The Journey Of Sheesh Mahal, An Indie Film 10 Years In The Making

I watched Sheesh Mahal in November, 2021 at Rama Naidu Studios when the team hosted limited previews awaiting a theatrical release. It didn’t release then, and they had to wait another two years to get a streaming release. Sasi, the filmmaker, informed me that someone from the streaming platform had attended the preview and encouraged the streamer to take it. But before its release on ETV Win on February 22 last week, the team screened the film for a few days at Prasads. And interestingly enough, Sheesh Mahal opens with a shot of two kids, Fakeer (Sai), a ragpicker, and his friend Yashu, a balloon vendor. It's a dark shot, barely lit by the stray light coming off of the huge logo outside Prasads Multiplex. Fakeer is fascinated by the building; its mirrored facade, a sheesh mahal, if you will, and the many things hidden underneath.

I was curious whether the team's choice to host screenings at Prasads is informed by the film or whether it's the other way around. "It's always been a dream of mine since 2015 to screen one of our films at Prasads,” Sasi tells me. Now, when I watch the film, I see the filmmaker most in the character of Fakeer. Sasi's determination finds a spot in Fakeer's fascination with Prasads. When Fakeer saves money and visits the place, he is done with it, and the film then starts tracing his journey experiencing the festival and cinema up close. It's also probably the filmmaker letting us in and showing us what cinema means to him.

Art is where what we survive survives, reads a line from Kaveh Akbar's poem, The Palace. Whether we acknowledge it or not, art is how most of humanity copes with the futility of existence. Art as a form of entertainment isn't a bad way to look at it either. But there is this popular and culturally detrimental notion that mainstream cinema is the way it is because your average working-class viewer does not want to see themselves on-screen. They come to a movie theatre to relax, laugh, and look at a life that is far removed from their reality, or any reality in general. There might be some truth in it, but it is discouraging to see a trend of filmmakers choosing to treat this as gospel to hide inadequacies.

The filmmaker duo of Rohit and Camp Sasi are a well-established niche. They aren't mainstream yet, but they have an enviable and loyal following. The journey of this particular film is fascinating because it spans at least 10 years and touches upon every aspect of filmmaking and the business built on it. They began the film's shooting in December 2013 but were only able to finish it in 2020. Sasi says that money wasn't the only issue. The technicians working on the film were busy as well. This is understandable considering the people they chose for this project. Cinematographer Gnana Shekar, music composer Vivek Sagar, and sound designer Sanal George are coveted artists. Sasi and Rohit, who are known to juggle more than two projects at a time, were positively distracted as well. When one hears that the film took eight years to make, their first instinct would be to fill in the blanks and paint a discouraging picture. I did too, but after speaking with him, I now see it as an exercise in patience and creative abundance. "Filmmaking is fun for us,” declares Sasi, whose motto is to make as many films as possible. This explains his reluctance to use words like passion; an onerous word that often results in joyless seriousness.

Most of the films or series made by this duo are anthologies. This could easily get redundant, but they manage to turn it into their strength, most of which comes from the way they write the screenplay and edit the film. Sasi agrees enthusiastically. "Rohit’s cut and Vivek’s music are pure magic." Indeed. The film in discussion has stories about people from many walks of life. So, it overlaps dialogue from one story with visuals from another, telling us two tales without losing anything in transit. Every transition is enriched by perfect timing and technique. When I was told that the film was shot with only an outline in mind, where the script was improvised by taking cues from the surroundings, I was that much more impressed by Avanti Ruya's eye (Rohit, inspired by the Coen brothers', uses the pseudonym to edit their films).

On the face of it, Sheesh Mahal too is an anthological film about a bunch of people whose lives brush against one another at the Children's Film Festival, which happened in Hyderabad in 2013. RK (Rahul Ramakrishna) is a frustrated filmmaker looking for inspiration, Lavanya is a teenager on her first trip away from home and family and Feroze is a canteen owner trying to make ends meet. Sheesh Mahal is also a tribute to the old city and the dreamers who inhabit its many crumpled lanes. Despite the changes, its old-world charm is still intact and an intricate part of its fiber. So much so that the air there smells different; much like an old book that hasn't been opened in decades does—pungent and precious. If the locations look and feel authentic, it is because they are. The titles even credit the Streets of Hyderabad under Production Design. When you watch it now, in 2024, it doubles down as a time capsule; an unwitting documentation of a city in perpetual flux.

Feroze, the canteen owner at a film theatre part of the International Children's Film Festival, encourages Gopal, his helper, to watch a film sometime. And even if a wall is all that separates him from the screen, Gopal is overworked and has no time, so he shrugs away the suggestion. Feroze, on the other hand, walks in and out of screenings sporadically. Until one day he walks inside and is pleasantly confronted by Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven. A time cut later, we see him sitting on a chair, still as a rock—a familiar feeling wherein a moving piece of art renders you motionless. When Gopal walks in, Feroze starts to narrate the movie's plot. Everything that happens from here on—the involvement with which Feroze tells the story, Gopal’s soft sobs as a result—is the most poignant counterargument to the aforementioned theory of entertainment. 

When asked if this was deliberate messaging, Sasi agrees that producers love to underestimate the average viewer. "Janaalaki ekkadhandi (It won't strike a chord with people) is a common sentiment". He also thinks that audiences are conditioned to equate slice-of-life cinema with boredom, but the filmmaker's reason behind writing this scene is different. When Sasi first watched Abbas Kiarostami's Khane-ye doust kodjast? (Where Is The Friend's Home?), he was just as stunned as Feroze. “I was amazed how such a small idea can be turned into a film”. This creative act of gently stretching a simple moment into a feature film is emblematic of Iran's humanist cinema and a great influence on this duo's filmmaking. Sasi wanted to pay tribute to it by doing the same with Feroze's character. Majidi's Children of Heaven wasn't playing at the festival, but Sasi wanted it to be the film Feroze finds his reflection in. Movies are dreamcatchers, after all. 

While a voiceover in the film says that Rahul Ramakrishna's RK is greedy for great cinema, I ask Sasi, half expecting a cool no, 'Does fame and money mean anything to you?’, he has no problem admitting that they aspire to be and are proper commercial filmmakers. "Maakoo manchi car la lo tiragaali, bank balance lu undaali, inkaa chaalaa kaavaali ani untundi" (We too want fancy cars, decent bank balance, and much more). The absence of pretence is rather refreshing. He then tells me that they sustain thanks to their fans. "During the first lockdown, Hriday Ranjan of Film Companion South recommended our Story Discussion web series along with a couple of other Telugu titles. Through that, we found a fan from Rajahmundry, who is a doctor. He gave us money to do a short film."

Sheesh Mahal too was shaped by support and love that came the duo's way, at times from unexpected corners. The film ends with thanking Rajeev Ravi, and Sasi reveals that he was the one who introduced them to Piyush Mishra. "We showed Rajeev Sheesh Mahal rushes, (and) he was very impressed." Mishra wrote three songs, sang two of them, and even composed one, yet he only took eleven rupees of remuneration. "When Piyush came to Hyderabad to sing, we became very greedy and asked him for one more song. He agreed and gave us his own tune." Stories like this might be rare, but they manage to slightly dent the dog-eat-dog-world reputation that shadows the film industry.

Prompted by the experience I had at the preview show I attended where a viewer laughed merely because a trans woman named Namitha was onscreen, I asked Sasi whether he ever worries about the viewer’s response beforehand. "Rohit and I are the first audiences, what we want to see is the highest and only priority," was his response. In another instance, after answering my question about his favourite filmmaker with Rohit and Sasi, he preemptively accused himself of vanity. "Too self-indulgent kada? We have that tag also, very self-indulgent filmmakers ani." In an industry where most filmmakers abandon their lofty ideals at the first sign of a setback, it is a miracle that these two continue to stand their ground. If self-indulgence is their survival mechanism, then who am I to judge?

I again spoke to him after the OTT release to enquire about the response to the film and Sasi casually remarked that it's been mixed. Since he isn’t on social media anymore, everything comes to him via Rohit. When I brought up the screenings at Prasads, Sasi was enthusiastic. They found out that multiplexes are approachable without the barrier of a distributing unit. As long as the seats are filling and the screens are free, a filmmaker can reach out to a multiplex, like Prasads or PVR, for a screening. He tells me, rather excitedly, how despite their directions not to, the lights were turned on when the end credits started rolling to the tune of Mishra’s ‘Bola Sa Mann’. And how despite the Pavlovian urge to get up, no one in the audience did. The greatest gift a viewer can give a filmmaker is their time. Is this wonderful act of reaffirmation worth the film’s long and arduous journey? I didn’t want to risk a ‘no’, so I didn’t ask.