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When it comes to India, no one has quite 'discovered' it like Mr. Shyam Benegal. His Yatra (pilgrimage) across India in search of an unknown discovery or better still, rediscovering what already exists, has given birth to many a tale . . . some told, some untold.

Benegal shares with ANOKHI —in his own words—some of those untold adventures.

"India has a population of over a billion and you wonder sometimes as to how you can escape people. But there are still some places where you find that the only other living beings are animals and birds. for me, every single journey in our country is one full of serendipity. there is always something that is in the nature of a delightful surprise. and an occasional nasty one as well. when I am traveling, there are two things I do. one is to travel with an accepting frame of mind, so that my own prejudices don’t come in the way. and two, to remember that traveling in India is not a five-star journey, if you really want to know the place. travel with the aam janta (local people)..to me, the most extraordinary part of my Indian experience is that ours is the only country, that lives simultaneously in the past, present and future. you will be living in 21st century in one place and half a mile away, you will be transported into the 10th century. where else would you experience people stepping out of one century into another in the course of a single day.

A Journey Back In Time

I was making a film called Junoon (1978) and it was set in the year 1857, based on a real incident that had happened in a place called Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Shahjahanpur is an army cantonment area and even in 1857, it was so. and when the Indian regiments there mutinied against their British masters . . . it was a Sunday morning. next to the Garrison was the church where the morning service was on with all the British families present. the Indian sepoys, led by a local pathan called Javed khan, massacred churchgoers. the church where it happened still stands with little that has changed. Even the sword cuts on the pews can be seen there and the victims' graves are in the churchyard. the descendents of the families still live in the same neighbourhood. nothing has changed in over a century and a half.

I filmed a battle scene in a place called Kakori, where some of the skirmishes had taken place. the locals who live there today would describe these skirmishes as though they had taken place just a few years ago, pointing to the bullet holes in the walls of their homes and pointing to where their great grandparents hid. the whole experience of that for them was like it was a contemporary event. while making the film, the entire film unit and I seemed to have been transported to that time with the sights, sounds and smells that had hardly changed in 150 years.

The Great Mountains

I was in the himalayas, shooting a biography on Jawaharlal Nehru called Nehru in the year 1982. We were flying in a chopper, filming where the river Ganga (the holy river Ganges) emerges in India at Gomukh. All around are the most magnificent and beautiful snowcapped himalayas. and suddenly in the morning light we saw the great Neelkanth—the blue-throated mountain, which for Hindus symbolizes the lord Shiva. And by blue, I mean royal blue! It was such an extraordinary sight. It reminded me of another incident many years ago. I was at the Vishwanath temple in Banaras, and I told the priest that I wanted to see the Great Aarti. It turned out to be a magnificent spectacle. My guide asked me to describe my feelings after the Aarti. He helpfully suggested whether it could be described as a mystic thrill, and when I saw Neelkanth, it was the same—a mystic thrill. Such things do happen but one has to be ready and open for them! If you take all these things for granted, you experience nothing...

India – A Search

When I was shooting Bharat ek Khoj, a television series on the history of India based on Nehru’s book “Discovery of India,” it was a discovery in every which way-—history, cultures, people, places, everything. Mapping the country filmically from the air can only be described as truly awesome. the mountains, plains, plateaus, rivers, etc.

I was following the river Brahmaputra (son of Brahma), as it comes down the mountains and makes its way into India with a hairpin bend into the plains of Assam at a town called Dibrugarh, it's an extraordinary sight. The Brahmaputra is an unpredictable and turbulent river, the only major river of India that has a male name. As Brahmaputra comes down from the mountains into the plains of Assam, it spreads out like the sea. Even when you look at it from the air, you can't see it end to end unless you go very, very high.

Discovering Classical Arts

The first time I went to Khajuraho, I was shooting a four-part television series on Indian classical music (1971-72). In those days the government was very particular about what you could or couldn’t shoot. You needed all sorts of special permissions, which invariably never came. In order to circumvent all of that, I woke up really early in the morning and filmed the temples at dawn, and finished before anybody had even woken up. I got some great footage. What's more, I discovered some of the temples that were not fully excavated at that time. I am talking of the early '70s. Now (the temples) far more tourism oriented, with a sound and light show at night. the sense of discovery has somehow been lost. However, there are still a lots of places in India even today that are waiting to be discovered. Nehru once said that India is like a palimpsest, where there are inexhaustible layers upon layers of historical experience. a neverending series of discoveries.

Old World Charm

In 1967, I made a documentary film called Close to Nature on a couple of tribal communities in central India, the bison horn Marias and the Murias. The Murias in particular had a social structure which now, alas like with most tribes, has disappeared. I had chosen to shoot in the Abhujmar area of Bastar (now in Chattisgarh). The only other person from the outside world who went there, apart from forest guards, was an Austrian anthropologist called Haimedorff who went 32 years before me.

The interpreter and guide who accompanied our film unit into Abhujmar had briefed us on the manner and etiquette to be adopted in a Muria village. The first step was to spot the Ghotul, located in the centre of the village—a large hut which served both as the guest house for people who came from outside as well as a dormitory for young boys and girls of pubescent age. Parents sent their children from the age of nine or ten to sleep the nights in the Ghotul. This served both as an education and familiarization program for boys and girls to understand and relate to one another. There were some strict taboos that guided sexual behaviour. No Ghotul relationship could be permanent as it was felt that the boys and girls were much too immature for such relationships. As soon as the boys and girls grew into adulthood they had to leave the Ghotul. The tradition of the Ghotul helped in making marriages and family life surprisingly free of discord. Unfortunately, the Ghotul has entirely disappeared from the community life of the Murias and exists only as a distant memory, although it was very much there even as recently as 35 years ago.

When my unit and I went to the first muria habitation we saw, we went and settled in the Ghotul. Soon enough we were given food and drink. In the evening, I decided that we should return the hospitality and offered them pots of Mahua, the local liquor. After that, it was a night of dancing and festivity until dawn.

BY NEHA SARIN / PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 2010 ISSUE 
BENEGAL PHOTO COURTESY OF SHYAM BENEGAL