more. D Jeet and i decided to go to Florence without camera and try and speak with her. I asked NN if she would be able to record sound with some inconspicuous equipment. She arranged for a Tascam recorder. We were all set to go.

On the morning of 14th when i was in toilet and looking at obituary out of habit than necessity i saw a death. Someone had died out of meningitis. The burial was again at Bhawanipore cemetery. I called D Jeet. He didn't pick up. I went to google chat where most of our discussions happen and pinged him saying i had a gut feeling about the burial that it was going to be better than what we shot the previous time. He was not interested. I was disappointed than angry. I asked him what the matter was. He said that burials would happen over and over again and that Florence was what was more important. He said that i was hyper and that he wanted me to go step by step and not do a lot of things together.

Everyone wanted me to change. I was saddened. I cursed the Lithium i was taking. People still thought i was hyper. What purpose did it serve then. What was wrong with hyper. Hyper was what made me work like a dog. May be there was a way to do it without being hyper. That was what normal people did, i suppose.

NN had a splitting headache. I thought it was better that she took rest. We weren't sure that we would get to see Florence. Before cycling to New Garia metro station i called D Jeet and said that it was okay if he didn't want to go. He said it was fine.

I reached Chandni Metro at around 3:15 p.m. D Jeet was already there. I gave him a defeated smile which meant 'why-couldn't-you have-shot-the-goddamn-funeral-for-me' and he gave another in return which i assumed to be 'just-like-that'. I asked if it was okay if i had a cup of tea before going to Florence. He suggested we go to hotel Broadway. I didn't have money for that place. He offered to pay for my coffee. Broadway was a place i loved ever since D Jeet, NN and i went there once during shoot. I agreed.

Over coffee we spoke of the project, people, love(lessness) and our miserable lives.

My heart started beating fast when we stepped out of there and started walking towards Madeira and Co.
Nikki was the only person who was there. He was sleeping. We waited outside. Had more tea. We went back there. Nikki saw us and said that we weren't allowed in there. My heart sunk. Was it all over? It couldn't be. It couldn't be. I kept telling myself. We walked back.

D Jeet asked me to call Florence. She had stopped picking my call a month ago. I decided to give it a go. When i looked for Florence's number on my phone i realized that the contact was in my old phone. It was okay, i had the visiting card she had given me in my wallet. She had neatly written her number on it. Only i had forgotten to take my wallet that day.
I called NN. Her phone was switched off. I called Sethuvamma and asked her to go to my room and look for my wallet. Hyper mother hyper daughter. She panicked and started banging on my door. NN who was sleeping to get rid of her headache jumped up and was confused. When i saw that Sethuvamma was in her panic mode i spoke to NN and asked her to look for the wallet under my pillow. She got it and i got the number. I dialed.

She picked.

I asked her if i could speak to her for some time. She asked me who i was. I realized why she had picked the call. She had lost my number like i had lost hers. Momentarily. I said i wanted to give her the film i made. That got her interested. It was Kunju Thalona who suggested that i went to Madeira's with some footage and use that as a means to pursue Florence to speak with us. I wasn't too convinced but had decided to give it a shot. Never got the time to. When i was back from the hospital Aalayam had already made a cut. All the departments wanted to evaluate their students which meant there was a deadline. The cut was pathetic. I had told him that that was not the film we were making. I suggested some basic changes. He gave me the final cut and i never watched it. I wasn't interested in that film. It wasn't mine. But it was useful. It looked like a promotional for the place. That was what i was going to give to Florence.

I never had a great opinion of cinema. I never thought it was something which interested people. When i spoke to Florence and said that i wanted to show her the film i realized i was wrong. People loved cinema. I don't understand why. Florence's tone changed. She wasn't dismissive of me. She asked me if i could whatsapp her the film. I said no and that i wanted to speak to her. Cinema as bait. Yippee. She said i could leave the film with Nikki. I insisted that she spoke to me. She said she was at a funeral and that she could not speak that day. I looked at D Jeet who was near me. I asked her 'Is this the burial of the lady who died of meningitis?' It was. She asked me to give her a ring the next day to see if she was free. I was to leave the film with Nikki.

I cut the call thanking her. I started hitting and punching D Jeet. 'I told you i had a gut feeling', i shouted. He didn't resist and just said that i was being hyper again. I apologized to him later when i calmed down. I had hit out of comfort. Not out of anger. Even then it was a wrong thing to do. People should never hit other people.

I was relieved. Florence had spoken to me after a long time. I felt rejuvenated.
D Jeet had a dinner date and his friend was going to meet him at Park Street metro. We decided to walk back there. He took me to Metro Gali, the place which was known for camera equipment. It was the first time i was being there. He was proud and showing off. Then he took me to a place which makes me laugh even now. They were shops lined up which had boards which read 'rubber goods'. They sold condoms. I had not seen anything like that anywhere else. D Jeet was taking revenge for me having made fun of him for not knowing many places in Kolkata. 'I know only a few places, but all of them are good', he beamed. We then went to Nahoum's where he bought brownies for NN and Sethuvamma. His friend was at Park Street metro by then. We parted ways there.

rubber goods. photo: D Jeet

Again came a gut feeling. I didn't want to go back to the institute. I hadn't had lunch and beef was waiting back there. I still wasn't hungry. I had a limca and roamed around Esplanade. Bought a lens frame for Sethuvamma. She had broken it while hurrying to reach me when i was in hospital. Smoked a cigarette or two and took a look at my phone. I was only getting used to the settings and methods of the new phone which Buddi had gifted me. So when i saw that i had missed a call from Florence i couldn't believe myself. If it was true it was the first time she was giving me a ring. I called back. Asked her if she had called me. She had.

It was a good day.

She had thought that i was going to give the film that evening. I said that she had heard me wrong. That i wasn't carrying the film but only wanted to speak to her for some time. She said she was very tired. I said it would take only a few minutes. She said okay.
I was lost in New Market. I ran this way and that and walked as fast as i could. [That was hyper behaviour too according to D Jeet. I was always running this way or that] I didn't have money to take a taxi. Not that there were many around. I walked and ran and walked to Madeira's. A man whom i was seeing for the first time stood at the door and asked me for the CD. He growled at me. I said Florence had asked me to wait there for her. I did. I called her. She didn't pick up. I called again and again till she picked. She said she was sorry and that she couldn't meet me. There was another death. She couldn't meet me the next day too. She had to be at the burial. I asked her when i could meet her. [Tried to bring in a little weight in my voice]. She said she could see me on Tuesday. I said okay and left.

Back in the institute while having my beef and erissery, the late lunch at 10 p.m, i thought hard if i should really give the film the next day. That was the only bait i had. That was the day i realized cinema was powerful. That was the day Florence Maderia alias Jogita Biswas had called me on my phone. I went back to my room and watched the cut Aalayam had made. It was the crappiest thing i had ever seen. It was just perfect as a promotional video.

I trusted Florence. I knew she would be at the burial the next day. I would have to wait for the newspaper to know where it would be. I would go with the CD there. Not give it to Nikki. Only Florence mattered. I had to speak with her.

I slept like a baby that night. 

Documentary Diaries #16: A Vision Called Florence

Documentary Diaries #15: Patch Shoot but not Patch Shoot

On 7th March 2015 when i got up and went to the mess to have my morning cup of tea i saw that it was shut. They were taking a holiday post Holi. I decided to have breakfast outside with Sethuvamma. The poori place which was cheaper than any restaurant back home Rs. 10 for four pooris and two kinds of sabji and chutney. Rs 5 for two rotis and the same] was an instant hit in family. Both of us had poori and ghughni and later tea from 'hardworking's'. [I call it that because they open earlier than most places in Kolkata and shut much later too.] It was around 10 a.m when i was back in the room and took the newspaper in hand. Bowel movement was to be with The Telegraph.

In the toilet evading a lot of shitty reporting (no pun intended) i did my daily scan of obituary. There was something i wanted in there. A christian death. The footage we lost. A burial. I don't remember if i finished what i was doing. I ran to the room and called D Jeet. He had a workshop going on and had told me that he was packed for the most part of the month. My family had already started calling him Santosh Sivan because he was so busy. I was scared he would refuse to shoot. Even before he could do that i showered a lot of please's. Later he asked me not to do that. She had said the same to me the previous day. The fact is i don't know what else to do in such situations. D Jeet asked me to arrange for a camera and a card. I tore down the hostel stairs to Kenny's room. He was the rich junior who had a camera. Some more please's later i had it. The next problem was the card. Nobody seemed to have one. I ran up and down the hostel looking for one. Finally got one from D Jeet's classmate, Kesh.

NN was fast asleep. She had slept as late as 6.30 a.m. I woke her up and said that we had to shoot. She made coffee zombie-like and changed. She had to go to her department to see if she could issue a tascam recorder. She didn't get it. We managed with a windshield-less boom mic and recorder.

While D Jeet and i were waiting at the main gate for NN to join us a lot of students asked us if we were going on a shoot. I don't know if it was because they were seeing us together after a long time or because i had created quite a commotion in the hostel running for the card and camera. I don't know why it was that neither of us felt like telling anybody that we were going on a shoot. We didn't feel like saying that we were going to try and recover the footage we lost. We didn't feel like saying anything at all. So we said that it was patch shoot. It sounded cool and it made us feel like we were film makers for real. They are the ones who had patch shoots. For petty film students like us all shoots were shoots.

It was around 11 a.m when we left the institute. My heart was racing. I took an extra anti depressant that day. Self medication that she so opposes and i practise often. When we were a couple of hundred metres away from the institute D Jeet exclaimed that we had left the battery charging at the security gate. U turn. Stop. Retrieve and commence ride.

The funeral service was at 11 a.m. There was no way we were reaching Christ the King church at ark circus in time. So we went to Bhawanipor cemetery where the burial was going to be. We had to shoot the digging of the grave. It was already dug when we reached there. I looked for somebody who could pretend he was digging it. D Jeet later said he knew what shots to take exactly because it was the second time he was doing it. It was as if we had had a rehearsal for shoot almost a month ago.

Bhawanipore cemetery entrance

Like the previous time i went out to check when the family was arriving with the body to let D Jeet and NN know. They arrived around noon. We shot. We had everything we had lost except for a small portion at the church. We had our opening sequence. We had what was in the card which was gone and which made me swallow a lot of small round sleeping pills.

D Jeet said that he didn't like what he shot. I said that we had what we wanted. That he was feeling so because a copy of a copy would never be the copy. All that Derrida and i had chucked the absolute of anything in the bin. There was no absolute shoot. We only had incomplete copies of images and sounds. Our films were incomplete. I liked it that way.

What she was brought in

Lunch at Zishans and back to the institute.
I copied the contents of the card the first thing after reaching my room.
I played badminton.
I watched the rushes.
I slept.

Documentary Diaries #16: Cinema is Powerful

Documentary Diaries #14: Nth Dream

I have got used to dreams about film making. On Holi day, 2015 i woke up to a rather peculiar dream about Florence Madeira. In it D Jeet, NN and i were again at Madeira and Co. This time we had gone with a cut Aalyalam had made with the available rushes. I showed it to her and she responded to me. She gave the interview i was after. From it i learned that she was a striptease artist. She also gave erotic conversations on phone for money. There were more than two women who worked under her. In the dream Florence was afraid of men. I didn't like it one bit and woke up to the festival of colours.


Documentary Diaries #15: Patch Shoot but not Patch Shoot

Talk With Tee Pee

Tee Pee, one of our professors in the Department of Direction and Screenplay Writing had visited me while i was in hospital and semi-conscious following my attempt on life. Tee Pee only gave classes in the first semester. I remember vaguely some of his lectures on French Poetic Realism. Rules of the Game was screened. Later he helped us during our DV project in which i made a crappy five minuter called ചെറുപയർ or 'green gram'.
I liked him not for his classes. Never thought he was a good teacher. He could hardly finish his sentences and always digressed to an extent which made us students feel giddy just by listening. I liked him because he was the only professor who made me cry out of love. I saw all kinds of professors here. Who abused students, who slept with students, who made students believe they were iconic just so that they could thrive and professors who only wanted students to drop out and feel defeated. In Tee Pee, i found a professor who was worried about his daughter with all the rapes and attacks on women in the country, who wanted to click photos of a birthday party in the family, who planned holidays in Kerala and had to ditch them because god! were prices going up like crazy!, who took my banana chips and gave cake which his wife made in the same steel dabba. It might sound silly, but in here, he was the only real person who actually loved, for me.
May be that was why even though i don't remember anything out of his visit in the hospital, i didn't find it hard to believe when Kunju Thalona told me that i held his hand in bed. That was why even though he digressed just as much today, i felt at peace when i spoke to him of the documentary project, Derrida, Jung and suicides.

I spoke for long on the treatment we were adopting for the project. Of the concept of death and of a woman who dealt with the dead for a living. He was interested. In fact he was one of the people who was present when i was at the department looking for a topic which was related to death. He had talked about one of my seniors' work which dealt with morgues. That was when our HOD emerged out of his room and spoke to me about Bow Barracks and the family which decorated corpses. I felt he felt responsible, in some way, for what had happened. With me. And my work.

I assured to show him the first cut when it was ready when he drifted to the Derrida for Beginners which peeped out of my sling bag and later to his journey with Jung. Inevitably he landed on my attempt at life. Like many, he said that 'it was not done'. Spoke of motivation like most.

I spoke of losing control. In the moments before the attempt i had lost control over my thoughts. That scares me even now. I am still in those moments when i was watering plants and thinking of what to do with my clothes whether or not to iron them before popping sleeping pills and lying down to die. Except it wasn't me who was doing all those chores. I was a goddamn machine with no intellect. Intellect is the only reason i have to live. That scares me. I know i am going to be in the same spot one day or the other, again.

I told him about writing. How i had devised a survival mechanism through my blog, by writing about many things and finding peace to an extent. I also spoke to him of ice when he spoke of finding motivation in cinema. Ice was one of the images D Jeet and i had agreed upon to be in our documentary project. We were looking for objects which were of death but also of a beginning. While shooting Florence had a pack of ice cubes which she laid in the coffin to keep the body as it was. While transferring it to a bag one of the cubes fell down and started melting. I asked D Jeet to tilt down to it. It left a small pool of water there and a line of it extending downwards where the floor slanted. The shot didn't turn out as i expected, but the image stayed with us. I told him why cinema didn't motivate me enough to stop me from taking sleeping pills or slitting my body to ease pain. It was because i was like ice myself. It melted at a certain temperature. It could only exist as water and water i was. He asked me to write that down. I just did.

My psychologist the other day gave me three alternatives to my methods of harming my own body. One of them was to clench tight ice cubes in both my hands. Sounded cool. Well, literally.
I hope Tee Pee makes awesome films like he used to when he was a student of cinema like me.
I hope i find my love and lust for life back.
I hope i don't melt. Not cool for ice, i suppose.

Documentary Diaries #13 Dreaming On

The anti-depressants i am taking ensure good sleep. The first time in years i hit the bed around 11 p.m yesterday. In the sleep i again dreamed of Florence. D Jeet, NN and i were at Madeira Undertakers and Co. again. I approached Florence for an interview. I was hopeless. Thought she would dismiss me like always. She didn't and on the contrary started speaking in length about all things her. I made sure that NN was capturing sound. When i turned to D Jeet i realized that he didn't have a camera with him. I was shocked. I asked him what he was doing and he said that we could just make use of the sound. I had a panic attack but continued speaking to Florence.

I am yet to approach her in reality. I am scared. I hope she talks.

Documentary Diaries #14: nth Dream

Documentary Diaries#12: Another Nightmare

12the February 2015

Dreamed that Florence was actually a man and that she was fooling me all the while. Her (now his) accomplice was his lawyer. Both of them were evading me for a long time because they were soon going to get away from the place. There was chess. There was me looking at Florence who now had a clean shaven face. I looked her (her for me) in the eye for a long time to to comprehend what was going on. And when i understood what it was all about, that familiar feeling rose inside me. Of losing everything. I felt that twice last year and i felt it in my dream yesterday. It's a pity that i am being followed by that even in sleep.

It was around 5 a.m when i hit the bed yesterday. I got up with a start after this dream. Was relieved that it was only a dream. I wanted to write it down in all its detail. There was nothing on the bed. I couldn't get up.

In the morning i was reminded of it only when i was editing last day's blog post on Bhawanipore burial. Had forgotten most of the details. It was better that way. Details in nightmares are the most horrendous things. I still remember the curve of a little girl's smile from a dream which scared me when i was in third standard. She was a witch.

Florence was a man in my dream and i felt cheated. Betrayed. Lost.
I am waiting for it to be the end of February to see her again and attempt talking to her.
Till then i will try and dream less.

Documentary Diaries#13: Dreaming On

Documentary Diaries#11: Record and Rest in Peace

8. 2. 2015

The previous day i had let both Sabari and D Jeet know of the funeral service and burial that was going to happen the next day. The newpaper had all the details. I wasn't sure that the family would let us shoot but decided to shoot whatever we could. I had asked both the men to wear black. When i, along with them walked Kolkata i felt like we were Shakespeare's three witches. Fun.

The funeral service was to be held at Church of Christ the King, Park Circus, Kolkata. The interment would be at Bhawanipore cemetery around 3 pm. We wanted to shoot the digging of the grave so decided to go the cemetery in the morning. Sabari and i left the institute around 9 a.m and D Jeet joined us there.

The cemetery was huge. People even went there for morning walks or jogs. We had made a wise decision visiting the graveyard before going to the church. The grave had been half dug. We filmed the rest of it. I constantly thought of the song in Haider which i had quite liked. This was nothing like it but we got what the documentary wanted. I was content. Every time i was happy with something Florence would start gnawing at an end of my head and make it all disappear. Such was my preoccupation with my protagonist.

Sabari and D Jeet recording the digging of the 'rest in peace' grave

We went to Park Circus and and located the church. D Jeet shot a bit there. Soon the family arrived, in black and all work. Booklets for the funeral service had to be placed in the seats. The table where the coffin would be placed was ready. The father at the church welcomed us but the family did not. We left after shooting the arrival of flowers in rickshaws. We could cut it and join it on editing table. It wasn't that bad.

It was after a long time that i was at a church which looked like the one i used to go to when i was a believer. I went on a brief nostalgia trip before hunger got the better of me and we went to Arsalan which sold the best biriyani in Kolkata (with potatoes, of course). D Jeet had his favourite biriyani and Sabari and i were true to our mallu selves and whined about food and in particular biriyani in Kolkata.

Church of Christ the King, Park Circus

By 3 p.m we went back to Bhawanipore cemetery.  After hanging around for some time we realized it was better that we operated like police in hollywood films. In other words i went out and told Sabari and D to be ready for my call which would let them know of the arrival of the coffin and family. When i did that i even slipped in a 'coming through' in there and felt really good. After the funeral party went in again and watched the burial. It again brought back memories when they sang 'Nearer My God to Thee'. I thought of Titanic too. Damn them films. Don't make any and don't watch any to make the world a better place. We shot. Till sunset.

It was then that D Jeet said that it was going to be the last day of shoot. He was going to leave for Mumbai in a day for grading our short film. I was not going to shoot without him. I felt empty again. When in love i let bits and pieces of it permeate amidst people closest to me. I knew that was why i was missing NN for the first time after being in the institute. It was why i was cracking jokes with Aalayam, my editor. D later said that he felt i was falling in love with him in those days. I apologized to him for having made him feel that. Confessed my permeation problem. I had to stop that madness and only honesty was going to do that. Honesty also hurt. I hurt.

Florence's whatsapp had 'love sucks, love punks' for a status and a picture which said she hid many things behind her smile. I looked at it a dozen times before i went offline.

On the last day of shoot which i called the 'last day of shoot of the first shift' because i intend to go back to Florence after D and NN return in the end of February, i watched a burial after ten years.
It was as dead as a corpse and as bland as death.

Sabari and i returned to the institute. Badminton matches were on. Sabari played great badminton and i sucked. He won many and lost the final. In the party after the tournament, i drank after a long time and for the first time after the beginning of the shoot, had a dreamless drunk sleep.

Documentary Diaries#10: Rose Day

7th February 2015

I had decided not to shoot that day. There was gloom in the air. I had apologized to Florence for having followed her to the hospital. As usual she had not replied. I sat in the room with melancholic music and tea. Then D Jeet pinged me saying he would like to shoot that day at Park Street Cemetery again. He was too unhappy with the previous day's footage. We decided to be there in the afternoon. I decided not to take sound equipment with me because we had already recorded the ambient sound there. Handling sound and the film together was becoming a huge problem for me ever since NN left. More than anything i hated how it reduced my mobility. Equipment was cumbersome. A pair wasn't a good number for arms, i felt.

That morning i got something i had been looking for for a long time. An actual death. I wanted to film a funeral and that day's obituary had one. We decided to attempt shooting that come what may. Decided to take my junior from Dept. of Audiography, Sabari along. Sabari and i had made friends on badminton court during the evening games i was playing as a stress busting routine. 

D and i met at Park Street metro station, Gate #3 and walked to the cemetery.
I was still out of my senses from the previous day. I was thinking of what Florence might be doing. How her nephew was. If she was thinking of me at all.
We again shot this and that at the cemetery. Looked at people. There were couples loving in the vast expanse which was the oldest and biggest in Kolkata. Kissing, cuddling, cooing, i even spotted a pair playing hide and seek. It was good to see people in love.

D shoots at Park Street Cemetery

When a girl walked in with a boquet of red roses i for a moment thought it was Valentine's Day. It wasn't. D said it could be Rose Day. I didn't even know one such existed. I thought he was cracking yet another poor joke.

We left only when the guards started shooing people away saying that the place was shutting down. It looked like during exams in school when you frantically hold on to the answer sheet and scribble away when the invigilator says the time is up. I was happy with one frame of what i watched. This wall which we together named the dead wall.

It was around 6 when we left and i was starving not having had lunch. We went to a roll joint (neither mean what they usually mean) and had chicken and mutton kati rolls. Oily to the core as usual, but good owing to an empty stomach.

On the way back i checked Florence's whatsapp profile as usual. It was then that i realized that it was indeed 'rose day'. She had that for a status. I thought of buying some roses and going to Madeiras immediately. Thought against it in a moment. It was the time for silence. Love was silent most of the time. 

Documentary Diaries #9: In Love!

6th February 2015

I have come to realize that i don't know how to love. I only know how to feel. Love is a responsibility and i have nothing to do with that. But feel i do. I feel what i call love. Now i feel that with Florence, the protagonist of our documentary project. Strange, but true. It's our first and probably the last non-fiction project in the institute and no surprise that it is stranger than fiction and yet much like it.

Even without me realizing it, i was pursuing Florence. I was always in anticipation for a sight of her. This has happened only once in my life. With her. I went back to that time when i would stare at my phone for a long time awaiting her call. When it rung unexpectedly my heart would skip some beats. I would be scared to pick the phone but dying to as well.

When Florence started avoiding me ostensibly because she was busy with family matters, i started feeling the pain of rejection. I would dream of her every night. Every morning i would set out envisaging new ways to make her speak to me. I only wanted to speak to her. To listen to her. Documentary was no longer the purpose. Florence was.

Every day when i heard more and more people say awful stories about her i started liking her more. When her neighbour called her a second Elizabeth Tailor i liked her a bit more. When some others called her and her mother 'servants who usurped a respectable family's property', i liked her a bit more. When i was told that she had numerous affairs, that she was in control of the Bow Barracks thana (police station) and its inspector, i liked her a bit more. When she refused to speak with me from the third day i liked her a bit more. When i saw a glimpse of her and rushed to her and when she turned me down saying her aunt was hospitalized, i liked her a bit more.

On that day we spoke to the neighbours again. Spoke to a tailor shop owner nearby. Found out the address of the house owner. Tried to speak to Florence again but were told that she wasn't home. We waited. Nikki, Florence's brother-in-law told us that we were making a mistake by waiting for her. I didn't understand what he meant by that. Things were becoming more and more obscure. I couldn't figure Florence out a bit. She knew that i wasn't media. She could have backed off due to the fact that i spoke to her neighbours but then again that was also reason enough to speak with me. She wasn't angry. Was just tired whenever she spoke to me. Most of the people in the crew had started seeing her as a fraudulent woman. What she is, i still don't know. But i believed most of what she told me. Whenever we asked the employees and other family members where she was we would be told contradictory things. One would say she was at the hospital another that she was in court. Nikki once told me that he knew all that i wanted to know. But i didn't love Nikki. I loved Florence. So i wanted to listen only to her.

After waiting for a long time i saw her pass in front of the office. I had to get to her before she climbed upstairs. Upstairs was forbidden. I rushed to her with the sound equipment tugging along behind me. I couldn't see. I couldn't hear what she told me. I just kept on asking her why she was avoiding me. I think she mumbled something like 'don't be silly'. I don't know. She brushed me aside and rushed up the stairs. I went back to the chair in the office and sunk in. I couldn't move. It had to be love.

I had felt all this only with her earlier. If i got a vision of her or heard her voice i would just sink back in my chair and go blank for half an hour. That happened with Florence that day. I told D Jeet that it was enough that i saw Florence. I only wanted to keep seeing her at that point of time. And she only wanted to keep rejecting me.

She came out in some time. I again ran to her and asked her where she was going. She said her nephew was sick and that she was going to the hospital to see him. I asked her which hospital it was. She said it was a children's hospital near Bridge no.4. I remember touching her. My heart was in my mouth when i held her hand and requested her to call me when she was free. She was cold. She was obviously oblivious to my state of mind. She was oblivious to me myself.

I thought i could get her on camera, going to the hospital and coming out. D Jeet was already thinking of filming our attempts to make Florence speak with us. The elusive protagonist who deals with death. I wasn't for the idea, but i wanted to go to the hospital. I knew she wasn't lying even when D thought so.

We found out the children's hospital. Things went terribly wrong there. When she arrived and saw me along with Bee and Venky who were also holding cameras (D was hiding and filming) she must have got skeptical. Two of her friends came up to me and said that i was violating someone's privacy and that i was stalking. I felt like someone had slapped me. I was losing my senses for Florence and perhaps turning violent in my approach.

Even though following the character to the places they go to and people they talk with is quite common in any character based non-fiction project i hadn't thought that i would be called a stalker by someone. I had never done that in my life. The first time i spoke to her i had told her that we would be filming her throughout the day too. I couldn't understand why she was being hostile in certain spaces. That wasn't important. What was was that i was intruding into some space which she didn't want me in for some reason. I was as foolish as i could get.

We left to have food. I thought only of Florence.
We went to Park Street Cemetery to shoot some graves in case it was of some use.
Nothing worked. We shot a little of this and that and went back to the institute.

I was in love and i couldn't help it.
I was being rejected outright and i felt like dying.

Bow Barracks became a sacred space for me that day. In the evening when i saw an elderly woman sit on the doorway and smoke, dimly lit street and a bundle of stories stacked up inside her, i felt like crying. Prescilla was walking her dog. The Madeira cousin was calling Florence names. I looked at the woman for a long time and she looked at me. We didn't speak, but we knew we were both bodies of pain. Pain i could sense. In the month of February love was only pain.

Documentary Diaries#10: Rose Day

Documentary Diaries #8: Locked

5th February 2015

We set out in a car that day (perks of being in a government funded place) to try our hand at shooting at the cemetery again. I had to pick my friend Bee from Sealdah station. We crawled ahead like a snail in the car and i got restless. There was gloom even on a sunny afternoon. It was the day Kolkata was proclaimed the first city with free wi-fi in India. I don't know how that came about. I thought it was Bangalore all the while. Didn't bother to verify. Let the Bengalis revel in more achievements and feel proud all they want.

We were going to try to shoot with Venky's phone camera. Even a DSLR was drawing attention. I wouldn't have to go because sound  had been recorded on our earlier visits. I was worried. Bee was in Sealdah station much before us and we were not able to see each other for a long time because both of us were finding it difficult to make out which entrance of the station the other was at. Meanwhile when i called Debojeet he said that it was better that i got permission. All hope was lost for me. I was getting frustrated with all the walking around in the station as well. When i finally found Bee and took him along to the cemetery i saw that it was bolted from inside. When i banged the latch a nun peeped out and said that she had instructions from the father that nobody was to be let in. I swore at him in my mind. There was nobody i hated more in that moment than that person whom i had not even met.


In some minutes D Jeet and Venky came back to us. D Jeet already knew Bee from his visit to Kerala the previous year. It was at Bee's cousin's place he had spent some nights when he was in Trivandrum. I was anxious at what footage they had got. Neither D nor Venky seemed happy. My heart sunk. Then D told me how the gate was latched and they had to leave and after a long pause how they had got in through another entrance and had shot what we wanted. Madeira's grave. I jumped up and down out of joy. I wanted to hug him, but didn't because i still don't know how to hug people. I am a stranger to tactile forms of expression.


I reveled in that moment for a long time. We called our driver to pick us up and drive us to Chandni, to the Madeiras. When he took more than half an hour we felt that something was wrong. It was. He had locked the car with the key inside and was now unable to move it. We walked to the car. Some vendors offered help. They tried opening the door by inserting a metal wire down the window. It didn't work. One of them tried to slide the glass pane of the window behind. While all this commotion was going on D Jeet started shooting it. I had nothing to do than look at all this and feel lost. I clicked a photo or two and asked the price of grapes. 60 a kilo. Not bad.

Open Sesame: When our gaadi got locked

Finally they were successful with the back window. We were all dying of hunger and decided to eat at Nizam's, Esplanade. Since Bee, who was a malayalee too was present, i decided to speak of the plight of biriyani in kolkata and the non existent logic behind aloo (potatoes) in biriyani. Bee sided up with me and so did Venky who is from Andhra though settled in Mumbai. But he could understand having had a lot of Hyderabadi biriyani and even biriyani from Paragon, Kozhikode. So D Jeet drowned in our murder of Kolkata. After food we set out to Chandni.


As usual Florence refused to speak with me. We waited for a long time. Then went to her neighbours. I then noticed that Florence's family was peering at us from their balcony. I realized what the problem was immediately. It had offended them that we were talking to the neighbours whom they were not in good terms with. I quickly gave up talking to them (Prescilla and the cousin of Leon Madeira) and rushed to the road from where i could speak to Florence's mother in the balcony. She had a rossary in hand. I almost went on my knees pleading. She seemed upset for some time and asked me to go back to 'those neighbours'. She said she had to pray. I said i would pray with her (in the name of cinema, atheists offer to pray). She refused the offer but in the end promised to tell Florence to speak with me. Asked us to return the next day.


While going back we stopped to have coffee at Udipi House, Lake Market. D Jeet left for his home and all of us returned to the institute. Little did i know that the following day was going to be my undoing.

Documentary Diaries#9: In Love!

Documentary Diaries #7: Damn the Clergy

3rd February 2015

I got up to Venky's call at 7 a.m. There was no reason why a batchmate would call at that time of the day. Day began around 10-11 a.m for most people. For some like me from 3 p.m. So it was not hard to guess the whole story. NN's folks who didn't want her to miss the train home had rung all her batchmates and me, her roommate, up to wake her up. I sprung up from bed sensing the disaster and quickly woke NN up. Attended her mother's call and was surprised to hear myself say that we had started.

We left for Howrah, us limping women. We surprised ourselves by how agile we were. Better than people who are fit as a fiddle. Nobody like women to rise up to the occasion and hurry. Fret is an alternative word which i refrain from using here.
After seeing her off i took a bus to Sealdah. I had asked D Jeet to text me the name of the church and directions to it. I am very bad with direction and geography. I get lost everywhere. Home town, non-home town. Anywhere, everywhere.

It was Baithakkhana Church that i had to go to. It was called 'Our Lady of Dolours'. It wasn't difficult finding it with the first name. I loved the road to the church through the grocery sellers' lane and the huge baithakkhana market.

At the church i was asked by the sexton to wait in the parlour for the minister. I waited. I read. I waited. I read. Nobody came. When i asked for his number they said they couldn't give it to me. It was the first time i was in a church where the priest simply refused to speak to a mere visitor. It was strange. I left the place after waiting for an hour.

Parlour, Baithakkhana Church. The Sexton is not pleased with me.

On 4th February 2015 D Jeet, Aalayam, my editor and i set out to the graveyard determined to shoot at any cost. D Jeet went inside and started shooting. The keeper asked us if we had got permission from the minister. I lied i had. He demanded a letter which said so. I asked him to call the father and ask himself. During the time they took to make the call and confirm we shot more. There were more questions and some nuns gathered to ask us what the matter was. D Jeet asked me to go the church and get permission again. I walked all the way to the church and said i wanted to meet the priest again. They asked me to wait. I understood it was going to be the same. Nobody was going to come. I walked back.

D Jeet showed me the footage he had shot. I was really happy with that but we had not been able to shoot Madeira's grave. Which meant we would have to go back. I asked Venky, my producer to try for obtaining permission from the church. He called back later to say that they were not letting him speak to the minister.

Why was a minister of a church refusing visitors! I was confused and amazed at the same time. I had never seen this. In all the years of belief and even now from what church goers in the family tell me the clergy was a sort of family. The minister at the family church would be a frequent visitor at houses. If it's from a belief where they are allowed to marry, the priest's wife and the women gel well. Recipes, embroidery talk et al. [I wonder if this happens when the priest is a woman]. In most Malayalam movies which show a christian family story, there will be a minister who actively participates in the family affair as a moderator. Sphadikam comes to my mind. There was a scene which involved drunk Mohanlal wearing the minister's cassock and Thilakan, his father mistaking him for the real minister and having some sentimental talk.

So i learnt that in Kolkata, or in this church, things were different. That you couldn't see a minister. I thought of attending the service once and catching hold of this elusive character once and for all, seeking permission. A sermon and a service was a huge price to pay for a shoot. I was having enough headache pretending to be a christian everywhere.

We returned to Chandni, to Madeira's. There Florence again refused to talk to me. The woman needed wooing. We guessed that her change in attitude was because she had seen us talk to her neighbours with whom she is fighting many cases.

We decided to speak with some shop owners next to the Madeiras. We went to a tailor who had been there for over thirty years. Contrary to what we thought, he had only niceties to speak of the Madeiras. He said that what happened there was none of his business and that shop keepers all stood together and that helped them fight anti-socials. 'Anglo-Indians are very nice people', he told us. We asked him about the landlord. He said we could find the name written on the building. We found it but there was no address. When we asked around we were led to a building not far from the Maderias. But one of the flats was closed and the inmate at the other one told us that the person we were looking for had shifted some place else.
Disappointed, we walked down. Then we met an old man who claimed to know the owner. Told us that the owner's name was Abbas Ali and that he had his son's number. I asked if he could call him and ask him where he was staying. He rang him and i spoke. It was Abbas himself who picked the call. I asked him for his address and he gave the location of his shop in Stand Road.

Aalayam, D Jeet and i returned to the institute thinking of how to shoot the grave, the woman and her landlord. 

Documentary Diaries #8: Locked

Documentary Diaries #6: A Fall and a Cemetery

1st February 2015

After a break of a day we set out to Bow Barracks again on 1st.

Nikki was around. I asked him if Florence was there. He said that she had gone out and didn't know when she would be back. I felt he was lying. We went to the neighbours. One of the neighbours who said he was Leon Madeira's cousin came out with newspaper reports on the place which said that Florence was running an unlawful business. He refused to speak on camera and said that his wife would speak after she was back from church. For the first time in my life my second name which is christian was of some use. When i showed my id card to make him believe that i was indeed a film student, he read it out aloud and asked me if i was Catholic. I said i wasn't. Tried to bring some faith on my face, the kind i have often seen on Sethuvamma's face when she thinks of me and raises her eyes up seeking help from god almighty, and said i was protestant christian. He seemed very happy. 'That is good', he said. I was relieved.

Even though he refused to give his face to the camera there was no end to his complaints about Florence. Speaking of how she was having an affair with an inspector at the Bow Barracks thana he used 'She is worse than Elizabeth Taylor' as a refrain. Someone was peeping through the small window opposite the man's house. It was a woman and he promptly turned to her and told us that she would be able to tell us more about Florence's evil ways. Her name was Prescilla.

We started talking to her. She narrated her experience with Florence which made me cringe. She had been hugely violated by Florence and her employees. After talking for a long time in the stairway and her dog barking from inside, we bade goodbye and decided to go in search of the landlord of the building in which Florence was living and working. I went up the building next to it and D Jeet and NN followed. One of the inmates said she knew where he was and led me down the stairs. I heard a loud sound and a crack. I turned back to see NN on the floor, cringing in pain and unable to move. My heart skipped a beat. I knew that she had twisted her ankle just by the look of it.

I ran to get the pain killers i was taking for my own knee. It was a Sunday and most medical stores were shut. By the time i was back her foot was twice its original size. We rushed to Medical College, College Street. Again, being a Sunday the OP was shut. We had to go the Emergency department. Took an X Ray and found that her bone was intact. She had sprained her ankle. Was given pain killers. She couldn't walk.

When i was on the run looking for a medical shop, Prescilla had called me to say that she had some more things to say.

NN decided to record sound in spite of her ankle and we went back to Bow barracks after lunch at Spanish Cafe. She held on. Suffering.

Prescilla, who is an Anglo-Indian and is neighbours with Florence was asked by the latter to vacate her own house. Prescilla was having problems with her family. It was something regarding her marriage. She didn't divulge too much about it. From the complaint she had filed at the Bow Barracks thana and which she showed us later, it was a grave matter. The family was forcing her into prostitution. Prescilla said that her family had paid Florence to evict her from the house she was born and grew up in. When she refused she was harassed by the male employees at the Madeira's. When she walked to work and back they would pass lewd comments on her. Once what she called 'a gang of burqa clad women' stood outside her door along with Florence and showered abuses on her chiefly accusing her of prostitution. They took her male friend to Madeira's and threatened to harm him if she refused to leave. When she approached the police thana they refused to file a complaint. Once she was arrested and had to spend a night in jail. This was based on a complaint that Florence had filed against her accusing her of disrupting peaceful environment of the locality. After that Prescilla approached the women's commission. Things got better after that. Florence and her associates backed off.

Throughout her narration Prescilla kept repeating the line 'I was alone and i fought the battle alone'. I felt a lot of respect for her. It is not easy to do that. If she won it is only because of her will which didn't falter in the face of terrible times. It is not something everyone has and those who have it have not had it easy.

Prescilla's dog Sally was barking throughout our conversation with her.

After that we decided to shoot a graveyard. We were thinking of which graveyard to head to when NN came up with a brilliant idea. We could go to the one in which Leon Madeira was buried. It was in St. John's Church, Sealdah. We went there. NN sat in the car giving some rest to her foot and D Jeet and i set out looking for the church. We found the cemetery and Madeira's grave.

In fact the whole family was buried there.

Both D Jeet and i at the same time sighed that it was a perfect love nest. That people should really make use of the place to make love. Since we had nobody to do that with we decided to get the documentary done and seek permission to shoot there.

We had to shoot there. When we asked the keeper he asked us to get permission from the priest at Our Lady of Dolours Church, Baithakkhana. We went there and were told that he would be available only on the next day and the day after that during 8 a.m and 9 a.m. We returned to our gaadi buying pappad for everyone. 

Pack up and back to the institute. 

On 2nd February we let the institute know that our sound person had injured herself and that we were unable to shoot. It was pathetic to watch most of them consider it as a ploy to delay our shoot. NN was to leave for Mumbai the next day. I decided to meet the priest on that day after seeing her off at Howrah station. D Jeet was also busy that day with another shoot so it would just be me and mr jesus christ after a long long time. 

Documentary Diaries #7: Damn the Clergy

Documentary Diaries #5 I Have a Dream

31st January 2015

During the night of 30th or morning of 31st i had a dream.
I dreamed that Florence shut us off from Madeira Undertakers building. I saw that the ground floor where the bodies were kept had been made over to function as an office alone. She cut off the passage between her house upstairs and the office by placing a huge wooden safe in front of the door in front of the stairs. I saw this and was very upset. I was worried how i was going to shoot her if she was to behave that way. Her mood swings were something.
When i was thinking that and talking to D Jeet and NN, Florence came close to me and said that there were some people who wanted to talk to me. I asked her who they were and she said that they were all her helpers in the business. I remember being hesitant for a moment and looking at D Jeet. She didn't allow him in and took me first and said that she would go back for NN. A peculiar thing i remember she did was pull me in by my pants. She in fact slid two fingers in the waist band of my pants and hauled me in, one could say. Like how you see sometimes is shown in cartoons. Angry school teachers to impertinent students.
Inside that room, there were men.
They sexually assaulted me.
Don't remember the details again.
I do remember crying for help. Then when the men had all got what they wanted i remember thinking how to expose them. It was terrible. What i felt in the dream. 
They were going to get NN in when i woke up.
We didn't shoot that day.
The next day, NN fell down the stairs while shooting and sprained her ankle. We stopped shoot till she left for Mumbai where her house is on 3rd February 2015.

Documentary Diaries #6: A Fall and a Cemetery 

Documentary Diaries #4: Mother and Child

30th January 2015

We went to Madeira's around noon that day. We had a better camera and also a tripod. Both were considerably heavy so we took a taxi. When we reached there people were only getting up from sleep. Some of them were watching tv. When asked where Florence was, they said she was tired from the last day's funeral and was sleeping upstairs. Meanwhile i saw her sister, Rupa. When i spoke to her, we got to know yet another thing. Nikki, who was in charge of the business in Florence's absence was married to Rupa. He was Florence's brother-in-law.

Rupa agreed to speak in front of camera on condition that i wouldn't ask her anything about the business. She spoke of Nikki. She said she met him on the way to sunday school. They were in love for ten years before getting married. Nikki had gone abroad and had worked as a chef before returning to work for Florence. Nikki said that he had won an 'Employee of the Month' while he was there. They had a son.

They were not allowing us upstairs let alone shoot. After some time an elderly woman came downstairs. She said she was Florence's mother. Her name was Sushila Biswas. She narrated a story which sounded like one from a Bollywood flick. Sushila was born is Australia and had come to India where both her parents died. Thereafter she was looked after by Mother Theresa's orphanage. When she was young in sunday school she became friends with one of the Madeiras. She started visiting the place with the young girl. Mother Madeira liked her very much and soon wanted to adopt her. She started living at the Madeira's. After her death Leon Madeira taught Sushila the secret ways of preserving bodies. Sushila used to take care of female bodies. Sushila had got married and her husband had died. When Florence (then Jogita Biswas), her daughter in that marriage was in her twenties Leon Madeira asked if he could marry her. Sushila said yes. [I am unable to fit in her two earlier marriages anywhere in this timeline. Sushila said Florence alias Jogita is now 33 years old. Florence herself said she married Leon Madeira nine years ago. Then she must have been 24. She is supposed to have been married twice before that. She has a daughter of 16 now who must have been 7 at the time of marriage. Which means she must have been only 16 or 17 when she first got married. This is if she had the girl from her first marriage. Then again one doesn't have to be married to have a child]. After Florence married Leon Madeira she also started helping in the business. Before his death Leon Madeira entrusted the business and everything he owned with Florence.

I was worried about Florence refusing to give her face to the camera. We stayed for long in the evening but were told that she had guests and was cooking and couldn't speak with us. I felt she was avoiding us for some reason. She must have seen us talk to the neighbours whom she knew didn't have anything good to say about her. We shot everything but her that day and left for the institute. Even at night she refused to talk to me over phone.

That night i had a nightmare.

Documentary Diaries #5: I Have a Dream

Documentary Diaries #3: Bow Barracks' Secrets

On 29th January 2015 D Jeet, NN and i went to Bow Barracks to shoot Florence Madeira and Madeira Undertaking and Co. They were all busy preparing a body for cremation. It was a famous hockey player and olympian who had died. BSF was swarming the place. We shot everything. The body being taken out from the freezer to it being stripped bare and cleaned to clothed. Flowers were placed on it. People had gathered to find out who it was who had died. They were talking about the dead man. If he was married or not. If one of the women there was indeed his daughter. How he could have a daughter if he wasn't married.

While we were shooting the curious onlookers i thought we could strike a conversation with them about the place. We spoke to one of the neighbours who was looking at the crowd in his verandah. That opened up an aspect of the story we had not anticipated.
He told us that he was Leon Madeira's cousin and that Florence was a fraudulent woman who had taken over the business unlawfully. He said that Florence had been married and divorced twice. That her name wasn't Florence and that her daughter was from one of her earlier marriages. That she was a housemaid at the Madeira's and he didn't know if she had ever been married to Leon Madeira. The neighbour's wife joined in to say things which i couldn't imagine anyone would dare say in front of a camera. She passed a 'casual remark' about how she didn't know if Leon Madeira had died of natural causes or if Florence had murdered him. The family said they were fighting a case against Florence for the property. He promised to show us some newspaper reports regarding the issue.

We were dumbfounded. It was not that we felt fooled. I view people who accuse single women only with suspicion. The way they were speaking of her revealed more things about them than about Florence. For instance if a person told me 'She is a slut, sure dresses like one', i infer things about the person who said it rather than the woman they called 'slut'. It was the same with the neighbouring family. Even then we were excited to know that we had entered a story with many sides.

We went back and shot at Madeira's for some time before heading back home. I let my producer Venky know that D Jeet and i were working together again and that we had to quickly approve the project and get the production meet done. I submitted a project proposal that very evening and P Mahmood approved it. She spoke to me in length of the project. She was concerned about my parting with D and was relieved when i let her know of the change of topic and the new subject. She spoke about women's displacement with marriage when i told her that Florence was someone who had married into the Madeira family. She was so excited that she felt like meeting Florence.

For me the project had become one on death. It was also on a woman running a business alone. Both were not easy. Nothing was, we would learn soon.

One of the employees and Florence's nephew. The child is atop an unfinished coffin.

Documentary Diaries #4: Mother and Child

Documentary Diaries #2 Madeira and Co. Undertakers

On 28th Janurary 2015 NN, D Jeet and i decided to go on a secret recce without letting the rest of the crew or the institute know. People were still secretly gleeful that D Jeet and i had parted ways. I thought of not letting them down. NN and i left the institute in the morning and D was to meet us at Chandni metro station. What i remember the most about that day is the pain. My injured muscle was aching like crazy throughout the earlier week and i was taking pain killers. The medicine course of five days was over and i was hoping that everything would be back to normal. But an hour after waking up that day and trying to walk without pain killers i realized it was impossible. By the time i met D and we were close to Bow Barracks NN offered to get me my pills. She asked for the 'lady who deals with dead bodies' around and we were led to our subject of documentary project, Florence Madeira and her business enterprise called 'Madeira Undertakers and Co.'

Madeira and Co. Undertakers is one of the only two places in Kolkata which offers the service of storing dead bodies. Death is all about who the dead leave behind. It is never about the dead themselves. The burial or cremation will have to be stalled for some days if there is a relative living far away. In death, most people are not near the most loved ones. [I don't know if that is good or bad. From my own experience i thought it was better that we were far from love at the time of death. It's called escapism]. So people wait for them to reach the place of burial or cremation. Last time we were there the family was tamilians settled in Kolkata. They had to store the body for a night because someone from Chennai had to reach Kolkata. Florence Madeira recounted times when there were people who wanted to take the body abroad. They had stored bodies for as long as a month sometimes.

The building was quintessentially north kolkatan. Dull, damp, deep and sad. The ground floor functioned as the body storing, dressing place and the family lived upstairs. It was crowded when we walked in around noon. When i referred to the places as s dookaan (shop) Florence was quick to correct me 'It's a service. You can't call it a dookaan'. She asked us to return in the evening. We spent a little time in the place looking around and imagining visuals, sounds etc. All three of us were forming a basic treatment of the documentary in our own minds. We were hungry anyway and decided to go to Spanish Cafe in Sudder Street to brainstorm over food. Food=coffee.

There i was delighted to find that both D Jeet and NN were thinking along the same path with respect to the approach we would adopt. Some important decisions were made there. That we wouldn't shoot the face of the dead. That we would begin with a funeral. That we would end in something related to a beginning.

We wrote all our ideas on a tissue paper on the table. That was the beginning. We had no idea what was in store for us then. It was, i later learned, deadly material as far as a film maker was concerned.

We went back to Florence and she told us more about the place and the services they offered. She mentioned cases she were fighting in court for the ownership of the enterprise. She said that people didn't like her doing the job and there were many who wanted her out of the place. 'I am fighting these battles alone', she told us. She said that she had married one of the Madeiras and after his death had continued the business. She also said that she was thinking of shutting it down herself because people considered her 'unclean' and that was a problem especially when her children (a daughter and a son) were only growing up.

We sought permission to shoot her. She told us that someone was already shooting her and that she would have to ask him if it was okay for us to do it too. Both D Jeet and i felt that she was making that up. We were judging, but we are trained to judge. It's a pity. Innocence was the first thing we lost after being born. I called her at night and she told us that the 'other' film maker did not object. We were ready. For everything Madeira. 

Documentary Diaries #3: Bow Barracks' Secrets

Documentary Diaries #1 On Parting Ways and Patching Up

I had started thinking of the subject for my documentary shoot soon after the short film.
There comes the short film project and there comes the day after the shoot of the short film project. Believe you me, it is the worst day of production and the only competition is going to be from the day you watch your rushes. Till a day ago you were the busiest soul alive. You had so much to do, think, execute, there was not enough time to even dream let alone sleep. Then you crash after the shoot and wake up to a day so blank, it looks white, like a paper. You don't see people, you only see faces. Thus it was that i set out to my department asking for guidelines for the documentary project because i had to do something, soon.

As usual, the department had a set of guidelines which sounded shitty. I like the pressure that those guidelines give, sometimes. But shooting within 20 kms of the institute sounded ridiculous to me. So did the ten minutes restriction. I took a break and went to Hyderabad to Kunju Thalona. She told me about a lady don there and i got interested. Farah Khan. I made up my mind to steal equipment from the institute and shoot her in Hyderabad. It was then that Salmaan Mohammed, a student from Thiruvananthapuram got released on bail. He had been arrested for the charge of not respecting the national anthem. International Film Festival of Kerala was around the corner and some of my batchmates were attending. I thought it would be a good cover to elope and shoot him. During all this D Jeet, was being updated about the change of plans and ways and means to execute them. He was in agreement with both these ideas. He came all the way to Thiruvananthapuram to shoot Salmaan. As usual is the case with me, it didn't work out. I left shooting only a small bit. [I intend to go back to that project with more funds and to widen its arena to the concept of nationalism itself]. D Jeet left even before i did.

While D and i were in Thiruvananthapuram i had got this idea of shooting a girl going to school. I thought of juxtaposing such visuals with the photographs from the attack in the school in Peshawar by Taliban. It was a vague idea and D Jeet too wasn't too impressed.
Back in Kolkata, we nevertheless decided to go ahead with this idea. I found a girl with the help of a professor from editing, S Karmakar. After a day of shoot i realized the inevitable. I was not able to work with D Jeet any longer. I was too dazed by this realization itself that i went straight to him and told him the same. I was so close with him in terms of everything related to my work here that i didn't know who else to go to!

It was Republic day 2015. It was also Sports Day at the institute. Men were playing boring cricket and Vi, my classmate and Ki, my senior were giving a comic commentary which made me laugh aloud in spite of myself. I laughed. I watched the damn game. I went to D and said i was unable to work with him. I couldn't hear the players or the winners' and losers' shouts of joy. It was as if i parted ways with my ego. Was that even possible, i thought.

For me, working with someone was nearly impossible. From the time of mise-en-scene exercise through the short film project and the various documentary endeavours i was surprised that D and i were getting along quite well. Most of the time when i had an idea he would complete it. It was too good to be true. In terms of aesthetics it seemed to me as if we were in sync. When ideas were dropped in the bin we were equally upset. When something seemed appealing to the work we were equally excited. What had happened?

Politics.

For the rest of the campus and may be D too, it sounded unbelievable that difference in opinion about issues could make someone take such a decision. Yet it wasn't the first time i was getting hurt thus. The first ever problem which pushed me into depression here was my batchmates' insensitivity towards things happening around them. When VK from editing called Anand Patwardhan's Jai Bhim Comrade propaganda of dalits, a professor cracked a joke about SC/ST, OBCs. 'Sound recordists during a shoot are like them. They would be in some dark corner on set and nobody gives a damn about them', he had said. Another earnestly wanted to know how Tarun Tejpal could have raped his employee. It wasn't that i had never faced such remarks earlier. I had. And i had engaged with them too. The problem was that this place didn't offer me the space to engage with that. I stopped talking or avoided politics altogether in the rare conversations i had. It was a sad thing to do and it killed me.

Then i learned to live with it. Avoiding, sometimes arguing, sometimes being silent and later feeling like crap. With D when i saw that we had our differences regarding a lot of such issues i managed it well within myself trying all these. It wasn't affecting me during work. Later i realized this was because we were working on fiction. Enter non-fiction and i sunk deeper into my dark pit of helplessness. I wanted to question a lot of things but i couldn't. I didn't want to, but i wanted to. I was going back to the old phase of feeling left out. He must have felt the same about a lot of things, i am sure, and i have no idea how he was dealing with it himself.

So it was that on Republic Day 2015 i rushed to him to tell him. What i thought. I did. And i thought it had all ended. I had only a void in front of me. I couldn't think of working with another person. Yet i had to do it. I had to complete the project. I tried doing a lot of things. N, one of the professors of cinematography had a talk with me. So did P Mahmood of my department. Later N, D Jeet and i sat down for a talk. Parting ways was the most difficult thing for me, always.
She always told me to work, talk, live etc without getting involved with people. People were only ideas. Tried a bit and failed as always. So i suffered.

Later that night i again asked D what we could do. He said he didn't know. Nor did i. By then the HOD of Direction had told me about a place in Bow Barracks, the last Anglo Indian colony in Kolkata. He spoke to me about a family who had been running an undertaking enterprise for generations. I felt like giving it a try. I still couldn't imagine myself shooting with any other batchmate of mine. I told D about this idea and asked him if we should give it a try. He said okay. To my relief.
We went to the place and soon it was like yesterday. Where we had seasons in the sun and cinema and good fun. I could speak with him about the topic and get a high. No weed included. No substance abuse. Just cinema. We spoke to Florence, the woman who was running the business. Got permission to shoot. The next day we went with a DSLR. NN was there too, recording sound. More on the place later. We had again begun to complete each others' sentences. I was seeing his images and he was seeing my whirlpool of thoughts. It was as if Republic Day 2015 had received a local anesthesia.

D still makes fun of my getting offended about the difference in opinion on issues. I even think he is going to kick me out of his cinema life forever after this shoot. This was that bizarre. Even then i know what it feels like. I know the pit i was in and its dampness. It's like when you are busy preparing for the UGC NET exam and your folks call you to say they are seeking alliances for you. Nothing is bad about it. It sounds perfectly normal and there is definitely no need to get hurt. But i will. Get hurt. And in that process, hurt people i am closest to.

This is from one of our days of shoot. D Jeet and NN.
I hope we stay together because when we part ways, we lose a bit of our ego and the world loses a bit of our cinema. Ah, and i thought i could be modest!

Documentary Diaries #2: Madeira and Co. Undertakers