Producer/Director: Neha Kaul
Cast: Deepak Dobriyal
Photography: Aparna Jayakumar
Editor: Anand Subaya

Ek Pyaali Jannat transfers a poem by Mirza Ghalib, the great nineteenth-century poet of Delhi, onto the visual tapestry of present-day Mumbai as seen through the eyes of one of the many dreamers who wander the streets of the city. The relationship between the drifting protagonist and his universe is presented through the metaphor of the milky sweet tea, or chai, that is brewed on every street corner.

A cup of chai is synonymous with taking a break from the day’s rush, stopping to look at the world, finding comfort in a sip of something freshly brewed and soothing. As expressed by the film’s suggestive stop-motion photography and recurring musical motif, the protagonist is in need of many moments of escape and release on his interrupted journey through life. The camera records his face thinking, puzzling, and dreaming, even as he seems to be measuring how many sips of tea he has left in his glass before it is time to move on and away.

Yet it appears, from the way that he himself sometimes stops to frame the world with his hands that he himself is a photographer, able to imagine himself too as framed against the city’s teeming and visually saturated scenes. Its floating, digressive visual style counterpointed by the strong rhythms of verse, Ek Pyaali Jannat is an evocation – about as long as the experience of a good cup of tea – of all those moments of contemplation and reverie that make up the secret music of a life.

Text by Chandrahas Choudhury

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Twitter: @Upper_na

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Mumbai Boss: http://mumbaiboss.com/2010/09/09/art-of-the-day-parsi-weightlifters/

GQ India: http://www.gqindia.com/content/parsis-muscles#3

Mumbai Mirror: http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/134/201009202010092017124158837ff8b51/Parsi-biceps-captured-on-film.html

Hindustan Times: http://www.hindustantimes.com/Entertainment/Art/How-many-stories-can-a-single-picture-tell/Article1-751962.aspx

The Times of India: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-09-28/mumbai/28226262_1_parsi-zoroastrian-pack-abs

DNA: http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_a-photography-exhibition-that-looks-at-gender-bastions_1326398

Indian Express: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/muscle-power/676069/0

Mid-day: http://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/2010/sep/170910-Aparna-Jayakumar-exhibition-Kala-Ghoda-power-lifting-bodybuilding-championships.htm

Rediff.com: http://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/sep/08/slide-show-1-when-the-parsi-community-flexed-its-muscles.htm

LPV Magazine: http://lpvmagazine.com/2011/11/letters-from-india-indian-photography-comes-out-of-its-closet/

I was a student of Art History, Silver Photography and Ancient Greek Literature at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts in Italy and Greece. Previously, I have studied Photography and Film at the Sophia Polytechnic, and Psychology and Sociology at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Ever since I began my career as a photographer, I have worked independently, with generous doses of encouragement, criticism and counsel from my mentors – Eli Reed, Sooni Taraporevala and Jeroo Mulla. My greatest artistic influences have been Egon Schiele, André Kertész, Raghubir Singh, Woody Allen, Wong Kar-Wai and Iranian cinema.

My work has been featured in Travel+Leisure, CNN Traveller, CNNgo.com, Verve, The Sunday Guardian, Lonely Planet, Elle, Femina and other publications. I was nominated for the international photography award Prix Pictet in 2009. My work has been exhibited at the Aegean Center in Paros, Lincoln Center in New York City, Villa Borghese in Rome, Art Bazis in Budapest, Strand Art Room and Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai and at the Delhi Photo Festival 2011. I have shot publicity stills for films such as Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Kaminey’, Sooni Taraporevala’s ‘Little Zizou’,  and the Harvey Keitel-starrer ‘Gandhi of the Month’. I have been teaching Photography to undergraduate media students at Sophia College since 2009.

Fascinated with the Bengaliness of Calcutta, and particularly with the men, I roamed the streets of Calcutta looking for these fictional characters I had read about in books and seen in Satyajit Ray’s films.  When I did find them, I decided to accost them in the street with my camera and make portraits of them. Many complied, some were suspicious, and others would have liked to have posed for a picture but they were rushing to catch the tram to India Coffee House to join their fellow babu friends for a chat over a long and meandering coffee.

(This project has been supported by a grant from the University of Oslo, Norway in collaboration with Drik India and Pathshala South Asia Media Institute, Dhaka.)

The first taxis arrived in Bombay in 1911. One hundred years later, a sad love story ensues between man and machine. The government has issued a notice that says that taxis over 25 years old must be officially removed from the streets. The Padmini has been the primary source of livelihood for thousands of immigrants who come to Mumbai in search of a better life. The shiny new vehicles recommended by the government to replace Padminis are unaffordable for many taxi drivers, making their lives very insecure in this expensive city.

Through the disappearing taxis, I want to tell the story of Mumbai – a city in flux, rapidly changing, ever-ready to throw out the old and embrace the new. As long as the purpose of the upper classes is served, there is little care for the lives of the not so privileged. While Mumbai houses the world’s most expensive home (‘Antilia’), 60% of the city’s population lives in slums. This kind of disparity between the rich and the poor exists in other cities of the world too, but it is at its glaring best in Mumbai.