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Cold Ashes Can Cause Forest Fires
At an off-season hotel, arrival of old family friends throws Uma (13) headlong into the adult’s world of lies and secrets.
Uma (13) lives alone with her father, Milind who manages a colonial hotel in a secluded town in the Himalayas. Her mother left them a few months ago without any promise of a return. Uma blames Milind for her mother’s departure and is resentful towards him. During the Christmas holidays, off-season at the hotel, old family friends visit to give them company. Uma at first is rejoiced to be reunited with her dear friend, Kali. What initially holds a promise of respite, quickly throws her life into disarray as she suspects her father of having an affair with Kali’s mother. Assuming this to nullify any prospect of her mother’s return and feeling betrayed by her father, she decides to punish both adults. The consequences are far graver than she had anticipated – Milind and Kali’s mother both get seriously injured. Uma is forced to take care of her father while contending with the possible discovery of her culpability. Milind too begins to suspect that his caregiver is also his perpetrator.
I remember my childhood being filled with a stream of people going in and out of our home. My young parents kept our door open to students, working professionals, basically anyone who wanted to share a drink and a joke. Being a single child, I became a quiet spectator to the lives of adults. I quickly discovered that they often deceive each other in order to not harm their social and intimate relationships. They would disregard the honesty that they preach. In this film, I dive into my memories and transmute them. The protagonist, Uma, punishes her father for this hypocrisy but when jolted out of the naivete of childhood, she realises she has created her own terrible secret. What do we do when we become the thing that we detest? Adolescence, a period on the cusp of change, is a fertile ground to explore questions of selfhood. With the father and daughter as the nucleus, I am attempting a choral film that scrutinises families, and through it the Indian society that they and I inhabit.
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