Kayo Kayo Colour by Shahrukhkhan Chavada - getting to the crux of matter

The Indian Film Industry is going through tumultuous times as of now; at the one end we are basking in the glory of Oscars for our song and dance routine that we assumed was the cause of ridicule amongst the western audience, and at the other end we have the highest grossing film that survived the threat of ban from the right wing groups on flimsy reasons as the colour of bikini worn by the leading lady. But, the real reason for the commotion was to cut the Muslim superstar around whom the movie was mounted to size.

In India our output of films goes into thousands per annum and the number of films that fly below the media radar is huge.

Kayo Kayo Colour? (Which Colour?), a Hindi - Gujarati film shot in Kalupur, Ahmedabad, in guerilla style with a lavish crew of two members and a humble Sony 7 S3 camera and a couple of camera phones for equipment. This film too was flying under the radar until the International Film Festival of Rotterdam happened. 

The film directed by 28 year old Shahrukhkhan Chavada tells the story of a lower middle class Muslim household staying in a predominantly Muslim Basti. The sole breadwinner of the family Razzak (Imtiyaz Shaikh), has left his daily wages job and wants to buy a second-hand autorickshaw to enhance his earnings. His wife Raziya (Samina Shaikh) is sceptical about the prospect as they don’t have savings to even survive for a few days.

 The young director seems to know the inner workings of a family leading an hand to mouth existence, where the man maybe considered the provider where the cash is concerned, but it is the lady of the house who is responsible for putting the food on the table no matter if the man has given her the resources for doing that or no.

 In a video chat after watching the film and noting the behind the scenes details from the director, you can’t hold back your curiosity any further and you ask him about the peculiarity of his name. Did he change it because he wishes to be ‘the King…’? “No, no I’ve no such ambition”, says the director whose shoulder length hair is tied in a ponytail with the help of an elastic band and a well trimmed beard giving him uncanny resemblance to Pathan. It was his mother and Mama (maternal uncle), who’d selected this name for him. “In 1995, the year of my birth SRK was a Chadta Suraj (rising sun), they were his ardent fans. So, that is the only explanation I can give''. At this point his partner Wafa Refai butts into the conversation “I even suggested to change his name before making this film public otherwise Google will be confused about which Shahrukh people are asking for, the superstar or the Ahmedabadi director. But, obviously my advice fell on deaf ears”.

 As for the subject of the film, it evolved in slow simmer for the director who is formally trained in Animation and VFX. “I was toying with the idea of making a short film using one of the threads that became a part of this film”, says the young director who used to freelance his expertise in filmmaking to other directors in VFX, animation and even as a cameraman. “Then CAA - NRC happened. That was a kind of political awakening for me. I began to understand how the decisions taken by our political masters impact common people and things like fascism and all that. This was followed by the lockdown, which gave me an opportunity to see Internati  onal Cinema, especially Iranian and European films. The simplicity of their storytelling and tackling intense subjects without going overboard. I also went through a few open source filmmaking courses online”.

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I'd written this in the first quarter of 2023 with a hope that it would be published in some news portal, but stopped midway as I thought it was meandering and lacking focus. Actually, I felt that thing I wanted to say about it wasn’t coming out the way I wanted. So, what happened now to post a write up that is almost a year old? The simple answer is that that I have found a video easily does the thing I strove and failed to do, it puts the film into contemporary context. It is created by the Nous Network.

And, here is a sensitive review of the film by my friend Aswathy Gopalakrishnan.

Viral Sebi - Not A Review

We rarely see Road Movies, where real-time long distance travelling is shown unravelling a story with the characters placed in the confines of a moving vehicle.

 

This is what Viral Sebi directed by Vidhu Vincent is all about. Brilliantly written by Sajitha Madathil and my friend Anand Haridas (we both started our journalistic career at the same time more than two decades back), this film uses ‘a day in the life of a cabbie’ form of narration to tackle a subject that is very topical and pertinent to be discussed in depth.

 

Sudeep Koshy plays the title role of Sebi aka Sebastian, the cabbie or the taxi driver. Apart from being in a hectic profession, he is an avid vlogger (Sudeep is a vlogger in real life too, here it is) with a liking for Rafi songs and the narcissistic urge of modern human beings to share on social media, every incident happening to them or the experience they have (for example my friend Manu Remakant, I’m sure he can come out with a decent book every six months with the content he shares on FB).

 

First half of the film is dedicated to the mundane to extraordinary things that can happen in a driver’s life starting from a violent students’ protest, where he has to take a detour because a student is seriously injured and needs to be taken to hospital, which makes him late for the airport pickup. There are other passengers getting in and out of the car, some with idiosyncrasies and of peculiar nature. A corporate honcho with perpetual petulance, a film star, a couple from the academic background, who we soon realise are having an extra-marital affair etc. The think tank behind this movie uses these cameos to add layers to Sebi’s character. So, when we reach the crux of the story we are comfortable with him.

 

I didn’t know much about Sudeep before watching this film; I thought he is an actor with theatre background and got Bhikhu Mhatre (Manoj Bajpayee in Satya) kind of entry into the film industry. He was with an unkempt beard and used street lingo peppered with cuss words. But, seeing his YouTube channel left me in utter shock; here he is suave and urban talking about luxury cars dropping automotive jargon at will.

 I’d asked Anand if he was inducted in the team to get the street lingo and the cuss words right... I better keep his reply to myself.

Now coming back to the crux of the story; Sebi gets a trip to Bengaluru with a foreign lady as the passenger. She has to reach the destination at the earliest to catch a flight. At first their relationship is confrontational; she is very anxious and angry. As we move forward we get to know that she is a Palestinian refugee in Jordan Afra (Meera Hamed). She is here on scholarship pursuing her post graduation in English. She too gets embroiled in the agitation and one of her friends is arrested. She is on the run because if she is arrested she will be deported and will not be allowed to return and complete her education.

It is here that we begin to see how topically relevant and universal this film is. The first thing that came to mind was of the story of the Afghani students in North India, they weren’t sure if they were lucky or unlucky to be far away from their homeland when the US troops left it overnight in the hands of Taliban. The other thing that struck me is the fact that it is a warning for fence-sitters like Sebi (he considers the students protest as a nuisance as it disrupts his effort to earn his daily bread) that he may suffer the same fate in the near future by remaining passive when there is an upheaval around.

You can watch Viral Sebi here.