What does 15th August mean to you? It is a day when you wear the tricolour proudly on your shirt and stick one more on the dashboard of your car and continue as you would on a typical day? Or is it a day when you pause to reflect on the struggles that previous generations strove for? Is it a day when you take the time to appreciate the precious freedoms that we enjoy every day in this beloved country of ours?
Here is a film that tells a simple story via a series of flashbacks and ghostly but benign presences. A man– his name, symbolically, is Azaad – comes home with his wife Akira after many years spent abroad. He is overcome by the memories he finds there. The first triggering event is the soulful rendition of a song by his taxi driver. There is also a reference to the iconic short story Toba Tek Singh by Sadaat Hasan Manto and the theme of partition made in the passing.
Azaad is soon overcome by the familiar sights and sounds of the land that was his home; the place where he spent his childhood and he starts to recall the stories of the struggle for independence that his grandfather Aga Khan had told him when he was a little boy.
We are reminded of the privations that were endured and efforts that were made; many of those efforts making the ultimate sacrifice to finally win us that precious freedom from a foreign yoke. As Azaad relives those dark times, we are also forced to ponder on the fact that our independence was not obtained for free; that we still owe a great debt to those who fought for the freedom we take for granted today.
Produced by Shariq Patel & Trigno Media for SonyLIV – Sony Pictures Networks’ (SPN), the short film has been made to commemorate our 69 th Independence Day. The film is written and directed by Chandan Roy Sanyal and produced by Shariq Patel. The film stars Adil Hussain as Aga Khan and Chandan Roy Sanyal as Azaad.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
