Starring: Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Sarah,Richa Nayyar,Gulab Soni Story: Shashi Verma Screenplay: Narayanan AV, Shashi Verma, Mayank Bhushan Camera: Rajendra Sharma Sound: Mohandas V.P. Editing: Narayanan AV Direction: Narayanan AV, Shashi Verma Language: Hindi Duration: 14 minutes Format: DV Year of Production: 2003

Synopsis

"The Touch"

Debu, a blind beggar, and Suneela live on a railway platform. Debu depends on Suneela's reassuring touch. She is always there for him - comforting his soul and acting as his helper. Suneela accepts all his compliments as long as they remain just that. But Debu's aspirations soar higher and he proposes marriage to concretize their relationship. Suneela flies into a rage as she knows this can never be… She is a eunuch.

A casual evening conversation sowed the seeds in making a short film on the above story. To me, it had the feeling of a piece of paper being tossed about in a whiff of wind. Along with my co-director, I began thinking of realizing the essence of the relationship between Debu and Suneela. Of course we were quite sure nobody would come forward to finance our little 'arty' dream. But our instinct just told us to go ahead. We took loans, favours from friends and what have you and did go ahead with just the honest intention of making something we believed in. Fortunately we had the support of friends and our technical team as well - cameraman Rajendra Sharma and sound recordist Mohandas VP.

This was followed by countless visits to VT station, sorry, Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Due to stringent railway rules that required us to pay the railways for official permission to shoot - at one stage we even thought of changing the backdrop of the story. But then we realized this idea went against the film we had set out to make. We finally got 8 hours of shooting permission at Panvel Station about 50 km outside Mumbai. Plenty of adjustments had to made plenty - A two day shoot had to be cut down to one, we had to overcome lack of light and yet complete the number of shots planned. This in a way dictated our shooting style. Much of the shooting was thus done handheld and sometimes we even had to overlook certain elements of crowd control. We boarded the train from GTB Nagar at 4.30 pm shot through the night and returned around the same time the next day.

As for the cast it was an interesting mix of one experienced actor Dibyendu Bhaatacharya from NSD and one with great acting ambitions - Saurabh Bhardwaj. Luckily, their chemistry clicked which aided the shooting greatly.

Of course, the edit revealed areas where we could have improved, making us cringe at some of our mistakes but also giving us a sense of elation as some of the moments were captured wonderfully. Overall the confidence of having attempted and completing the film gave us a sense of satisfaction even though it was tough on us financially.

Finally, it was most heartening to get a positive reaction from a number of people as we nervously began to show the film around. In particular, the eunuch's acting was largely appreciated.

While a lot can be criticized about the presentation of a low-budget short film like this, but as it is said about film - something is always better than nothing. It would have been easy to just sit back and not do it at all.

We are thankful to all those who supported us in whatever way, and had the decency to say "Yes, an appreciable beginning". A satisfying result, beyond our expectations.

Narayanan AV is an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune with specialization in Film Editing. The Touch is his first fiction film.