My journey with cinema started back in 2016. After completing my 12th standard, I started preparing for medicine away from my hometown. I was not very happy with what I was doing so I returned to my hometown but with a pang of huge guilt as if I failed or something. And other aspects of my life were also not going very well back then, quite a low phase. One day, while passing through the living room, I saw a glimpse of a film (on the TV) that was very different from the usual ones. Very curiously, I asked my mother, “what film is that”, she replied, “that’s a good film, a realistic and artistic one, none of your business, you will not get it” she said laughingly. But this statement left me even more curious, so, in the evening, I started watching the film on the TV when it was supposed to be telecasted. The film was Ardh Satya, originally released in 1983, directed by one of the pioneers of Realistic Indian Cinema Mr. Govind Nihalani. If I were to describe my journey with Ardh Satya, I can just say that I was a different person, at the beginning of the film and became an entirely different person when the film ended. It changed something in me, my mind, and my thoughts, it impacted me deeply. Ardh Satya was just the beginning, in a matter of a week, I almost completed watching and reading about all prominent films made by the extraordinaire of the New Wave Cinema. This whole process of watching films, and reading about them introduced me to the geniuses like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Tapan Sinha, Basu Bhattacharya, and many more. I think a person can learn filmmaking more by just watching Satyajit RAY’s films than by having a formal education about the whole process. A time came when I considered watching these films only or films made by directors like them only. But this belief changed when one day, very surprisingly, almost impossibly I was introduced to Hrishikesh Mukherjee, through one of the finest classics- “Namak Haraam (1973)”.

…to be continued

Also Read Journey Part 2