Meet Arnab Kanti Mishra an IIT Delhi graduate who chose filmmaking as his calling, the director of this short film bearing fruit to his years of toil and single focused dedication towards storytelling.
This fifteen minute experimental drama was selected in the Court Metrage section at the 69 th Cannes Film Festival. It is a tribute to the numerous freedom fighters and independence activists who sacrificed their lives for the greater good of our nation and were never heard of. We all know and celebrate the lives of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Chandrashekhar Azad, but for every such celebrated Shaheed, there were umpteen unknown, hidden, and backroom heroes who never came into limelight. No history textbook mentions them, no film depicts their life story, and barring a select few no even knows about them. This film is about one such patriot. It is October 1931 and Subod, an Hindustan Republic Association (HRA) comrade has to carry an important message for Jatin Da. In the past few months, the British Government has been keeping a very stringent check on the activities of HRA, restricting their movements. Subod leaves from Jhansi and reaches Itarsi on the third day, his native place. He gets shot, injured he reaches home, expecting some help. Seeing his wife, Aashaa lying on the cot in pain, he applies turmeric to the bullet wound himself. A local volunteer named Deep carrying a bag, knocks at his door and leaves keeping it there. Subod mentions of leaving for Jatin Da, not mentioning the code word to Aashaa, being classified, but then realises that she herself is bleeding from a bullet wound. Aashaa figures that she does not have much time left and asks Subod for code, revealing to him that she is the local HRA in-charge and in possession of the letters to be delivered to Jatin Da. But she would not hand them until the code is signalled as part of the protocol (code being Safed Kabootar). There Subod realises that she was playing an even larger role for the cause of freedom, unbeknownst to him. It is later revealed that Aashaa’s efforts do not go in vain, with she being honoured posthumously by the HRA, though paying a heavy personal price.
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