Synopsis
Set in rural South India, Vanaja explores
the chasm that divides classes as a young girl
struggles to come of age. Vanaja (Mamatha Bhukya)
is the 14 year-old daughter of a poor, low caste
fisherman who goes to work in the house of the
local landlady, Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari),
in hopes of learning Kuchipudi dance while earning
a keep. Matters go well until the landlady’s
son returns from the US, pitching her into a tale
of class, family and animus from which there is
only one escape…
Vanaja was written as a project submission
for my first semester class at Columbia University
in the Fall of 2001. Inspired by a child’s
scream in the film Sophie’s Choice,
it was to be a tale about mother-child separation,
but as it developed over the next three semesters,
it gradually took on the elements of class distinction
and conflict that continue to infuse our society
and culture even today.
Pre-production finally began early in 2004. The
first hurdle was finding appropriate talent and
crew in a state where most filming was big-budget
Tollywood (the Telugu language version of Bollywood)
that was particular to my state of Andhra Pradesh.
Given the rural nature of the story, and the tendency
of most local acting to lean towards the theatrical,
it was clear that non-actors drawn from hutments,
labor camps and the vast Indian middle class would
have to be chosen for the film. Not only that,
they would have to be put through lengthy acting
training, the lead would have to learn Kuchipudi
dance – no easy task, and the landlady would
have to learn Carnatic classical music - if the
film was to have any sense of authenticity at
all.
As a first step, household staff and their friends
were roped into various capacities – making
flyers that would be inserted into newspapers
at night, canvassing at schools, visiting local
hutments and persuading dwellers to come for auditions
while simultaneously combating rumours that we
were after their kidneys, pleading with government
bureaucrats, putting up posters etc.When we wanted
to place an ad in the newspapers for the landlady’s
role, we found to our surprise that we couldn’t
do so. So instead, we decided to advertise for
household help: Female, aged 35 to 50, needed
to care for elderly parents. When unsuspecting
ladies turned up for an interview, conversations
would inadvertently steer towards film, what a
wonderful art acting was, and how rarely ordinary
people got a chance to prove their talent.
 When
we visited her school, the lead, Mamatha Bhukya,
almost didn’t get selected. Her hair was
too short. But at her teacher’s insistence,
she sang a song about Gandhiji so sweetly, that
it was impossible not to short-list her. During
the year of acting and dance training that followed
in the basement of our house - to have started
from scratch in both these fields and progressed
to what you see on screen - was amazing to say
the least. Her favorite scene is the one where
Vanaja returns with her father to the
landlady’s house begging to be taken back.
Although only 15, she feels that she internalized
the character of a mother so deeply that she couldn’t
stop crying even well after the scene was over.
It was also one of the happiest moments for her
to see tears in the eyes of the watching crew.
They were so moved that they couldn’t help
but burst into heartfelt applause as she was led
out.
Location scouting proved another challenge. Finding
the landlady’s mansion, a building grand
enough, stable and secluded enough to meet the
needs of the script was turning out to be an impossibility
given the sad state of disrepair that most rural
bungalows have fallen into. Finally however, princely
connections to erstwhile rulers of tiny kingdoms
proved invaluable in securing a building in Bobbili,
a town close to the coast. The problem was that
it was full of snakes, overrun by vegetation and
bats, and sections of the building were too weak
to support filming. A team led by Nagulu Busigampala,
a tailor, turned gardener, turned chauffeur, turned
production designer took over the job of cleaning,
repairing, planting, painting and furnishing the
place. They assembled a chicken coup in the yard,
a pen for goats, painted the walls and roped in
locals to bring in their livestock to trample
the place and make it look inhabited. As news
spread, people were more than willing to bring
in sacks of rice husk, bricks, bullock carts,
farming tools, hay stacks and more. They didn’t
just loan them for the shoot, they wanted to act
as extras. Our surprised crew warned them that
they would have to pass a very severe test called
‘no looking into camera’ and save
a mishap or two, before we knew it they had mastered
the art and no amount of camera moving would ever
trick them into it.
Finding an elephant was another nightmare. We
wanted to find one locally to save it a truck
ride. An agent in Mumbai promised to get us a
temple elephant close to the coastal city of Vizag
– a day’s journey by bus from Hyderabad.
So we sent a crew, parking ourselves in a hotel
and waiting until he arrived. When we called him
on his cell phone, we were assured that he was
minutes away and held up in traffic. Hours later,
there was still no sign of him. Repeated calls
over that day and the next gave us explanations
that he had to run here or there on urgent missions
trying to locate our beast. Each ended with assurances
that we were almost there. A few days later, on
a hunch, we called him from another telephone,
pretending to be another party, and to no surprise,
we found that he hadn’t even departed Mumbai!
Needless to say, we settled for another agent
and a longer truck ride.
Dealing with the bureaucracy was very similar,
except that the elephant in the room was the money
that nobody seemed to talk about. All this was
indeed a hard learning curve, but we were learning
fast, given that the shoot was scheduled to start
in a month ie January of 2005.
When shooting did commence, on Jan 13th, looking
through a Super 16mm film lens for the first time
was a great shock for me, having never shot on
film before. All of my previous projects were
video shorts - which had a very different aspect
ratio - one that had dictated all of my storyboarding
and camera moves. But DOP Milton Kam’s reassuring
and supporting presence, a crew that realized
that making a Telugu language Independent film
such as this was worth pouring life blood into,
and a cast that was nervous yet rearing to go,
made all the difference in giving the film a momentum
that sent it sailing. For any independent film
to succeed, a hundred miracles need to happen,
and we feel grateful that in our case they all
did.
Rajnesh Domalpalli worked as a Computer
Engineer in California’s Silicon Valley
before deciding to take up Film at Columbia University
in New York and graduating with an MFA in 2006.
Vanaja is his first Feature Film. To
know more about the film visit www.vanajathefilm.com.
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