Yatra’s journey through the arts

Temperate July evenings are usually the perfect setting for outdoor functions in and around Auroville. But when the skies open and wash out a performance and its audience of 125 people, it says much about an organisation’s professionalism that it can bundle the audience, projector and sound system into the nearby building, and have the show up and running again in a mere five minutes. Yatra Multimedia’s screening of its most recent films demonstrated that the organisation embodies the old show business adage: “The show must go on.”

Yatra has grown considerably since Auroville Today’s 2009 profile of its founder Srinivas, who now sports the professional name Yatra Srinivassan. The Yatra organisation now consists of two arms: Yatra Multimedia, the commercial arm that makes films and street plays; and the non-commercial Yatra Foundation, which provides (mostly free) dance, acting, music, painting and after-school tuition classes for village children.

“Yatra is a pilgrimage. It’s our art journey,” explains Srinivas. “We had a dream to create this. The arts connect us, and allow people to express feelings.”

Yatra is driven by three key people – Srinivas, his brother Osiva, and Srinivas’s wife Adhalakshmi – plus two administration people and one amma. There is also the theatre team, as well as the many collaborative filmmaking relationships that Srinivas engenders. “It’s not a corporate company, it’s a close family,” says Srinivas. “Yatra is a good example of team spirit. It has a long-standing relationship with other directors and artists who come.”

Recent films

This collaborative capacity of Yatra is borne out by the new seven-minute film Full Stop, for which Srinivas shared co-directing duties with filmmaker Raghu. The idea for the film, which is intended to be a public service announcement to be posted on social media to promote discussion, came from Raghu’s team’s observations during recent travels around India.”A common sight in Tamil Nadu is of the drunken man lying on the road,” says Raghu. “We used to make fun of such people because of the way they act. But we realised it is also a problem for the men’s wives at home because these are not just guys who just drink; they go way overboard. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we do something?’ Why not give it a comical twist, but also highlight a problem that’s very prevalent?”

Raghu wrote the script and brought his team of four to partner with Yatra Multimedia in order to share resources and skills. Srinivas plays the lead role of a public drunkard who is whisked into a van by a vigilante team that then dumps him in a remote location to dry out. Raghu explains that “fulla” means a full bottle of alcohol in Tamil slang, so the film’s title Full Stop essentially translates as Stop Drinking.

Perhaps unusually for a Tamil film, the vigilante team is all women, dressed in urban black and sporting ‘don’t mess with us’ attitude. “We think that women are under-represented and misrepresented in film, and we like to break stereotypes,” says Raghu. “The affected people are women… We thought it would be interesting to shake things up.”

With its tight editing and building drama, the film’s debut screening during the July function evoked a strong audience reception. While Srini’s performance as a drunk initially provoked much hilarity, the serious message took over by the film’s end.

It was a similar case with the other drama film screened at the function, the 12-minute film Semmozhi, which means classical language. In the film, Srinivas plays a self-satisfied film director travelling through India by car. He boasts of his global travels and extended stints in foreign countries to his travelling companion (played by Auroville’s Loretta), flipping through smartphone photos and smugly talking up his capacity to speak different European languages. However, when the car stops at a tea stall, the character is flummoxed when he’s unable to order chai in a common language, whilst his companion easily does so in Hindi.

The highly ashamed character then explains to his companion how Tamil Nadu vociferously resisted all attempts in the 1960s by the Central Government to make Hindi the national language, and the visuals flashback to dramatic black and white protest scenes that capture the heightened tensions in Tamil Nadu at the time.

Srinivas explains that the film was inspired by his own experience of going to north India for the first time, and being mortified when he was unable to communicate with his own countrymen. The film’s core argument is that Tamil Nadu could have benefitted by taking on Hindi as an additional language, in a manner that did not undermine the importance of Tamil as the state’s first language.

The third film to have its debut screening at the Yatra function was the delightful film clip Happy Children, set to the hit song of the same name by Pharrell Williams. Featuring Yatra’s bharat natyam students dancing in various outdoor locations, its saturated colours and infectious joy made it a big hit with the children in the audience. The dancers also performed live at the event, displaying excellent technique, timing and feeling, and a confidence that often belied their age.

“Art gives shape to the youth and kids,” says Srinivas, pointing out that children in his village of Kuilaypalayam previously had to go to Pondicherry to learn dance, drama or music. “We wanted to bring this opportunity to the village.”

The Yatra vision

Srinivas’s original vision for Yatra Foundation was for an arts college that would teach children and create artists who could then teach others. Yatra now absorbs up to 40 students for after-school tuition on a daily basis, as well as students in bharat natyam and veena, a musical instrument.

Yatra is something of a family affair – Srinivas teaches drama, while Osiva teaches painting and coordinates exhibitions. Daughter Priyadarshini choreographs, and his wife Adhilakshmi coordinates classes, manages the bookings for the Yatra dance troupe, and does film production work and budgeting.

Srinivas’s style of teaching drama encourages students to develop work that reflects the life they see around them. “I encourage the children to observe situations in the modern world and body language,” says Srinivas. “They watch lots of TV these days, so kids catch stuff so quickly now. Their interest in arts is really developing. Some former actor colleagues of mine from 25 years ago still attend the drama programme, so the arts connect us.”

Osiva points out that the Yatra activities are designed to give balance to the conventional schooling system in the village. “Playing is important,” he says.”With their other studies, they suffer. School is study, study, study. Lots of the kids are from poor families or their fathers are drunkards, so the kids are under the control of grandparents. They come here and they’re happy. That’s the success of art.”

Osiva teaches painting in a way that reflects his own development as an artist. He taught himself painting by studying French impressionist techniques, as well as observing Auroville artists. He travelled all over India, including to the Andaman Islands and Kashmir. “Here, I go out early in the morning on my bicycle, and paint in the open air,” he says.”I show the kids books, take them to the exhibitions at Pitanga. I like to encourage them to touch their inner creations, explore their inner joy.”

As with many not-for-profit initiatives around Auroville, funding is often tight and the Foundation survives more through passion, flexibility and some dedicated support. “The street plays and films that we make through Yatra Multimedia bring income which supports most of the running expenses of the foundation,” says Srinivas. “A Swedish friend Leif, Pallas from Holland and some other individuals also supported us by giving some funds, and international students volunteer here.”

And like many small not-for-profits, unexpected expenses can throw a spanner in the works. “On Semmozhi, the film shoot in the hired taxi was only supposed to take two days, but in the end it went to five days!,” Adhilakshmi says of the challenges posed to her as production coordinator. “The extra taxi hire costs threw out all my calculations! Sometimes I have to adjust the family budget to accommodate these things.”

Beginnings

Srinivas and Osiva themselves benefitted from an upbringing that offered the best of both conventional study and the arts. Their father and grandfather were street players who staged the Mahabharata in Kuilaypalayam village.

Srinivas did theatre in school and found that he also had acting talent. “I started an acting team in the village and put on a stage play, which was very joyful. My father, who worked in the Ashram paper-making unit, would take me to watch films in Pondy.”

Srinivas did a BA in economics and then worked in Auroville units. While working at the Health Centre, he was encouraged in his creative pursuits by Dr Assumpta who was working there. “The Health Centre started putting on street plays, so I started doing that, as well as making films. She identified my talent, channelized my life. She supported me to study film in Chennai. By then I’d made seven films, doing deck-to-deck editing!”

Sometime after his mentor Dr Assumpta died, Srinivas decided to go out by himself and start Yatra. “I had a lot of fear, but the idea clicked. I never focused on money, but on making quality films. Many NGOs doing outreach came to me because they knew the quality of my films.”

Since then, dozens of NGOs have commissioned Srini to develop short films and plays to promote awareness about their causes. “The NGOs work on different issues – toilets, sanitation, toddy (the local alcoholic drink). They ask us to write the script, and we give a budget for 12 actors, usually for two days for a film. I take real subjects with a society-based message and make it funny. It should have a good story, not boring, as people need to relate to it.”

Srinivas points to five awards on a shelf, for stage plays he produced. “I can’t do without my street theatre team, Krishnamurthy, Rajaram, Arulmozhi, Dhanajayan and Prabhu. Sometimes we have to travel up to 80km at night to perform, and we get back very late. The actors have to hold down a day job, so theatre is really their passion.”

Assessing the outcomes of initiatives that encourage ‘behaviour change’ is always difficult, but Srinivas is familiar with the challenges of portraying controversial issues in film and theatre.

“After our sanitation theatre play in one village, 40 people there agreed to build a toilet. Planting trees has been a success. But the film about solid waste created problems. People in the audience started accusing each other of dumping garbage, saying: “Because of you, I got typhoid!” Personal hygiene for children has improved, but the issue of toddy is difficult, and drainage also – people still let their wastewater run onto the street, where it creates sanitation problems. Kids are easier to change, so we focus on them.

“Some time ago, when we made our HIV film, Dharana, the audience got angry at the character. In our culture, they don’t want to be open to such topics, like talking about condoms and prostitutes. It was sensitive, it was seen as subversive. But people are getting more aware now.”

Yatra has now done 25 films about social issues, and the solid waste film Maattram won the Auroville Film Festival award for best film. Yatra has has also executed commercial work for businesses, including a highly amusing TV commercial for a Pondy burglar alarm company, in which Srinivas plays a brash thief who gets his come-uppance. He has also played comedy roles in Chennai films and TV serials, sometimes sporting a large wig and the exaggerated expressions that are characteristic of the genre.

The future

Srinivas relates how, every New Year’s Eve, he would write up his goals for Yatra. While there were initially about 30 points, the list has reduced as he achieved many of the goals. “All our vision is coming together slowly, happening in a nice way,” he says.

But his one yet-to-be-fulfilled goal is to direct his own feature film. In order to gain valuable feature film experience, he recently accepted an invitation to co-direct a major Chennai film with film director Chimbu Devan of Imsai Arasan fame.”I learnt a lot – it’s totally different from making short films in Auroville. There’s a lot of hierarchy, it’s more formal, more commercial. He said I shouldn’t be so nice! He said ‘You can’t request people to do things, you have to order them and give a deadline!' "The people on the Chennai film sets don’t stay in contact off the set. I thought, 'Do I want to work like this?’ They should enjoy it but they’re suffering, shouting. I like good people to surround me. This was a big learning!”

One thing Srinivas is sure about is that his filmmaking process will always be collaborative and respectful of his team. “I held the [July] film screening function to show gratitude to the crew,” he says. “It’s a collective process. I saw them working hard during the shoot. We should honour them in the Indian way with the shawl. Some outside teams put the film straight onto YouTube without giving a CD to the crew. We presented the CD at the function and gave speeches. That gives inspiration to everyone. It’s the Yatra tradition.”

This ethos of collaboration also informs Yatra’s relationship with Auroville, even though Yatra is not an Auroville unit. “We’re very collaborative, we’re sharing with Auroville,” says Osiva. Srinivas chimes in: “Yatra is a bridge. We want to bridge Auroville and the village. We’re connected to both. We’re proud Auroville is near to us.”