The Banality of Story

Dear Studio, invest in people, not in products. Tell me a story I can feel-each time anew

- Kanu Behl

A box is just a box. There is someone inside, and there is someone outside. But when I look at his box, I often wonder where this box came from.

When I was a child, I fell in love with cinema. It was a sort of head over heels, love at first sight. The act of making up stories; being able to fly anywhere that I liked, as if floating on a magic carpet somewhere in the clouds, was magical. While I was telling these stories to myself, I didn't understand what I was making up fully but the act of being able to create the story from the beginning to the end, each time moved something inside me unequivocally.

I found myself making sense of the world without the story fully making sense always.

And that is the power of cinema. We think it's about stories/ storytelling, but somewhere it is about being 'in the moment'. In a particular space; at a particular time; where we are able to connect to memories hidden deep inside; and, they take their own sensory collative form. Every child experiences this oneness with themselves as they grow up.

But as we grow up and fall in love with cinema or any other of our own chosen art forms even more, suddenly this box appears. This box begins to root us in the real world-telling us where we can go, and how far we can go. We fight with it, scream and rail against it, kick and box it, hoping to dent it. But the box stubbornly holds its shape.

Or at least pretends to.