The Show Must Go On
The fall of 2020 seems to be a neverending episode of an ongoing saga from ‘Black Mirror’. However, young creative minds in India, unleash their talent in ‘Tell me a Story’ elective and penetrate into the very core of human nature fleeting between optimism and despair.
The confines of the four walls don’t inhibit students of the Communication Design discipline, as they explore a broad range of narratives combining facts and fiction. Making a short film based on their narrative is the extended aspect of storytelling they embark on confidently. However, one thing remains truer than ever…these narratives offer us endless adventures and a glimpse into the minds of the young who have embraced the new normal with great fortitude!
‘BUY ME TIME’ by Anirudh Yanambaka -Sanju Yadav and her husband, Rajan, and their two children — Nitin and Nandini — arrived in India’s financial capital Mumbai a decade ago with their meagre belongings. Hoping for a brighter future they have managed to survive so far…however, the lockdown changes their destiny as nature might require of them more than they are ready to give.
Joseph, a journalist through his lens follows a story in times of crisis as the migrants journey back to their hometowns with shattered dreams leaving them gasping as they are ejected from the familiar flow of time.
A comprehensive survey, covering 25,371 respondents in rural India including households with 963 found that 22.5% or about one in four migrants interviewed said they undertook the journey on foot, while another 6.9% percent partly walked and used vehicular transport.
About 2.6% said they cycled back to their villages.
A RENDEZVOUS WITH A DREAM’ by Ekanksha Lalwani- James is all of 25, and belongs to a middle-class Indian family. He manages to convince his parents to let him pursue his dream of travelling around the world. As he embarks on the adventure he gets stuck in Europe during the lockdown triggered by the pandemic. He discovers his passion both for food and writing and with a twist of fate ends up with global fame and recognition for creating innovative recipes with limited ingredients.
Thus in life using uncertainty as a wellspring of our creative vitality — “what is best in life and art often comes into being by making not knowing”! (Artist Ann Hamilton’s lovely phrase)
FREEDOM IN SOLITUDE’ by Anoushka Golani -“Sound of rain splattering down onto planet earth. The sound reminded me of my fingertips hitting the keys of the piano. The petrichor wafting into my window made for a glorious morning. Taking a deep breath in I felt one with Mother Earth.
As I sat there enchanted, watching the trees and grass swaying. I was in a different realm. The strong breeze carrying the rain and caressing the grass was swaying to nature's philharmonic. A sign of hope and freedom as there is nothing more that inspires freedom than nature itself. I found myself surrendering to nature, moving with it, celebrating it… for I was eager to feel connected and free in solitude”.
Creativity is our coping mechanism — our little raft on the perilous sea of time. Gazing at the streets with no one in sight to speak to…yet reaching out to all of humanity across all time.
HOME’ by Mehek Khanna- The pandemic has reshaped our relationships in unprecedented ways, as we live closer at home but distance from the world at large. The stress of confined living too has taken its toll on many families. Home’ is a narrative exploring the dynamic relationship between a teenage daughter and a single parent — a father, as they navigate the perilous waters of daily routine which take its toll on the sixteen-year-old as she decides to run away from home!
It is a coming-of-age story where experiences define a person. An explosion of emotions combined with facts that society must assume that it is stable, but there is nothing stable under heaven and that is what the pandemic is here to tell us all.
MIRAGE’ by Naresh Kumar- “He couldn’t lose her. He tried to keep up. He felt that he was losing her. She was picking up pace now. He could almost see her smirk at his plight. But he was determined, he kept following. Not knowing where he was going. Then she vanished. The buildings and the smog of the city were nowhere to be seen as the sea rose to devour the skyline. He wakes up from his nightmare to face another day alone…a story of unrequited love and loss.”
Loneliness is a disease which seems to devour all those who rendezvous with love and anguish stems precisely from that contouring of selfhood in the sand of time. This Pandemic unfolds many helplessly human impulses which are life-affirming realizations of our vulnerability.
ADIEU’ by Shristi Sahani- “Imagine having nobody come visit you while you’re on your deathbed. If me doing this gives them the little hope they need for a better end, a better afterlife, then I have no issues dealing with this hollowness I feel every time I’m exposed to a situation like this.” Health workers around the globe deserve gratitude and support as abandoned senior citizens find solace in their arms in what are their last days, abandoned and alone.
As millions of lives are threatened by the current situation, death is a reality faced by many daily. Aged care staff on the coronavirus front line are battling their grief with tremendous courage, ingenuity, and determination as thousands of senior citizens have been battling COVID-19 globally.
DISPARITY’ by Alex Joe — “Shade. There was none. Swaraj squinted, looking ahead. Heat glistened off the tarmac as far as the eye could see. He tried not to get disheartened, focusing on moving; One barefoot after the other, he had a long way to go. The city he’d so desperately tried to call home had cast him aside. Was it ever truly home? He was no longer sure of anything.”
“Another day in quarantine. Rahul had lost track of time… he’d stopped counting now. He checked his phone as he semi-subconsciously decided to skip brushing his teeth. He found himself looking at his feet.“When would he get to wear shoes again?” Humans weren’t meant to live like this, they were social creatures. He missed .. people. He was no longer sure of anything.”
The disparity felt both by the migrant and the urban dweller has a common ground…What we do with our days, how we schedule our body rhythms to a new world, is another twist of the same ludicrous helplessly human impulse where we seek a time-stamp as we face the absurdity of a new artificiality.
WITHIN’ by Sanyukta Mathur — “But life would move on and she would seek solace in her work. This seemed like a never-ending cycle.
Her heart longed to go back to simpler times. She was torn between the dichotomy of what felt like, two opposed worlds.
She has imprisoned herself in her thoughts.”
The moral anxiety felt in that peculiar and inescapable place that makers inhabit by their very nature, the place between looking out and looking within for answers haunts us all as the shadow of death gets longer by day and engulfs all by night!
VOICES’ by Siddhi Mandora- “A man has a panic attack because of his inability to cope with society’s perception. What he should be and can be, are no more related to what he has become in the process. He battles with himself and what he feels like. He is overwhelmed and two voices take over and speak to the man — one which is rational and the other being the man in the state of utter panic.”
Man’s manic desire to make or grow or do “something,” that now seems to be consuming everybody, while he has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it with pursuits of survival.
A mass traumatic event experienced across the globe will leave many suicide related deaths and unanswered questions for years to come. As the world still battles with physical health and mental health as if one is reality and the other a fragment of imagination. This crisis will force us to face this dilemma…questioning the very fundamental understanding of human mind versus human spirit!
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Creative Mentor: Program director — Utkarsha Malkar
UTKARSHA M. | Author | Design Thinker | Creator -
A desire to understand the world and to improve it always remains at the core.
Design is a managed process and my quest for knowledge is subject to an
inquiry of the apparent, the imagined and the recalled.
As I speculate and design, my liberty of self-expression is in direct
correlation to my existence and knowledge. 
