Manu Joseph: Why filming reality in India is nearly impossible—and what it says about freedom of expression

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Visual: A narrow winding cobbled way in Paris. My voice: “It’s far worse to be poor in a rich country than to be poor in India. To be poor in the spectacular beauty of Paris is like Assamese art cinema trapped in a Wes Anderson scene.

Have you seen Assamese art films? I’ve seen one. Water boils.”Visual: Water boils in an impoverished Indian dwelling,My voice: “Water keeps boiling. Because it’s art cinema.

A melancholy woman combs her long hair.”Visual: Camera zooms out to show a pensive village woman combing her hair, watching water boil. I was trying to create this image in a poor tenement in Noida for a comic documentary. The actor was draped in a rustic sari, her hair oiled.

She combed her hair, the evening light was in her face, it was all perfect. This sort of scene traumatized me as a child watching Doordarshan’s sad films on Sunday afternoons. I always wished to lampoon it.

Then there was a lottery moment. In a narrow drain between her and the camera were two dead baby rats. I nudged the cameraman to exploit the gift.

But the line-producer said there was no way we could shoot them. That was odd. It was the first time since the film shoot began that this exceptional man who could get anything you wished for, had said no.

And it was for dead rats. Why? Animal cruelty, he said. But the rats were dead.

Still. He said if we wanted dead rats, we would have to make prosthetic ones. It would cost thousands of rupees.My voice: “Melancholy woman combs her hair.

Three birds fly in the air. Then everyone dies.” Not expecting to be taken seriously, I told the producer we need to shoot three birds. “Hmmm,” he said.