RUNS LIKE A DREAM
As she moves from stage to screen, director Anamika Haksar blurs the lines between real and surreal
Theatre director Anamika Haksar is fascinated by dreams. So, when it came to writing her debut feature film, Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon, writing a story with fictional characters wasn’t enough. She wanted the people of old Delhi to tell her not just their personal histories but also their dreams. “It is when you know of their dreams that you get into their psyche and know of their subconscious worries or joys,” says Haksar.
Haksar put together her repository of dreams with the help of a questionnaire, one that also touched on fears and ‘what-if’ situations. Shot in 2015-16 and set in old Delhi’s Shahjahanabad, Ghode Ko… is a film where the lines between the real and the surreal are blurred. Here you see characters flying on a carpet over the old city, dead bodies floating, street
musicians performing with western classical artists. After touring more than 35 international festivals, the independent drama releases on June 10 in select theatres.
Though she had no interest in directing a film, Haksar says it was old Delhi—a place she’s familiar with—that made her want to put together a screenplay. “There is a multi-layered quality to old Delhi—multiplicity of cultures, communities and histories—that I felt only cinema can best capture,” she says. “Yes, there’s lot of difficulty, struggle and drudgery, but there’s also so much love, life and laughter and dignity in each person.” In Ghode Ko...,
Haksar shows us the area through varying perspectives—a pickpocket (Ravindra Sahu), a guide conducting heritage walks (Lokesh Jain), a loader-activist (K. Gopalan) and a street food vendor (Raghubir Yadav).
Working with theatre actors and also amateurs, Haksar’s stage approach seeps into her maiden feature. She jumps between genres—magic realism, documentary, real stories, dark comedy and dream narration—while interspersing Urdu poetry with facets of Delhi history. Though the canvas she paints is abstract and humane, it is one that can be demanding for viewers to follow. What helps is that Ghode Ko... shows on screen a Delhi that is rarely seen. The capital’s underbelly is beautifully shot by cinematographer Saumyananda Sahi whose earlier credits include the award-winning Eeb Aaley Oo (2019). Subtlety is Haksar’s biggest strength. In one scene, she showcases the “underlying tension that exists between two communities” in an area where diverse cultures are known to co-exist. In another, she highlights how exploitative tourism in marginalised areas can be as a Seva Kutir bus comes to clean up an area where beggars live.
Haksar held on to her passion project for over three years despite many asking her to take the OTT route for release. But like all true-blue theatre practitioners, she was stubborn. “I wanted to take the film to the very people—the migrant labourers, the pickpockets, the vendors—who are part of it,” she says. “It is their film.” ■