The Septuagenarian Youngsters
In 2013, Films Division decided to release works of filmmakers like SNS Sastry, Pramod Pati, Vijay B Chandra on DVD, something that was much discussed in newspapers as well and rightly so. The DVDs are really cheap – ₹200 for three discs containing over twenty films – and are available from the website of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and are worth every penny for anyone interested in history. Films Division has also, additionally, uploaded some films on their YouTube channel but the DVDs also contain films not yet uploaded. Even for the ones that are already available for free online, the DVD print is of much better audio-video quality.
I am Twenty was one of the films contained in the SNS Sastry DVD. In the film, which was released in 1967, Sastry interviewed youngsters born on 15 August 1947 about topics ranging from their idea of freedom to academics, from their needs and desires to what they thought of India’s future. The twenty-minute film, commissioned by Films Division, was purportedly shown in cinema halls before the movie started (so much better than today’s commercials) and then it was forgotten for all I know until the DVDs came along. Anyway, luckily, I am Twenty was one of the films also uploaded by Films Division on their YouTube channel and at the time of writing this article, has 16k views and for all it is worth, and no downvotes.
But there is a major problem with the film. Sastry did not leave behind contacts of any of the people in the film, not even their names. There is only one person in the film whose name we know: Tinuveli Neelkanth Subramaniam. Despite the efforts of many freelance journalists, very few people in the film could be traced and asked what they thought on the same questions today.
Twenty at Seventy
So, on the seventieth anniversary of Indian independence, I decided to do the next best thing: travel India and ask youngsters similar questions that Sastry asked and make a film on youth today. Perhaps it was a better idea than going back to the same people Sastry covered in the original film because mine will document another generation and their views on the same issues. This time, I made it a point to take note of names and contacts of as many respondents as possible, subject to their comfort of course. These can be found here.
Having travelled through five Indian cities, I have decided it to render it to film and release it on 15 August 2017. I decided to call it Twenty at Seventy, and I invite you to watch it here:
“>
Before I talk about the adventures I had on the way, let me get the film credits sorted out:
Credits for photos and videos not shot by me
Students crowded in front of a counter (07:36): Meenakshi Sharma
Chairs broken on Republic Day, 1958 (15:10): Narain Prasad, provided by Ambedkar University (please also see: www.ritvikc.com/delhispast/)
Village school girls (08:08): KR Deepak from Frontline 15 July 2011
Tejas Express video (15:23): Chinmay Kole
Music credits
‘Sugar Baby’ by “Dock” Boggs (5:32) from Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country 1927-1931, Yazoo Records
For a list of people in the film, please view this Excel sheet: People in the Film
The story
I had never thought of becoming a filmmaker, but since nobody else had continued this project where Sastry left off, I felt compelled to do it as a history student. Ideally, a film like I am Twenty should have been made every ten years since 1967. There were two other important reasons behind my compulsion. First, as a history student I was irritated by the fact that my professors had much to say about things that happened hundreds of years ago but shied from commenting on their own times. Social scientists, I felt, should be great storytellers of their age no matter what their area of interest is. Secondly, despite the fact that I detest my generation, I still felt it was misunderstood by many quarters. The making of the film did both to make me understand people better and take judgements less quickly (although the judgements I arrive on are still the same) as well as reinforced some presumptions I had earlier.
When I started out on this project, I had absolutely no idea if it will be completed. It is finally complete, I am proud to say. Nevertheless, I agree that the cinematography remains to be improved to say the least, and is terrible to be honest. Sadly, this was a one-man project throughout and that too on a zero budget, and since I have no skills of colour correction, I had no option but to leave the ‘effects’ area untouched. I hope you will forgive me for that, and I will be only too happy if someone wishes to take the entire eight hours of footage shot from my iPod and decides to make a better film out of it.
There was another problem I faced, which was unexpected. It was that when I shot a video without any external microphone, the audio quality was very bad. I started the film at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. People at NIAS were most cooperative and patiently heard me out and even helped me interview their friends. Tragically, on 21 April 2017, when I returned to my room to review the entire day’s footage, I realized the audio had too much disturbance and could not be used.
It meant that henceforth, I shall have to change my recording method. I did not have a high-quality Bluetooth boom microphone, so my solution was to attach the usual wired headphone-cum-microphone and then record. The audio was great, but then I was not able to take the camera very far from the speaker. So, I decided to use my older iPod for the audio recording (it’s great for that, trust me) and use another one for video. That way, I could shoot from whatever distance I wanted. But there were two shortcomings: one, in all the videos, you will see the white cable and my iPod dangling from the speakers’ ears; and two, I had absolutely no idea how I will synchronise the audio and video when I sit down to make the film. Suffice it to say I somehow managed…
People
If you have not seen Sastry’s film yet, go and watch it.
If you have already seen Sastry’s film, then you will know that Sastry gives maximum airtime to TN Subramaniam. No doubt he is the most loquacious character in all of the film. I found my Subramaniam in Ralph Fernandes who opens my film with élan and confidence. When I was editing the film, there was hardly anything he said that I wanted to leave out, but then I had to give space to other equally smart chaps who sweated out in the Sun for the film. I invite you to watch Twenty at Seventy to know what I mean, but I just want to add in conclusion that I felt he was the conscience keeper of my generation.
Another lucky find was Jitendra Seregar. If you do not believe in there being a way wherever there is a will, then hear out how I ran into him, and what made him special for my film. On Sunday, 23 April 2017, I was in Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Bangalore for over an hour trying to interview people and all of them had refused. Frustrated, I exited the park and started walking – I wanted to go to Hard Rock Café. Then, on the way, I spotted MTR. It was famous, and it was a shame that I had been to Bangalore thrice – had spent good thirty days on my second visit – and had yet not lunched at this speciality. I quit plans for Hard Rock Café, and took a hard-found seat at MTR. The people who were serving were absolutely unbothered by what I was eating, and kept dumping lumps of delicious food on my hand or my plate, whichever came earlier. It was as if to say: ‘I don’t care if you haven’t finished it yet, I am just going to mix what I have in yours. I don’t care if you like it either, I won’t give you time to ask more of it and will give you something else instead.’
Opposite me sat Jitendra and his bearded friend who were kindly explaining me what each dish is even though I was a stranger to them. In the conversation, before we got up, I got to know his birthday fell on 15 August. I could not believe it. This was even before I was about to ask him if he would give a few minutes to my film. He could be a precious anchor in my film, and I already remembered very well the lady in Sastry’s film who says 15 August is special to her not only because of Independence but also because it was her birthday. To my relief, and masked delight, Jitendra agreed to speak in front of the camera. I even remembered the exact words of the aforementioned lady in Sastry’s film. For a moment, I thought of requesting Jitendra to speak exactly the same thing. But I realized that it will not only defeat my purpose but also be insulting to him.
While walking in Hazratganj in Lucknow, I wanted to interview somebody against its magnificent backdrop. I wanted to interview a girl, as there was little female representation in the film. Approaching women at random is not my cup of tea. Most women in other cities had given me weird looks when I asked them if they would answer some questions for my film. Some of them agreed, but then quit even before I switched on my camera.
At Hazratganj, thankfully my mother was with me and approached three teenagers hanging out. Somehow, my mother managed to convince a girl among them despite their initial hesitation. It turned out that Alina was a Muslim girl, and was very quick to label her family as orthodox. After the shoot was over, my mother and I were in absolute disagreement with her, even as she had been ever so kind in giving me footage. Both my mother and I felt that her family was actually very open minded and liberal.
Alina was a resident of Lucknow, but studied in Kota. No ‘orthodox’ family – Muslim or non-Muslim – would send their fourteen-year-old daughter to live in another city all alone to study physics and biology. An ‘orthodox’ family by South Asian standards stops their daughters’ education by that age. She had taken the liberty to call her family orthodox merely because they were training her to be a doctor and not a blogger or a YouTuber or a fashion designer as she wanted. A small part of this is also shown in the film.
To clarify: I think no middle-class family in India would allow that. I mean, honestly, she does not need a degree to become a blogger or a YouTuber. In fact, she could write blogs even now. As for fashion designing, a friend who works in a fashion designing institute that trains students for NIFT and NID exams is very open about this field being viable only to rich South Delhi or South Mumbai people who speak that accent of English. A rookie from a middle-class background has no chance of penetrating that coterie and will settle down with a boutique at best. She also tells me that she feels like asking middle-class parents who come with their kids ready to invest their lives’ savings in this futile endeavour to go somewhere else; but she cannot do that as she works for the institute. Personally, I feel physics and biology are more useful than fashion designing any day. If she had grudges against her parents because of that, she could call them ‘conventional’ at best, and certainly not ‘orthodox’ by any stretch of imagination.
Differences in Sastry’s film and mine
The first difference that will strike the casual viewer would be that Sastry gave as much as four minutes to village areas. I would have loved to cover villages. Unfortunately, because of mine being a zero-budget film, I could cover only one village. Even then, I could not really put in all of the footage acquired from there.
What surprised me was that Sastry’s respondents from rural areas back in 1967 were confident and forthcoming. The children of 2017 in the village I interviewed were shy beyond measure and spoke next to nothing. Maybe it was that Sastry had interviewed many country-folk and then found something worthwhile. We shall never know this, until someone from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting finds something.
Another thing which is not that obvious is that Sastry had in all probability arranged appointments with most people in his film before he went there and shot them. This is most obviously the case where he interviews youngsters in college campuses comfortably seated in their chairs, on in their homes lying in their beds and so on.
My approach was entirely spontaneous. I would go to public places and quite literally accost strangers for the film. Some would graciously agree, while most would just refuse. I did not have a fixed appointment with even a single person in the film. I do not need to explain how that panned out.
There are many issues that Sastry does not cover or covers in a limited way. Evidently, they were non-issues in his mind. Things have changed, and so should the purpose of the film, I thought. There are some issues that were insignificant then and have become important now, and vice versa. Similarly, you might find topics that I do not cover and Sastry does.
There were two big issues that I wanted to show in my film, that I am sure were not on Sastry’s mind at all. One is Reservation, and the other was technology. Sastry does not discuss Reservation, it was not there then. Instead, he chooses to discuss bribes in getting sarkari work done especially getting college admissions. The lady whose birthday fell on 15 August 1947 testifies to that. I feel that with e-payments, incidences of bribes and controlling it have fallen, and I can testify to it as I have never paid bribes. But we will discuss that some other day.
Out of the many students I interviewed for Reservation, only one was in support and even she advocated it only for rural areas – not for urban ones. There were many poor students who came from General categories and could rant on and on about it. The richer ones could escape to Oxford or Yale.
Ignore the bad cinematography or close your eyes if you wish, and just listen to audio from 07:31 all the way to 09:05.
Respondents to Twenty at Seventy had much to say about social media and how other aspects of information technology have taken over their lives. I am Twenty was limited in its coverage of technology. The most it ventures into the topic was when a young, smart lad mounted on a tractor talks of farming equipment and another young lad talks of blades (what kind of blades, we do not know).
In the same line, I have devoted adequate footage in my film to youngsters discussing the proliferation of media. When Sastry made his film, there was only one radio station and only one television channel. Both were government owned, and at that time they did not even broadcast all day. This has changed enormously now. Since you are reading the article on a small spot in the world wide web and streaming the film at your own convenience, I need not explain that to you.
Other than that, there are themes that I would have liked to see in his film and that I have tried to cover in mine. One of that is regrets in life. Another is cleanliness, although India appears remarkably clean in 1967. While people in Sastry’s film discuss their hopes and ambitions, and college admission procedures; they reveal little about unemployment and the actual quality of pedagogy.
Lastly, there is a difference in how Sastry has shot his film. Sastry was no doubt a veteran filmmaker. He had good equipment and a crew and knew his onions better than most filmmakers today. I, on the other hand, perhaps would not have taken up this project had it not been for the fact that nobody else was really doing it. This shows in the films too.
There are many instances in I am Twenty where interviewees are not looking into the camera and are looking sideways, clearly at Sastry who is out of the frame. This has added a dynamism to the film that is missing in mine.
In Twenty at Seventy, all respondents are looking into the camera. When one is shooting alone, it is very difficult to arrange for respondents to look away at some imaginary person while speaking. There is always a fear that respondents, who after all are strangers, may feel I am asking for too much and just refuse. This will leave me with nothing. Also, because I knew I had to lip sync audio with video, I knew I should have the speakers’ face clearly visible. Professional filmmakers will hate me for this, but I am fairly relaxed about it.
Where I have left off
I hope that I have tried to cover all viewpoints in whatever topics I touched upon. Except Reservation, where a person looking for an alternate viewpoint is most certainly a beneficiary from it or a nutcase.
I hope that out of ten people who watch Twenty at Seventy, or I am Twenty for that matter, at least one will feel like taking the project forward in whatever format, not necessarily in that of motion picture.
I hope that Twenty at Seventy will work upon the minds of its audience after fifty years the same way I am Twenty has on today’s audience.
If you feel bored or dissatisfied after watching this film, the responsibility is entirely mine. In order to reiterate what I already mentioned in the tenth paragraph, I will be only too happy if someone takes my footage and decided to make a better film out of it.
Last, and not least, I apologize to all people who spared their precious time for the film and yet could not be featured because of inevitable audio/video loss but largely because I could not fit them in. I would like to apologize especially to the people at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore (where the film actually started) who were most cooperative and whose footage I could not use because the audio turned out to have too much disturbance. I could not fix it till the end. For all it was worth, this realization led me to adopt corrective measures later that I have detailed in the eleventh paragraph.
Any work on this website can be reproduced without permission, but only with attribution to the author.