Leaving Home: Old Monk, 180 hrs, recession & more...

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Jaideep Varma arrived at our Karol Bagh studio on a hot May (or June, I really don't remember) afternoon a few years back, with a proposal to make a film on 'Indian Ocean'. My initial reaction was scepticism, accompanied by a sense of being extremely flattered that anybody would want to make a film on us. Now Jaideep is a man of extremely strong views and convictions, and he used all of his persuasive powers to convince us to participate as "subjects".

As evening became night and the Old Monk started to flow, the discussion became fluid as well as heated. Jaideep wanted to shoot an entire 'Indian Ocean' concert as part of the film, but Amit Kilam had been wanting to shoot a live concert for years, so we persuaded Jaideep that we would shoot our own concert and give him all the footage so that he could do an independent edit. Jaideep at which point handsomely offered to put up some seed money into the concert shoot, which went on to become INDIAN OCEAN "Live in Delhi", the first live DVD released by any band in India.

In the meanwhile, Jaideep's shoot began with two days in end-June or early July, a two-day disaster where they put up these extremely hot lights in this extremely hot room and got everybody's temper extremely hot! The guys went back to the drawing board and arrived with a more detailed plan (as well as more practical) late July. They shot us for days on end, not just practising and composing but also sitting about and chatting with each other, occasionally arguing.

And then one day they shot a small concert at our Karol Bagh studio, where we played songs that we had by and large stopped playing at concerts years and years ago, songs such as Village Damsel, Desert Rain, No Comebacks. By now they had graduated to three cameras, and our very own favourite sound engineer Samir Kripalani (Sam the Man) did the honours with the mixing and the recording.

Jaideep's crew followed us everywhere (We almost had to stop them shooting us in the loo!!), including to I.P. College (Delhi) and then to St Bede's College in Shimla, where they got great footage of audiences with large numbers of rather good-looking attractive women. Shortly thereafter, Jaideep courted disaster by asking us to comment on the fact that "some people" claim that IO is a band that appeals more to men. The blistering invective-filled reply he got was apparently the highlight of the footage shown to people who visited the Cartwheel Films office during the film's editing!! Unfortunately this is not in the film since it would have straightaway led to an 'A'-certificate and innumerable bleeps. I'm sure Jaideep would make copies of relevant bits (actually, his crew is much more likely to do this!) for interested folk.

The film makers wanted to capture our roots and our home situation, and many days were spent at our homes with our families as well as at our favourite places in Delhi. In fact, we all got to know stuff about each other after watching the film, things we don't tend to discuss, about early days and childhood and suchlike. Asheem, our most talkative man, apparently had seventeen HOURS of holding forth. Boy, did he love to talk. And now that he's gone, I'm sure we all want to get all of that footage and watch it over and over. (Thanks, Jaideep!!)

All of us miss Asheem terribly, and felt his absence even more when we watched the film a couple of weeks ago. He would have been so proud to know that Leaving Home was finally going to get released. And there lies another story.... Having shot over 180 hours of film, editing was a nightmare for Jaideep's gang. Even logging so many hours is miserable. The guys got it down to 4 hours, and then got stuck. Then down to 2.5 hours and NOW, they've finally managed to make it about 115 minutes.

In the meanwhile, the film went off to festivals across the world, to Germany and Los Angeles and South Africa and Nepal. And then they almost got a big-screen release set up for September 2008, and then the recession struck! Bye-bye release. Jaideep, being a highly emotional person, went into deep depression and almost wanted to give up, but he found courage and conviction from somewhere deep within himself, and stuck to his task. Hats off, baby!

One thing I do want to say is that the film's contents are entirely Jaideep's own. This is NOT a film on 'Indian Ocean' produced or directed by Indian Ocean, nor even a film commissioned by us. We had no say in the structure or the content or the edits. Sure, Jaideep showed it to us, but more for comments and out of courtesy than for green signals.

So, I think people should come out and watch it in large numbers, for its fun to watch, the music is great, and it's the FIRST EVER FILM ON ANY INDIAN MUSICIAN OR BAND TO RELEASE ON THE BIG SCREEN. (And not just in India, I believe they are trying for a release in New York City as well). I also think any person passionate about what they're doing and facing the inevitable hurdles that arise in life would enjoy watching this, seeing how others negotiate similar issues without getting frustrated or giving up.

Cheers!