Embrace shoot – Recce in Rajasthan !

In February  we at Global Rickshaw were on a roll ! Apart from filming the inspiring video diaries for GOAL we were making an AD film for Embrace.

Twenty million pre-mature babies are born every year of which 4 million die annually  mainly because of hypothermia. Those that do survive often develop life-long health problems. In a country like ours, many deliveries in the rural areas take place at home, hospitals are hard to reach and the treatment is expensive. A traditonal incubator costs $20,000 and requires electricity. Inspired by these facts the team at Embrace developed an infant warmer that  is portable, works without electricity and can be made available locally. Know more about embrace here.

For almost a month, Aparna and I went back and forth on the location for the Embrace shoot. We wanted to depict a really harsh living condition and Aparna’s references were a few mud houses in the middle of Thar desert. Phew ! While a studio shoot would have been easy and there would have been a compromise on the desert feel, we decided to opt out and go real ! I went viral on my needs and called up friends and acquaintances in Rajasthan, Gujrat and in the Himalayas! Absolute serendipity! A month ago I was connected to Gitanjali a Gandhi fellow working in Rajgarh, Churu district Rajasthan. Without the the support of the Gandhi fellows we would not have been able to shoot this film ! Thank you guys !

On March 2oth, after shopping for White clothing and wandering in the Delhi heat for a few hours, Aparna and I had a terrible heat stroke! However, We decided to keep moving as per plan and take a train to Sadulpur JN the next day! KILLER HEAT!! what do you expect in the middle of a desert!

Gitanjali and Vaibhav came to pick us up on their bikes. Gitanjali had planned a visit to Seaua, a village 30 kms from where we were. Wearing kurta pyjamas and covered fully in our brand new white dupattas,  we rode 30 freaking KMS at 2.30 pm !

An unending straight road with beautiful landscapes and bare trees!! My heart wanted to sing aloud : “Banjar hai sab banjar hai” Atlast we reached the village. Even in this dry land, everything was soo picturesque ! the houses and the colours and the clothing ! Wherever you place your camera, there is a frame ! A-MA-ZING!

We were welcomed by a bunch of shy kids who later sang for us some Rajasthani folk songs. We now set out hunting for the perfect location! One house after other…. We were offered tea, chaas, lassi and more ! Indian hospitality rocks ! After an hour of wandering just when we were about to give up declaring that this village is not it, Aparna spotted this absolutely perfect house with mud walls for our first scene !

I went inside and spoke to the women there and asked for permission to shoot. She could understand a little bit of my hindi and I picked up on a few rajasthani words when she spoke … her smile through the dupatta was very calming ! The women said she had no problems but she lived with her husband who was a drunkard and when he is drunk one can say nothing !! Well at that point, Aparna and I could only sympathize with her! To see the strength of that lady was something ! The village school master helped us sort this out ! He asked us not to worry about the husband and if he created a scene to just give him some money for his alcohol!

Once the location was locked we had to lock the cast ! Imagine getting villagers to act ! We were in a village where women would cover their face with a duppata when the elders were around them and in THIS very village we were looking for a women, a less than one year old baby, a couple and two girls to act in our film ! Surely we were going bonkers !  Unbelievable but with the support of the primary school principle we were able to fix that too ! Although everything looked settled, we were never 100%confident. Everything was sooo unpredictable!

The next day, we visited Jaswantpura with Manish. This was the easy part of our adventure. The principle was a happy old man. He took us on a village tour. We fixed our location and now we were looking for our star baby! house after house ! I think that day we must have had 4 cups of tea and 2 glasses of lassi in a span of 4 hours !

This was it ! The heat had got to us and we reached home and collapsed ! I couldn’t wait any longer and decided to take a bus the very next day and go back to Delhi ! Well, travelling in a Rajasthan ST bus for 8 hours straight, without food, sitting on the last seat next to two policemen and a handcuffed prisoner  was no less an adventure than wandering in the middle of no where !

We were now hoping to cool down and be back with a bang to shoot in Rajgarh the following week !

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