A prominent institute for films in India is FTII and I had friends in this department. When I was doing my PhD in psychology, I was approached to do some research on the life of a guava seller. There was a girl who was keen on making this film about his life since she believed there was a strong narrative in the man and his guavas. I was involved in the interviewing and research. The world of films is irresistible and I wasn’t resisting at all. The documentary came out and went on to go to several international places.
There was another film I was involved in. it was a more sensitive topic, it dealt with what happened in the Godhra massacre. The massacre was violent and ugly and the usual suspects of politics and religion were at centre stage. I was given the role of a journalist or a filmmaker during these times. The name of the film was Ruhi and I was a filmmaker in the film. The entire movie was made very sensitively and the humane aspects of ugly events were drawn out. The narration goes deep and this girl, who this movie is centred around Ruhi, has quite a revelatory journey.
Another research that was very interesting was related to colours and emotions. How does one affect the other? How can we test this out on people? How are colours perceived differently by different people? I was involved with many research projects during the duration of my PhD. That way, academia is very kind- any researcher I approached extended their resources and research tools to me with open arms. We did a lot of interviews with people and culminated a lot of the live conversations into a documentary.
