As the River flows : this time, that year…
- redriverandbluehil
- May 18, 2021
- 4 min read
[originally appeared on May 18, 2013]
As I am still trying to comprehend the good show of ‘ekhon nedekha nadir xipare’ (Assamese version of ‘as the River flows’) in the recently concluded Washington DC South Asian film festival, where it won the award for best script & best actor (for Sanjay Suri), I couldn’t help taking a trip down the memory lane, towards similar time zone in another year… No, it is not about the unfortunate controversy during this time last year …
… Yes, there will be a time to look back at that episode too – and I strongly believe that someday time will tell the tale – but that ‘time’ is not now… Today I’m remembering the tale of a different ‘time’ here…
21st or 22nd April, 2009. The last day of our films’ shoot in Assam. We had to shoot round the clock in order to finish before the general election, the voting for which was scheduled for April 23rd in Assam. And we have kept the shots in the bosom of river Brahmaputra towards the end. Because, we wanted to capture the vastness of the great river on camera – and only towards the second half of April, with the pre-monsoon showers, the level of the river starts rising thus forcing the wintry sand bars to disappear. Whoever has experienced Brahmaputra during monsoon will tell you that the great river resembles a sea during those times – where you can’t see the other side standing on a bank. That is the affect we wanted to capture on camera.
On the preceding night, while shooting the sequence where the extremist drops the protagonist of our film Abhijit on the river bank after sailing through the river at night, we got a small demonstration of what the river is capable off in its rage. The shooting involved 3 boats – the actors were in one boat whereas two boats were tied together to make a platform for the shooting crew. The boat with the actors was sailing by the bank whereas ours’ was further in the middle of the river, to capture the actors’ boat along with the river…it was pitch dark and late in the night and suddenly a storm blew in … The boatmen in the actors’ boat managed to take it to the bank, but ours being a little more deeper side of the river, the boat broke free of the experience boatmen’s control … they just couldn’t control it from being dashed against the bank … yes, the planks and bamboos joining our boats were smashed to pieces… We thanked our stars as no one got injured…
But we had a film to shoot. So we were back on the river the next day, to shoot the crucial beginning and the ending sequences. In the late afternoon, as we finished taking the last shot, suddenly we realized that our boat was ‘struck’ there in the middle of the river! On enquiring, we realized what had happened – due to the rise in the water level, the sand bars in the middle of river had got submerged. But water had not risen enough to float the boat – so our boat, being a big one (yes, we ensured on a proper bigger boat for the crew, wiser by the previous night’s experience!) got stuck in the sands below whereas the actors’ boat, being a much lighter one, could easily sail back…
As we waited for help to arrive, suddenly I had a surreal vision… I saw a person walking towards us on the water, in the middle of the river!! Well, it took a while for the logical side of the brain to come up with an explanation – that guy must have had his farm house in the recently sub-merged sand bar, and seeing a boat getting stuck he is merely coming for a closer look, fully aware that the water level is not more than a feet high in the sand bar….
As darkness fell, after what seems like an endless wait, help arrived in the form of another boat. And as we unburden half the load in the new arrival, the old boat – much lighter now – also floats and start moving…
The journey back in the bosom of the great river on that pitch dark night was truly a memorable one. The boatmen were warning us to look out for the herd of wild elephant that swims across the river during those time… our cinematographer Madhu Ambat sir requested the boatmen to shut off the lamp so that we can enjoy the journey in the darkness … few of the crew members were singing songs to make the darkness more colorful… and finally relieved and happy seeing the light on the approaching bank (those were the lights lit up for our next shot on the river bank)…
Looking back today, the whole experience comes across as such a beautiful analogy to our existence itself… in life, at times, we had to face storms… our boats gets stuck in the mid river… things seems to get all dark and gloomy… but if we continue our journey with a smile in our lips and a song in our heart, we are bound to reach the lighted shore to continue our journey, as the life flows…as the River flows…
Bidyut
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