Sleepless in Bangalore
Documenting Mentorship and Its Role In Society
Documenting users and projects is both my favorite thing to do and also one of the most anxiety provoking. For filmmakers, shooting in the field is when we are fully on stage, even though we ironically are way behind the camera and crew, observing interactions, and trying furiously to connect the dots and not miss any potential opportunities for footage.
The places I go to document are never “easy”. I’ve filmed in Liberia with former child soldiers, in communities across Nigeria, and in HIV and AIDS orphanages in India. While filming in these places is often challenging, the vibrancy of the environment, and the honesty of the characters can’t be captured on a Hollywood set or in an apartment in Manhattan. Discomfort often translates as authenticity in footage.
Mentorship is a powerful force in many people’s lives, certainly mine. Mentor Together, a Bangalore based organisation, has been working since 2010 across India to pair professionals with youth in order to improve life skills and educational support for those without the same educational opportunities across the country. Mentors in the programme meet in person, which can limit their reach to urban areas in India. As technology leads and implementers, we came in and helped extend the program to reach girls in rural settings by making the services available on a mobile platform, Mentor to Go. Powerful work no doubt, but without any face to face meetings, it definitely made filming the relationships a bit tricky.
Can meaningful relationships develop from contact through a mobile phone? The short answer is yes. The plethora of dating apps, and the countless stories of marriages originating from them, show that mobile can be a good place as any to start a connection.
But what if it started and ended there. What if there was no “let’s get off this phone and meet”? Can mobile sustain meaningful relationships without face-to-face interaction?
For the mentors this was an easy question to answer. These women, many of them successful professionals who had been supported by mentors through their careers, wanted to give back to others. While committed to service and volunteering, the women did not have the time or ability to commute or travel, either due to family or work obligations. Mobile made it possible.
But what about for the tenth grader planting seeds 5 hours outside of Bombay? Or making chai in a town outside of Bangalore? Not only would they have to borrow feature phones from their families, but mentorship was a new concept to them entirely.
As I spoke to the mentees I was struck by how many of them said their mentors were “like a sister to them”, and how they felt they could “trust them” for support and advice. Many of the mentors reiterated this closeness. I was awed by this — how could they feel so close and so comfortable when they have never met?
The truth is that oftentimes the most discomfort in many of these communities can often be felt within the family structure. Even today, for example, if I talk to my relatives about their marital trouble, they are more concerned with how I found out about it, than with working together to make things better. The comedian and actor, Hasan Minhaj, recently referred to this concept in his solo show. Log Kya Kahenge — What will people say? This is the predominant concern that sets panic in many South Asian communities.
In many Western households that I know, people disengage with their relatives because they prefer to live honestly, rather than keeping up a pretense to preserve familial relations. But for other cultures, and definitely with Indian cultures, that is often not the option. People live in secrecy for their entire lives, and often even a glimmer of a conflict is both hidden quickly and widely shared amongst relatives. This makes trust a rare commodity.
The mentees and mentors in the program do not know each other’s exact addresses, much less their respective families. All calls are routed through our system so that personal contact details and phone numbers are never disclosed . Privacy is key. They can each share as much information as they want, but there’s trust that it will only be shared between them. For many of these girls these calls were their rare opportunity to confide in someone, to ask for help, to share their fears and dreams.
Can mobile sustain meaningful relationships? In some contexts it may be the only way.
Watch our video on mobile mentorship.
Written by Ambika Samarthya-Howard
