The best stories are usually the ones right outside your home. Or your neighbourhood.
When 25-year-old Viswesh S stepped outside his house to visit the neighbourhood store for groceries, he was taken aback by what he saw. “I’ve lived in Tambaram for 20 years, and have never seen the area like this,” he says, referring to the lockdown, “Wherever I went, I saw people talking about how it’s very different from before. Everyone felt fear... about other people, about currency notes, about touching goods.”
Viswesh sensed that everywhere he went — at the local vegetable vendor, and the bus stand. “The lockdown had changed people’s perspective, but we are looking ahead with hope.”
The independent filmmaker-cinematographer decided to do something about it. And then, armed with a camera and accompanied by a small team, Viswesh went about the roads of his neighbourhood to get people and places on film.
The result is Namma Tambaram, a six-minute short that tells the tale of this important Chennai neighbourhood and how much it has changed over the past three months. “Tambaram is the entrance to the city. It’s an emotion,” he says.
Viswesh has tried to pack all that into his short. The heroes of Namma Tambaram are long-time residents and the local shopkeepers, most of whom have been affected due to the lockdown. There’s Mohammed Iqbal Firdhouse, who has been running a bookstore since 1962, and a few other vegetable vendors, who add that dash of colour to the usually-bustling neighbourhood.
“I wanted it to play out like a real-time documentary, capturing the rawness of the visuals,” recalls Viswesh, who shot it in the month of May and subsequently edited and worked on the post production. “People were hesitant first to come on camera... but it helped that I’m a familiar face in the neighbourhood.”
Namma Tambaram also captures in detail the biggest change that the neighbourhood has undergone in recent times: the railway station decked with mural art, an effort of illustrator Varshini Ramakrishnan in colloboration with Nissan and NalandaWay Foundation to pay tribute to COVID-19 warriors. “It looks lovely and is a special occasion for our place. But the irony is that it cannot be physically celebrated, in person, by most people due to the lockdown.”
Watch Namma Tambaram