I recently saw a gem of a film, A Billion Colour Story, at the London Film Festival. The film, which is due to be shown at the Jio MAMI Film Festival in Mumbai later this week and next, is produced by veteran Bollywood actor-director Satish Kaushik and N Padmakumar and directed by the latter. Told through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy, played by Dhruva Padmakumar, it is a contemporary story of India, the challenges we face on a daily basis, the prejudices regarding religion, culture, age and sex and the prevailing intolerance to anything that goes beyond people’s set views. Yet, at its core, it is a story of hope and faith in human goodness.
Dhruva plays a precocious Hari Aziz, whose mixed parentage (Hindu mother, Parvati and Muslim father, Imran Aziz) makes him sort of an oddity in his school. Add to that a superior intelligence and propensity for Google, which makes him several degrees smarter than his teachers and fellow students, and his isolation is complete. His parents, both of whom graduated from film school in Australia, are in the process of shooting a film in Mumbai and are as bohemian as one can be.
When they have to sell their home to finance their film they run slam bang into Mumbai’s most prevalent prejudice, renting a flat in societies that very clearly don’t want Muslim tenants. When they finally get a home in a Muslim society, Hari’s mother’s shorts, lack of hijab and obvious liberal attitude irk their conventional and fanatical neighbours. When their financier pulls out they encounter the stereotypical Bollywood producer with his own set of demands and run from pillar to post trying to convince said producers of the validity of their concept. In one of the most evocative scenes from the film, a progressive writer-sympathizer who has just managed to raise money for their film, pays for his sympathies to the cause of tolerance.
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Despite all the travails of the lead couple the film never loses its sense of humour or its lightness of touch. The couple’s relationship with each other and their son is beautifully brought out as is that between the young lad and his first girlfriend, his parent’s friends’ daughter. Old regressive concepts are done away with by mutual consent and without being at all communal, issues are addressed head-on.
But where the film reaches the pinnacle of creativity is in its use of colours. As long as the story is being told through the young boy’s eyes it is in black and white denoting his innocence uncoloured yet by prejudices. As soon as it shifts mode to adult observation, colour makes an appearance. And strangely, though colour is the norm in today’s times, the viewer misses the usage of black and white.
A Billion Colour Story is Padamkumar’s first foray into features. With this film he has proven that his grasp of the complexity of human relationships is as firm as his perception of the convolutions of the troubled times we live in. Speaking at the festival, Satish Kaushik, who makes a brilliant appearance as a Bollywood producer in the film, said that he knew Paddy because Paddy used to be his tenant. They have already proved that together they can create magic, with their next collaboration, a story of a father and son set in Sri Lanka and Canada we hope to see them take the magic much further.
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