Crew Statement - Hampi, India

India is the 7th largest country in the world with a multi-cultural, multi-lingual population of around 1 billion. The GLP India shoot took place in a quaint little village in the southern part of India called Hampi which, has a population of 4,000(2001 census). Hampi, as it is popularly known today was the medieval capital of the Hindu empire Vijayanagara (the City of Victory). Located in the state of Karnataka, the picturesque Hampi is listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The local language spoken is Kannada. However, the GLP India team discovered, to their surprise that most locals, can ably communicate in English as well. This very characteristic, coupled with the rich history, beauty and uniqueness of the place is what makes Hampi a tourist’s paradise.

Hampi’s landscape is dotted with boulders and ancient archaeological sites. The architecture is breathtakingly beautiful, the locals are amazingly helpful and ever so polite. The populace is largely dependent on tourists and agriculture. The place is a blend of locals and tourists. One usually gets to see a horde of non-Indian tourists comfortably mulling around Hampi’s streets. Unfortunately, we have learnt from our interactions with Indians in the cities that even the so called travel-freaks haven’t even heard about this amazing place. The peak tourist season lasts from Late September to mid-March. During this period, one can also see a lot of rock climbing enthusiasts walking around with their crashpads. Hampi is a preferred destination for bouldering amongst the rock- climbing community. In the period November- January , one can also see a sale of 2nd hand climbing equipment available at throw-away prices. Hampi is a place to be experienced…no amount of travelogues and lonely planet’s will come close to detailing the experience of actually being there!

It is in this beautiful place that the GLP India team got the opportunity to film Muttu Kumar, an 18 year old enterprising postcard seller and incidental tourist guide. Muttu (as everyone affectionately calls him) is originally from a village called Kaddi Rampur, around 4 km away from Hampi. Normally he covers this distance on foot. His father, Chinnataambi, 42, is an ice-cream vendor and mother, Chandramaa, 35, is a house-wife who he visits once a month for 4 days. Muttu’s sister is now married and lives in Hampi. Muttu usually ups with the lark and spends most of the day around the archaeological sites of Hampi, selling postcards, taking the tourists around the ruins and temples of Hampi. In the off-peak season, Muttu heads back to his village and helps his father, with occasional trips to Hampi over the weekend, to meet his friends and scout for tourists who visit from Bangalore and Hyderabad over the weekend. Muttu hangs around the Hemakutta hill bus depot, scouting around for tourists, showing them his colorful and beautiful wares. Muttu prefers to help non English speaking customers. The reason and result-Muttu speaks Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, French, Spanish, Italian, English and Russian despite being a 6th grade dropout. And one would be amazed at his ability with languages- within the 3 days that we were there, hearing a couple of the crew conversing the language, he even started speaking Marathi!!This ability is what transformed him from a being only a postcard seller to also guiding non-English speaking tourists around the place. Muttu is not an official tourist guide, but his ability with languages, is what catapulted him into the “guide” space. He is only one of the two people in Hampi who speak French fluently.

Muttu is very articulate, enterprising smart and matured with a helpful countenance. He came to Hampi at the age of 12 to help out with the finances of his family and started staying at a guest house, cleaning the tables, generally helping around the guest house and earning his bread. Slowly, being gregarious and affable (we saw this when we went for the shoot!!), he made many friends who were tourist guides. From them he learnt about the archaeological sites around Hampi and slowly started branching out into selling postcards and also guiding tourists. He started staying at Rama guest house. Besides earning by selling postcards and occasionally as a tourist guide, Muttu also gets a commission from Rama Guest House for arranging the lodging of tourists at the Rama Guest House .

Dreams-His immediate dream is to buy himself an auto rickshaw (3 wheeler) so that he doesn’t have to depend on renting one when he takes his customers and has more freedom and more income as well! He attributes his life, his success and popularity to the grace of God. He says he doesn’t really know what he sees himself doing in the future, since he cannot predict what the Gods have ordained for him, but he hopes to do more versatile things, be successful and happy.

The experience of the crew:

We couldn’t have gotten a better subject to film!!! Muttu symbolizes one of India's primary strengths - the youth of India. He also symbolizes the general phenomenon which exists across all demographics in India viz. the concept of going away from home to work and also find alternate sources of employment. People usually visualize individuals leaving villages to come to towns/cities for the purposes of employment. However, there exists a large populace in India which actually goes to neighboring villages to find alternate sources of employment, especially of the non-agricultural type. Even though Muthu lives in a village named Kaddi Rampur, just 4kms from Hampi, he needs to "go out" to find an alternate source of employment. Among all the faces that we interacted with, Muthu seemed to steal the show completely. He represented this section of the youth of rural India (which is confident and striving for opportunities deep within but is at the same time living each day to the fullest) perfectly.

How it began- The GLP India journey started with the Director discovering about the Global Lives Project and from there using his brilliant production skills to liason with David and building up an efficient team for the project, which wasn’t too difficult, as loads of people were enthusiastic to work on the project, pro bono. The proposal was made, budgets drawn up, then came the first hurdle-permissions! As Hampi is a World Heritage Site, one cannot shoot there without explicit permission from the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India), Bangalore, India. Next few weeks were spent liasoning with the ASI, finding out the procedural and cost aspects of the permit. We tried calling up all possible people we knew, and using our contacts to get the permit fees waived off. This effort was on EVERYDAY until the day we were leaving Mumbai for the shoot. Finally, after rounds of discussions with the Superintending Officer and his staff at the ASI, and talking to them about the GLP etc, they finally granted us permission to shoot, although in three monuments.

THE Shoot-The extremely talented and equally enterprising, young team of GLP India enthusiastically toiled through the scorching heat, guzzling down cartons of bottled water and cartloads of coconut water through the four days. The trip started with a day of liasoning with the authorities and generally having a go around the place, another day of an interview attempt, shopping for more amenable clothes and accessories to beat the heat, ooh- aah’ing every few minutes, planning and scheduling for the day of the shoot. The day of the shoot commenced at 4 a.m. with the ceremonial breaking of the coconut and brief prayers by the team. Then the whole day was dotted with literally running after the subject, quickly switching from a tripod to steadycam and back to tripod, depending on what the subject was upto. And just when we thought that all we had to bother about was dehydration, the Lavalieres failed, spinning us into another debate about the interview which was to be held the next day. We tried scouting around in the neighboring town to get it repaired or hire another pair, but well, tough luck! David to the rescue-he calmed down the Producers and gave them tips. We continued the shoot with a much calmer and humbled countenance and learnt one important thing-NEVER underestimate the need to carry back up equipment.

Well, in no time, the beautiful dawn we had started with turned to an even more beautiful dusk. Turn by turn, the team gulped down their favorite foods at our favorite eating joint in Hampi – our last dinner at Hampi and  as Muttu grew ready for bed, we decided the schedule for the last few hours. 2 of the crew members stayed up all night-to make sure the tapes were changed every hour and another 2 joined them in the wee hours of the next morning to conclude the shoot and take the last parting shot.

Wait-it wasn’t over as yet. The interview was yet to be made. By 8 am, with the entire team woken up, we culminated the final chapter of the shoot –the jinxed interview which was conducted in the most perfect setting, on the terrace of a guest house, with the symbol of Hampi- the tall Virupaksha temple on one side, and Tungabhadra river on the other.

With the GLP India shoot finally complete, we took pictures of the entire GLP India team, and washed away our tiredness into the cool waters of the Tungabhadra. Feeling complete and satiated with the experience, and not so happy about leaving the beautiful Hampi, with the clichéd heavy hearts, we caught our transport back home. To learn about the experience from the crew members themselves, please log onto the GLP India blog: www.globallivesindia.blogspot.com

On behalf of the entire GLP India Team,

Deepa Bhat (Co-Producer)