And/Or

And/Or

Being There...

Mirana Medina, Editing 1984

To think of my days at the Film and Television Institute of India is to shuffle a series of images in my memory. It is putting off my being in the continuum of the present to be in what was once my present; of days I truly sorely miss.

India had always been a part of my subconscious self, long before I was “sentenced” to go to FTII. At that time, no film courses were being offered in the Philippines, and the Film Center of the University of the Philippines used to send scholars abroad to study filmmaking. The UP Film Center was the first to offer workshops in filmmaking where Director Ishmael Bernal, now our National Artist in Film, used to give his lectures. He was the first Filipino to study at the FTII and was a classmate of my former teacher in scriptwriting, Mr. Surendar Chawdhary. Many scholars were sent to France, a few others to the United States, Japan, Russia and Germany. For some reason, nobody wanted to go to India. When the scholarship was offered to me, I accepted at once because I have always had in my mind the picture of a mythical and mysterious India, with a glorious past and a great civilization which I earlier encountered in my Art History class. All that overpowered the negative images about contemporary India which I had been reading about and hearing in the 80s.

When I landed at Bombay airport, no-one was there to welcome me from the Indian General Cultural Scheme Office which offered the scholarship. Confusion, uncertainty, fear enveloped me. “Where the hell am I going?” I thought. To my amazement, it was kind of a magic word when I said that I was going to FTII to study. The Immigration personnel asked me if I was going for a class in Acting. It amused me and lessened my anxiety at the same time. I realized then that FTII was a very popular and respected school.

Then I approached a short, old policeman wearing loose khaki shorts. He reminded me of a comedian in our films. Nervously, I asked him how to get to Pune. He nicely gave me directions to a taxi terminal. But even before he could finish speaking, a porter came to take my luggage and lead the way.

I got into the taxi, and after sitting inside for some time, wondered why the cab driver just kept standing outside. Then it turned out, much to my surprise, that he was waiting for other passengers to come. Not being used to a car pool system back in my country, the thought of having to ride with strangers only added to my nervousness. I held on tightly to a small knife, a cutter actually, ready for anything to happen. Passing through the Bombay roads, I relived the Indian films I had seen, especially the films of Shyam Benegal which we got to see in Indian Film Festivals. A couple of hours later, the ice finally broke between the passengers, and a conversation started. Soon enough, a kind man from Pune, a dentist as he introduced himself, offered to drop me to the FTII. What a great sigh of relief then!

I reached the FTII at noon, and the big acacia trees near the gate loomed large before me. Seeing the tropical flora, not so different from ours, made me feel immediately at home. At the girls’ hostel, I was first assigned a room at the ground floor and later transferred to a room upstairs next to Sameera Jain, if I remember correctly. It was a great time with Mrs. Gloria Koshy and my hostel mates – Reena Mohan, Uma Segal, Bina Paul and of course Dipti Bhalla who later became, through thick and thin, my closest friend during my stay at the FTII. We are still in contact – text mates in our lingo. Jay Bhunjun, who later became my husband, I also met at FTII.

To think of Pune is to think of the Ganpati Festival and its long, colourful and noisy processions. The lights of Diwali, Bhagwan Rajneesh and his ashram, Lakshmi Road and its river, the Popular Bookstore and Main Street, Bajaj tricycles and their sound, the Buddhist monks who were political science students at Ferguson college who mistook me for a fellow countryman and became my regular visitors at the FTII, Junaa Bazaar, the Indian temples, the cowshed at the FTII hillside behind the boys’ hostel where Dipti loved to sing, Mr. Nair’s Archives, the ganne ka ras corner, the post office near the gate, the cows passing down the road, the feel of henna on my hand, the wearing of saris and salwar kameez.

In my first year, photography class was my favorite. Had our house not burnt down in 1998, I could have contributed hundreds of photographs to the GraFTII photo gallery. Although watching Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy touched my heart and made me tearful even without subtitles, I experienced in Ritwick Ghatak’s films a more sublime feeling. So much so that I have named my second child after him.

Side by side with learning the ABCs of filmmaking in the Integrated Course, I struggled to learn some Marathi and Hindi words to help me get by: Namaskar! Namaste! Mera naam Mirana hai. Aap kasakay? Aap ka naam kya hai? Kitna hai? Kya yaar! Kya hogaya. Light Kaato! Teen Chapati! Dhanyavad! Zindabad!

The editing room was my home, my world, my heaven – except the noise of the Moviola, which I hated. And Kakaji was our angel. I would see him always with a big smile, ready to assist us. I enjoyed the confines of the editing room with the Steenbeck machines as I struggled to understand the film footage in Hindi. Dipti had to translate for me. It was no problem, of course, when the exercise was cutting Bollywood songs and dances. Too bad, but at the same time too good for independent filmmakers like us at the moment that non-linear editing has come around. Although I said goodbye to traditional editing in 1996, I still cherish the touch and miss the feel of real celluloid.

I learned then how to drink chai with milk and ginger, sugarcane juice with lemon and ginger too. I came to love eating chapati with dal, pulau and biryani; and enjoyed waiting for my puri to cook. I experienced, in my first month or two at the FTII, what it was like to be thrown in a pond of water during Holi, and also tasted bhaang for the first time in my life. But I never did learn to enjoy eating spicy Indian dishes.

To think of my FTII days is to hear the sound of crows at the acacia trees in the evenings, and to remember the crawling snake right outside our art direction classroom at the CRT. Of hearing different languages – Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi – as they overlapped each other in the canteen and breezed away. Being with Iranian, Vietnamese and Indonesian friends, being with Mr. Rao, Mr. Mathur and Kakaji, listening to Farouk Rustom’s music appreciation class, and attending lectures by William Greaves, the black American filmmaker who squeaked and ran away at the sight of mating cobras while holding our class in the forest. Later, he was furiously surprised as Rajiv submitted his script written on a cigarette wrapper. I remember him with his big, bulging eyes holding the cigarette wrapper and the tone of his voice as he said, “You call this... a script?” Down memory lane, I see myself and Dipti singing and shouting to our heart’s content in the hostel corridor when the place was empty during vacations, reading Krishnamurthi’s thoughts over a cup of tea especially during the monsoon, tying rakhi to my overprotective bandhu Dharam Gulati, spending time in the library near the sound room, carefully measuring the right amount of chemicals to develop our black-and-white negatives and seeing them turn into pictures, observing how Mr. Gopal smiled upto his ears. I remember seeing, at the entrance of the studio, our late professor (in scriptwriting, forgot his name). He was placed atop a huge ice block waiting to be transported to New Delhi. I also remember meeting and conversing with Shekhar Kapur when he wasn’t yet a director, as he waited for his sister who was acting in diploma films; and getting Louis Malle to autograph my sketch of his portrait, getting complaints from my vegetarian hostel-mates because of the fish I used to put in the fridge, and getting drunk for the first time on red wine!!! And of course, having my first baby!

The surreal image of a crib placed under the Wisdom Tree for my first-born, baptized as Siddharth Ricardo, whom Kakaji fondly called Prabhat (after Prabhat Studios, he said) was truly memorable for me. My classmates pooled in money to buy the crib. I hope it is still in the Props Department at FTII. I can say that I am no exception in having dreamt under the shadows of that Wisdom Tree, having enjoyed
just being there and just being me.

The knowledge I acquired from FTII has enabled me to face head-on all the challenges in film-making, from the time I returned home and first worked as an editor in 1984, when women film editors were a rarity. What shaped my film sense was largely the fact that I watched three films daily after class at the Main Theater. Hollywood films were the only foreign films available in our country at that time, and the repertoire of classics from all over the world I saw at the FTII was a revelation for my mind. That is what has honed my appreciation skills and developed my taste for good cinema. The film structure analysis we learnt in Prof. Bahadur’s film appreciation class has remained part of my filmmaking activity right until now. With my current work as an independent filmmaker, attempting to change people’s set ideas and convince them about the worth of ‘non-commercial’ subjects has become my addiction and passion, if not my mission.

I managed to return to Pune two or three years after I first left it, but I do not know whether I will get the chance again to ever physically return. But there is no question that the FTII has never, ever left me as fond memories endlessly live on in my heart and soul. The GraFTII idea has brought all my distant memories back to life even more vividly. My thanks!