The Netflix short film Anuja begins with 17-year-old Palak, the older sister, reciting a story to her 9-year-old younger sister, Anuja, as they lie in their slum dwelling in Delhi. In the story, a beloved mongoose is entrusted to care for the baby of a family, which it does when it shreds a snake to pieces when it enters the home. When the parents return, they see blood on the mongoose’s mouth and mistakenly believe that the mongoose has eaten the baby. Before seeing the snake’s corpse, the father kills the mongoose.
We learn that Palak was reciting a story that their late mother had shared, whereas Anuja is too young to remember. But aside from the story, perhaps foreshadowing the fate for the sisters, albeit not as drastic and certainly not deadly, it also cements their loving and doting relationship toward one another.
Anuja works in a garment factory with her sister, Palak. When a teacher offers Anuja a life-changing opportunity to attend an elite boarding school, her employer gives her an ultimatum that is very difficult for such a young girl to ponder. Director Adam J. Graves and producer Suchitra Mattai, who are in fact husband and wife, bring this story to life with such beautiful attention to detail of the landscape of Delhi and the life that exists in the margins. They both are already accomplished in their own right — Graves is a philosopher who has a Ph.D. In the philosophy of religion and has lived in India where he studied Sanskrit. Mattai herself is a multi-disciplinary Guyanese American artist of South Asian descent who studied South Asian art. Oscar-winning producer Guneet Monga, Mindy Karina, and Priyanka Chopra are also part of the filmmaking team of the short film.
Masala Magazine had the opportunity to ask Graves and Mattai during a roundtable discussion about their film and about how they brought their own educational background into the making.
“I have a background in South Asian studies. My day job, as it were, is that I’m a professor of Philosophy. I often use film in my classroom as its own heuristic tool, but increasingly, it’s become its own medium worthy of philosophical exploration as of itself. I have been interested in filmmaking for a long time. I knew I always wanted to make a film. It took the pandemic that had an effect on a lot of people to rethink what they want for their lives,” said Graves. “Suchitra and I were sitting around and were like, we can’t wait until retirement to make a film. We need to start now! It was a natural progression. We knew we wanted to film something in India. I knew I wanted to work on a project that took its inspiration from Suchitra’s own artistic practice.”
Suchitra added: “I’m a visual artist, and a huge part of my process and conceptual framework is storytelling and giving voice to women of the diaspora and the continent. And, really, thinking about telling stories that haven’t been told before. In a way, the visual art world can be not as accessible. Thinking about film and how accessible it is felt like a natural extension of the work.”
Graves also took the opportunity to elaborate on how his background in philosophy extended to his natural inclinations as a storyteller. “I don’t think I’ve ever said this in an interview, so I might as well say it now, but that is my work as a philosopher - a lot of what I do is take questions about agency and the relationship between agency and narrative. I’m known in the philosophical world for having developed a narrative theory of personal identity. Which is very much connected in some sense to our practices as filmmakers, screenwriters, and storytellers.”
And in fact, Abuja is a film that requires one’s full attention, and the ambiguous ending about the ultimate decision that Anuja makes about her future, and also her sister’s, is one that falls on the audience’s shoulders. It challenges the very notion of agency that is given to a child, one that is in impoverished conditions no less, and the weight of life-making decisions that no one should ever have to make.
“I have to confess that which decision she makes is up to the viewer. It’s meant to be a cliffhanger or an unresolved resolution. The reason why that ending was so critical for the film — before we completed the screenplay, we knew we wanted to end with this conflict and not put a bow on it and give in a Hollywood Bollywood ending — what we learned as we did more research and did more site visits and read more case studies of children who come from this community in particular, is a lot of times that girls in their families are faced with this incredibly tough choice. Do I go to school? Do we send our daughters to school in hopes for a better future, when their prospects could be very slim? Or do we keep them home or have them work in order to contribute to the material wellbeing of our family? Often, these are families that live in abject poverty and depend upon that extra income,” shared Graves in the roundtable.
Mattai agreed that it is an unthinkable decision to have to make. “I think that in the west, we would say education. Through the narrative, it's developed that they have such a strong bond. They love one another. If Anuja goes to school, she will be far away from her sister, and they might never connect again. So, there is that aspect of family and love vs education. Yes, we know if she goes for the education, that she will have a life perhaps of no poverty and not be in the factory. But it is that leaving of the family and the breaking of the bonds that makes it a tough decision.”
In an almost meta ending for Sajda Pathan, the actress who plays Anuja, the end of the film shows that she herself is now in fact attending school and is a resident of the Salaam Baalak Trust, a nonprofit organisation that offers education and opportunity to young girls. Graves and Mattai looked to the Trust for help and partnership when filming as well.
Graves and Mattai are now basking in the reception that the film has received—an honor like an Oscar nomination means that they are filmmakers to watch.
“We have been so elated to see the response for this film and to realise that these young heroines can be accepted as universal heroines. It has been a true honor to recognise them this way,” shared Mattai in the roundtable discussion.