shanu taxi

Synopsis

Sixty thousand taxis run on the streets of Mumbai. Each one has a story...Shanu has been driving a taxi in Mumbai for three years without moving up or making any money. He doesn’t want much - just enough to be able to take his old Abu Jaan on the Haj one day. Late one night, a passenger leaves an expensive mobile phone behind in his taxi. When Shanu returns it, he gets the phone as a reward. He could either sell it off or he could start using it. Perhaps, after three years of toil on the city’s lonely streets, this is his chance to do better for himself and his family. Shanu Taxi is Shanu’s little story: about his dreams, his taxi and his city at night.

On my 26th birthday, I woke up an hour earlier than usual and sat at my desk, having decided the previous night that this year I would make a film. I had written a script a few months ago – the story of a young Muslim taxi driver called Shanu who discovers a mobile phone left behind in his cab. When he returns it to the owner, the owner gifts him the phone. Resisting the temptation to sell it, Shanu activates the phone, and begins to look at it as a portal to better things. One day he gives a ride to an affluent young executive who has the same phone. They talk, make a connection, and the executive takes Shanu’s number. On their second meeting, Shanu pushes this familiarity too far, and suffers for overstepping invisible social barriers. This 15 minute film, was entitled Shanu Taxi.

So, I sat at my desk with the intention of revising the script – to be ready to make it whenever the time came. When I finished reading the script, I realized that the time was now. There was a little money in the bank and my boss was away to LA on work. By the time he came back there would hardly be any time to breathe.

While making a film, you are essentially staging an imitation of life for a camera. Unlike theatre (and bigger budgeted films), this staging is done in an uncontrolled environment. The stages for my film were a Chawl in Sion, an apartment on Pali Hill in Bandra and the open, police-infested roads of Mumbai. I mention the police for a reason. Staging an imitation of life doesn’t come cheap – Rs 5000 for permissions from the police, another 5000 for permissions from the Municipal Corporation and another 5000 for permission from the Transport Office. These three figures combined were more or less the budget of my shoot! All I had was a small digital video camera. There was no bulky equipment that would come in anyone’s way. Damn the permissions! I would have to wage a guerrilla war to catch this imitation of life for my camera.

I set about finding my cast and crew. Perhaps it was luck, but I found there weren’t more than three degrees of separation between me and the right people for the job. And their price? I discovered that talented people are always looking to do good work, and are willing to negotiate their price when they come across it. I was armed with my script and my pitch, and the combination convinced most of these people that this would be good work.

There are 60,000 taxicabs in this city. Around six months ago, about the same time when I wrote the film, I underwent some ayurvedic therapy for an injured back. The treatment centre was a ten-minute drive from where I lived, and I took a cab there each morning before work. One taxi driver started waiting for me each morning when he saw the regularity of my trips. His taxi was upholstered in velvet, with a mirrored ceiling and blinking chandelier for good measure. I decided that this was to be my taxi. Rakesh Joshi, the driver, a sturdy UP-ite in his 30s, who had once been deported from Thailand and Singapore for working there without a permit, heartily agreed to the enterprise. We set a fixed price for the three nights of shoot. Once I had the taxi, I knew I had the film.

Soon, Shanu Taxi was rolling ahead. I realized its momentum when an actor who I had never met before dropped by where I work to leave his photos, having heard that we were “making some short film about a taxi driver”. The plum role was Shanu’s and I wanted to cast him before even thinking about the others. An actor called Vikas Kumar rose to the occasion. He’s the friend of a friend, active in theatre and in film as a dramaturge and dialogue coach. He’s of thin frame, sunken cheek and exudes sincerity. A Shanu by look, definitely. My decision was made on the following basis: after hearing the narration, he lapsed into a long silence. It took him a while to say anything, and when he did, his comments were quite sparse and reserved. But when we did a little screen test (in an abandoned corridor of an industrial estate in Andheri), the character rose to his eyes. When I saw that understanding in his eyes, it was easy to take the decision.

Each professional who came on to the project brought with them the contacts of others who would be willing to do such work. Thus, the preparation progressed like a rapidly branching tree. Not to say that there weren’t any problems. The untanglements of one day would knot themselves afresh a few days later. A previous experience really helped me along – A few months ago, I had been in Greece, helping my boss in making a one-minute tourism film for the Greek government. While we were there, Greece experienced its harshest extended winter in two decades! Just when I thought that our plans of making an inviting, summery tourism film were in serious jeopardy, my boss remained calm, and pushed ahead. Somehow, through initiative, innovation and faith, we managed to squeeze out a good film from those very circumstances. I tried to evoke the same spirit for my own film.

In retrospect, when I think of the days before the shoot, I recall foremost a certain energy that I didn’t know I possessed. My body seemed to have kicked in the reserves, and I think that it was enjoying surprising me. I think what happened was that psychologically and psychosomatically, all its stops were yanked out. My subconscious mind probably willed that to happen. I guess when you can will these things with your conscious mind, you must be close to enlightenment.

The day of shoot arrived. The first thing I thought of when I crawled out of bed was that it would be another twenty four hours before I could get back to the same bed. That’s the funny thing about this business. When there’s no work, things are too still for comfort. When the work comes, it comes in driving torrents; and then you yearn for stasis again. At five, Mr. Zul Vellani, who was to play Shanu’s father, arrived outside the office. He is close to eighty years old, asthmatic and can barely walk. Yet he has the spirit of a man a quarter his age. He has shared a stage with Balraj Sahni, and in one day and age, he used to breakfast with Nehru every few months. I had met him once on a previous assignment where I had assisted him in some dialogue dubbing. When we travelled to the first location together, he asked me for one rupee. When I gave him a coin in his hand he said the following: “This is my salary. I am a professional and I must be paid. Remember this when you are fifty and someone young like yourself asks for your help.” For the rest of the ride he told me about his conversations with Nehru and many other very interesting things.

I had chosen very contained environments to shoot in for the first night: a chawl room, a posh apartment and some relatively ‘safe’ roads. We cracked a coconut before the fist shot in the chawl, after which we worked hard the whole night, barely stopping for a break. I realized that things are different when you are doing your own work, the type that lies close to your heart. The body somehow complies to this harmony and makes allowances by brushing aside inconsequentials like hunger and fatigue. In my experience, a film shoot is usually over in the blinking of an eye. Perhaps this is because it is necessarily a focussed endeavour, in order to save precious time and money. As a result there is a constant compression of the spaces in between moments.

One scene at a time, we tackled the script. Ironically, what we had thought to be the most difficult proved the simplest, and we got stuck at the places we thought we’d coast through. Well, Alea jacta est, I thought – the die is cast. The only way was forward, and that’s where we went, happily. In the two years that I had spent working in the business I have seen far more difficult things than Shanu Taxi achieved. Yet, through those times, I never felt the same jitter and fear. I guess that the difference was the sense of propriety I had over my own work as opposed to the work of others. There was also the knowledge that the propriety extends to responsibility when things go wrong. If something had gone wrong, it would have been my neck, not anyone else’s. My respect for directors I have worked for went up one notch.

I am sure that each in each profession, people come across moments where they know that it is worth all the toil and burden of their work just to experience them. Making films is hard work. In order to stage an imitation of life, you must work against the grain of life’s natural movement. On day 2, we had shot through the night and had met the dawn near Maratha Mandir cinema, where thousands of cabs stand parked waiting the day to commence. There, when I saw the endless rows of taxis, the legs of the sleeping drivers protruding through their half open doors, the geometry of bonnets and meters lined up unending towards the urban horizon and so many Shanus scrubbing these taxis clean in the half light of daybreak, I walked on air. Meaning seeped into whatever I had done for this film. All that I had understood tacitly in order to write this script was now a discursive understanding. It was not just me who felt this. All of us who were there that morning, elation was on all our faces. Life would move on and the soft dawn would break into a harsh day, but I would keep this memory pristine. I am sure that evoking it one day will get me through a dark night. The shots we got here make the opening and closing sequences of the film.

I negotiated the post production of Shanu Taxi over a month. My cousin Aman composed a superb score for it, and I got by most problems with a little help from my friends. One day, it was ready, and I decided to send it out into the world. There was a screening in Bandra with a small film club, where it was seen by an audience of 150 people. I knew about 60 of them, and they all clapped really loudly. There was no reason to be unhappy and everything that followed was a bonus. Soon, it was seen by larger audiences at other film clubs. Only when absolute strangers were moved by it, did I really allow myself some credit. Often some criticism came, and I began to notice patterns in which aspects of the film worked for people and which did not.

On the advice of successful short filmmakers, whose own work had won them awards at international festivals, I took a chance and sent Shanu Taxi out to some. I was hoping that it would at least get into one international festival and take me there with it. One morning, it happened. A festival in Korea not only sent me an acceptance letter, but an invite promising that they would pay my airfare and three nights hotel stay. In Korea, I saw strangers from another culture sympathize with Shanu and his tragic dreams. The film held its own amid some great work shot on 35mm, and I was proud. I met people like myself from all around the world, recognized my own experiences in their stories, nodding knowingly at the troubles they had gone through in order to create. The biggest affirmation came when Shanu Taxi was chosen in competition at Clermont Ferrand, reputed to be the world’s largest short film festival. There, I sat in amid an audience of 2000 in a huge hall. When they applauded to affirm the film I smiled continuously for the next three days. At Clermont Ferrand, I saw short films being bought and sold like vegetables and I had the opportunity to sow a few seeds of interest there. There were many talented people well met; and many introductions to those with whom I shall cross paths again.

After Clermont Ferrand, the film has its own life. I do not have to send Shanu Taxi anywhere anymore. It now gets invited to other festivals. Yet, I know that I did not start making films just to travel to festivals. Fortunately, along the way, I made use of some down time and shot another short film, this time on 16mm. I remember how I felt while making Shanu Taxi, and I want to feel that same feeling again. I remind myself again and again that this entire experience was but a good beginning. I am thankful for it, especially to all who took a chance on me and helped me realize it.

Vasant Nath studied English Literature at St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi and went on to do a Master’s in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK. He worked as assistant to director Deepa Mehta on her Oscar nominated feature film Water, after which he joined director Bharat Bala, whom he assists in production, shoot and script development. To know more about the film visit www.shanutaxi.com.