Abhishek Shah & Hellaro: a Journey of Faith
by Shujaat Mirza

As the debutante director of "Hellaro", Abhishek Shah recalled his life journey at the 'Kalaansh' monthly talk session, conceived as a cosy gathering of creative minds by Chaula Doshi, the element of good fortune seems to have played an important role throughout his life and made timely interventions and sometimes in life all it takes is the raw courage of a leap of faith to be duly rewarded.
He narrated how he won the top prize in a mono-acting competition when he enacted a scene with a seven minute long monologue, which was the first push of dame luck, which sparked a lifelong love for theatre in him. As luck would have it, his father was in a clerical position in Bank of Baroda, where there was a vibrant drama culture and they used to hold an annual drama festival and Abhishek could indulge his passion and hone his rudimentary skills there
Once again, at a certain critical point in his life,as he recalled, Kabir Thakore, the theatre thespian, offered him a chance to perform a play, out of the blue, at the INT drama competition, as a replacement for his troupe, due to unforeseen circumstances. At that time Abhishek was working in Akashwani, the government radio station, at Vadodara and had been out of touch with theatre world for a while. So he took the offer after some hesitation as the event was at Ahmedabad and would demand a daily gruelling trip to and fro. Luckily the play went on to win the top prize, and became a stepping stone that got him good visibility and boosted his confidence.
Or the time when he wasn't even a student of H K College, in Ahmedabad, which was known for the lead it took in experimental theatre under the tutelage of Saumya Joshi, the famous maverick poet cum playwright, and yet he approached him to be a part of the theatre group there and as luck would have it, suddenly an avenue opened up because Saumya had launched 'Fade-in' theatre group just around that time to allow people from outside to participate in the theatre activities there. This group was responsible for deepening the roots of an experimental and subversive subculture of theatre in Ahmedabad, against the general impression of the city being a graveyard for meaningful theatre.Theatre and commerce itself seem like a misnomer and in that arid place they strived to make a difference.
As we can see, his journey speeded up on a learning curve rather organically and by a stroke of luck at each critical period in life, to propel him closer to his dreams.
Abhishek Shah made a valid point that as art allows us a space to articulate ideas that one cannot routinely express in day to day life, without the risk and consequences that such articulation entails, because the ideas are framed within a fictional format, hence it is imperative to take up bold, taboo topics, be it on caste, race, religion, women's emancipation, otherwise it would be futile, if one let go of such an opportunity to bring these issues to the fore before a captive audience. And this thought planted the seed of scripting a movie about the nefarious concept of suppression. As he vehemently is against the notion of anyone being dictated to or told to do what he/she should do and the idea of 'Hellaro', his award winning film germinates from this thought bubble and was triggered by two incidents in particular that he experienced first-hand. The first was when he had a chance reunion with a female friend on Facebook with whom he reconnected there, but there was no recognisable image accompanying the profile and as he enquired about the reason for it, she said it was because her husband disapproved of it. The second incident happened, just a kilometre from where he lived in Baroda in Makarpura, where he used to go to watch the Garbas being performed in a deprived area/ colony where the lady who did his household work came from, He saw the transformation that took place for those nine nights of Navratri, when the women from that area got freedom to dance for hours and he saw how they were lost in the passion of the moment that for a minute it would seem they possessed such an energy that they might kill anyone who comes in their way. He got the outlines of the story from these incidents, about a remote village in Kachchh in the early 1970s, and the women there defying their husbands to dance the forbidden garba and the consequences of that in their lives for overstepping patriarchal restrictions. Hence, 'dance' is the pivot around which the movie runs and maybe the central character that connects all the dots.
He then spoke of the multifarious challenges that he faced when he embarked on his journey to make the movie, and again the element of providence comes out strongly, as we see when he narrated the story to Saumya Joshi, whom he wanted on board as a song-writer as he felt only he could do justice to the songs in a movie in which the songs are the centrepiece and the most crucial aspect of the movie, despite knowing that Saumya doesn't write songs or dialogues for Gujarati movies, on the sidelines of the Gujarat Lit Fest, as the last audiences had left and he, Saumya and a team mate alone were left at the venue, and Saumya was so touched by the narration, that he called him over to his hangout and started discussing the song as if he had already committed to writing it.
To the way music director Mehul Surti agreed to compose the music for the movie, even within the strict time limits set for him to compose them, as the songs had to be recorded well before the shooting commenced, as they were needed for filming the sequences, and to get it all done within time, Abhishek and Saumya went by road to Surat and did an all-nighter with Mehul, in a race against time, and thrashed out the final words and compositions overnight.
Since the Garba dance was going to be the mainstay of the movie, Abhishek wanted to have the very best choreography for his movie and wanted professionals who understood the demands of dance as well as cinema and he zeroed in on Sameer and Arsh Tanna, who had done some fantastic folk dance sequences in 'Hum dil de chuke Sanam' and 'Ram-leela', though he knew they were beyond his league as a first-time director, but as Abhishek said, one should always think big, and so he called up Sameer and flew to Mumbai to meet him, and they met at Taj in Mumbai over a coffee and Abhishek gave a brief narration of the story to them and then asked Sameer whether they would do the movie and Sameer said that should that even be a question after the story that you told me. So again things somehow fell in place by some amazing luck. Something similar happened when Abhishek approached noted cinematographer Tribhuvan Babu for the movie and when he called him up and narrated the story, he said when should I come for the shooting. So a good story and conviction attracts people like a magnet as they see the dedication and confidence as well as the sincerity of purpose in a person, and it doesn't matter if you are an old hand or a newbie.
When they went scouting for the perfect location for the movie in Kachchh, they had almost given up the hope of finding the right place, when they came across what looked like an abandoned bungalow right in the middle of nowhere and they saw a phone number written on the gate. Just like that they called up the owner, who, as luck would have it, was visiting his home and invited them inside for tea and as the tea was being prepared they went out to as far the motorable road went in the desert and just where it ended and lo behold, right in front of the desert was the location they were looking for. The requisite permissions to start the shooting would take around six months as various jurisdictions overlapped, from the collector office to the police to the Border Security Force ( BSF).
For the shooting they actually constructed an entire village, taking photographs of that era as reference material that they sourced from the NGO Srujan's archival collection as well as noted artist Jyoti Bhatt who had shot extensively during the 70s there. These images were also used for the costumes, ornaments and other minor details. They wanted a fidelity to the period circa early 1970s and set out to achieve that meticulously, as they didn't want to compromise with the authenticity of the era depicted. And for a better impact they used sync sound, which isn't commonly used in Indian cinema. Though one of the drawbacks of that was Abhishek couldn't bring his daughter to the sets as sensitivity of mikes is greater and they capture even the minutest stomping of a kid even a few hundred metres away. The personal costs for the cast and the crew was tremendous as they shot in the scorching heat of march and april and at times the place where they stayed post packup also had power outages, yet they shouldered on and shot at odd hours. Even the hired crew for light and sound, which is usually quite unconcerned with anything but their task, went out of the way to put in their best and pulled off some amazing work. Within the limitations of budget, the light playing truant and the unbearable heat, the shooting took a toll on people yet was completed in time. Filmmaking,at the end of the day, is a group effort, with one person at the helm, but helped by a team. And it also demands many sacrifices, especially when it's a debut. When he wasn't getting an actress for a particular character, Abhisek's wife pitched in and agreed to take up the part and in doing so she had to bring her four year old daughter to the location, which isn't an easy choice to manage.
So as Abhishek said that maybe the movie won the national award for the best feature length film because the sincerity and effort must have resonated with the jury as well and it must have worked because it was an organic work and straight from the heart. Even the title is a reflection of how particular the director was about each aspect of the film-making process, as the usual word is 'Helaro' but to make it sound more hard hitting he named it "Hellaro", but only after consulting language experts about the authenticity of this variant. If that much work goes into a movie, it should surely succeed in appealing to the audience at large as well. And as they fortune favours the brave and I might add, the strong minded. There is, over-all, a serendipity to his journey.
Takeaway:
“One sees the arrival of a fresh new voice in Gujarati cinema in the league of Ketan Mehta and his work is an admixture of realism tempered with good storytelling like the Hrishikesh Mukherjee school of cinema, that makes for a compelling movie going experience and am sure he will branch out into mainstream Hindi cinema on the strength of his breakthrough work.”
© Shujaat Mirza
