Day in a Bawana Factory (Ek din Karkhaane mai aur ek mahina Dilli Mai)

The factory: A place of everyday work and dread for them becomes an area of potential creativity for me. Their exploitation turns into content for me. Looking at it this way then, maybe the saying that a creative person can make boring things interesting is highly problematic.
My shooting them and making something out of it is also double exploitation. I’m on the powerful end of the camera. I see them and shoot them. And this very fact is possible comes from privilege, fair skin, family history etc. I want their behaviour to be natural but it is hard, because of my presence- babuji ka beta. I want to capture this reality. What goes on in front of me i.e Simply this industrial environment which is very different from a manufactured retail like environment
Capturing their reality, on the other hand, is hard. What are their problems, their ambitions, their children’s habits. Gathering all that information and letting it affect you emotionally is more harder than simply pointing a camera to them.
I wonder what they must be thinking about. Is it a surprise check? Will their work motions, methods, speeds, productivity and efficiency be scrutinized by their bosses and my family.
Prabhat, like the other workers, has a big belly- a big beer belly. A good side effect of a peasantry or a proletariat life, I thought from movies, is to have six pack abs and a good athletic build. These workers don’t even have that. Most stories like Veer Prakash are about alcohol and cheap drug addiction. His dad died due to gradual sickness from drinking too much desi sharab and his mom lives with his elder brother. His son works in a clothing factory in Gujarat. Daughter is 18 years old and recently graduated from school. She enrolled in a college but soon withdrew due to the fee being too expensive. Veer’s and his wife’s goal is, for the next couple years, is to collect enough dowry so their daughter can be married off and the liability can be removed.

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