15 Seconds A Lifetime Archives The TikTok Generation Before The App’s Unceremonious Ban

"Chutiyagiri" — a public perception of what happens, well happened, on TikTok when it was stoking fires across the country's younger generation. "Nalle log" was another sting thrown at the 200+ million users who spent hours scrolling through and creating content on the app, trying to push their videos through the jammed algorithm, achieving some semblance of virality, fame, or money. Snigdha Poonam wrote of the app for The Atlantic, "In theory, TikTok is just an app where users post short videos, but in practice it's the stage on which teenagers across the world are competing for attention, for celebrity, and, in India, for a completely different life."

Director Divya Kharnare decided to soften the spotlight on this stage, focusing his camera on Mayur Natekar of Mumbai as he began this journey to becoming a TikTok star. Produced by Hardik Mehta and Divya, the documentary 15 Seconds A Lifetime archives Mayur's coming of age. Mayur and Divya were college mates who exchanged stories and biographies in snippets, the way hours in between classes are whiled away. When Mayur confessed his intention to "start this TikTok thing, doing it properly", Divya's archiving instinct sprung to the surface. What if he follows Mayur around documenting his journey? "It was also about checking my patience, my persistence about whether I could make a film or not. We were also figuring out how to make a film," Divya tells me over a call. 

Mayur's family — a boisterous mother, a precocious father, a needling younger brother — were game, but Mayur was initially uncomfortable, an awkwardness and worry that soon wore thin. What started off as a three-month-long project, became a two year odyssey of documenting and editing the film, during which Mayur achieved some semblance of TikTok fame (70,000 followers), while gradually getting disillusioned by the nature of its engagement, till the app itself got banned in the early months of the pandemic. For months, Divya would shoot Mayur, twice or thrice a week, with a budget of 25 lakhs buoying a 3-person team, a Canon 77D and a basic Shotgun mic. They ended up with around 100 hours of footage.

On impulse, Divya sent a cold email to director Hardik Mehta (Famous In Ahmedabad, Kamyaab) with a trailer cut of the film. Hardik replied within the hour, the next day they got on a call, and soon he was on board, giving Divya's team the resources to carry out the sound design, live music recording, and colour grading in studios that were expensive. (All the TikTok songs in the film had to be originally composed, because of copyright.) 

What are the limitations of pursuing a documentary in which the protagonist is a friend? In a centerpiece scene of the 50-minute film, Mayur colours his hair platinum blonde and as he enters his home, the camera respectfully stays outside, documenting the anger of the mother, the snide comments of the brother. Mayur himself walks around, hurt, pretending to do something, pick something, find something, before walking out. His discomfort is visible. He wonders if they should stop this project. Divya tells me that Mayur did not want this scene to make it to the final edit, but over the months, was convinced of its importance, its place in the constellation, its emotive reach. Mayur's body language has that bending, reluctant sadness, the kind that he tries not to show by sturdy-ing his stance, pretending he doesn't care for the comments, but his searching eyes reveal what is burning within.    

Today, Mayur is trying to replicate his fame on Instagram, using his body — now acquiring that sculpted look — with videos of him doing pull-ups in the gym, photos of flexed muscles, either bare or bulging through tight clothes. With 14.8k followers, it's a far cry from his TikTok days. But online fame has become a mere side-project for him. He has a 9-5 job, and has earned enough money in the intervening years to move his family out, into a better furnished home. Some dreams die a slow death, giving way to life as it is.  

The film can be streamed on NYIFF online