Vinod Kumar Shukla's intimate world of words

There is little separation between the way Vinod Kumar Shukla writes and the way he lives

- Poulomi Das

In Gamak Ghar (2020) and Dhuin (2022), Achal Mishra's previous features, the filmmaker displayed a preoccupation with the many worlds that can be contained within the confines of a house. A similar throughline informs Chaar Phool Hai Aur Duniya Hai, Mishra's latest outing, which follows renowned Hindi poet and novelist Vinod Kumar Shukla over two afternoons at his home in Raipur. It is a fitting way to render Shukla onscreen, a writer who has spent 50 years of his literary career creating universes out of bare rooms, paying attention to the vivid inner lives of ordinary people who inhabit them.

The 54-minute documentary, now on MUBI, emerged by chance, when Mishra tagged along with actor Manav Kaul and a common friend, the screenwriter Nihal Parashar, to meet the Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer in March 2022. On the initial visit, he focused on shooting conversations between Kaul and the soft-spoken Shukla. Surveying the footage once he returned to Mumbai—then made up of straightforward interviews filmed in unbroken takes—Mishra recognized gaps. "I remember thinking that maybe if I could do one more visit, it would add something more," he says.

Ten days later, they were back in Raipur. This time around, Mishra's camera became attuned to being an onlooker, at a remove from the action. It was while observing the 88-year-old writer interact with the space—sitting on his swing, ambling around the garden, reading by the window, reciting poems on his terrace—that Shukla's son, Shashwat Gopal, transformed into something more than a stand-in.