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Private Notes
“Indians and Chinese will rule the world” — a prophecy and a challenge from one of the unforgettable characters you will meet in MYTH AND MIGHT, a panoramic documentary that captures the drama of epic change in the world’s largest democracy.
The new superpower is emerging amid the collision of the ancient and the modern – and MYTH AND MIGHT gives you a front row seat. Explore India’s rich tapestry of myth — from the flames of the ancient cremation pyres on the Ganges to the unforgettable spectacle of Navratri festival’s tens of thousands of dancers. Experience the force of India’s might – in the mountain jungles where a war for the country’s future is being fought, to the concrete streets of the capital where millions demand justice from their government.
The colorful and charismatic Lalu opens the show. Extraordinary access to India’s powerful and successful railway minister provides a closeup of the face of power. Both beloved as a savior of the lower castes, and reviled as a corrupt opportunist, Lalu embodies India’s hope and its contradictions.
The struggle for the soul of the new India is told through the stories of two brilliant doctors – both fiercely committed to their country, both determined to build its future. One, a rich heart surgeon, has returned home from America with a plan to build a medical system that will bring westerners to India’s door. He claims the future belongs to India. The other follows the example of his father who fought with Gandhi for India’s freedom, devoting his life to providing care and hope for India’s forgotten villagers. He fears India will dissolve into civil war.
The sublime city of Varanasi provides the backdrop for the powerful story of a father’s servitude and a son’s redemption in India’s ancient caste system. As one of India’s dalits or untouchables, Ramji Choudhury is doomed to spend his life burning bodies on the cremation pyres, but a breathtaking act of rebelli
The documentary is called "INDIA ON THE MOVE" for good reason. “The elephant is thundering,” says Vineet Agarwal whose family owns India’s largest freight company – the one growing at 25 per cent a year.And from his leather armchair, in the living room of his private jet, an Airbus A319 that would normally carry 130 passengers, billionaire Vijay Mallya leans forward, chuckles and declares that: “before, America and Europe held center stage. I guess center stage is going to move east.”
Such is the confidence that now abounds in an economy that boasts a middle-class of 300 million, and more young people than anywhere else on earth — 500 million under 25. See the call center come of age, and Arjun and Sunita’s good life unfold. They are American-trained doctors, married with two kids, running two businesses and clearing email in the car on the way to work. In one business they do radiology over the Internet: a room full of Indian radiologists analyze cat-scans and x-rays of patients sitting in emergency rooms in America. They turn the results round in half an hour.
“This is almost space age medicine,” says Arjun, a Yale graduate.
But “India on the Move” also reveals that India still has a long way to go. It is all “space age” and “consumer age” in the cities, but medieval in the countryside, where farmers live in dire debt, and an alarming number commit suicide.Corruption is improving, but remains endemic; public education is woeful; and crucially, despite all progress, there remains a desperate need for jobs. The Indian growth of recent times has largely been driven by the service sector and software, but the documentary makes clear that India will have to make widgets and not just digits, if it wants to ever provide enough jobs.
"INDIA ON THE MOVE" captures all this through the lives of people at a moment in history when this ancient civilization has decided to take on the future — and transform the world.
From strobe-lit studios in Mumbai, to back-alley village sets in the shadow of communal strife, MANUFACTURING DREAMS shines a spotlight on a society where rising prosperity has set traditional values in turmoil. Our characters are seen through the colorful prism of Bollywood From would-be actors to stoic nightwatchman, Manufacturing Dreams pulls back the curtain on the new India, revealing intensely vivid lives lived in Bollywood’s colorful shadow: a spectacular world of bright profiles … and stark divisions. The show opens with a lavish Bollywood-themed wedding in the nation’s capital. The bride to be, Neha Chopra, has just met the man her father chose for her. 8,000 guests are invited to the spectacle. Geeta Samuel, a top wedding planner (with a crew of 3200) is helping achieve the bride’s dream of the best wedding in Delhi. Geeta blesses the day she gave up dreams of being a civil servant.
Outside, Pradeep, the night-watchman begins work: standing guard at a five-star hotel hosting another lavish wedding. He fears he won’t be able to afford even a modest wedding for his four-year old daughter and worse, he fears she might try for a love marriage. He has no use for Bollywood’s new movies: “I don’t like the fact that the guy is from one caste and the girl is from a different one.”
In a high-tech studio in the city-of-dreams itself, Mumbai, a former chartered accountant lives out his dream as a celebrity radio disc-jockey. While his family back home frets about finding him a bride, Tarun is unworried (and unhurried) in searching for a wife.A few hundred kilometers inland, in a dusty village, two young Muslim friends, Farogh and Sheikh, are struggling to make their own cheap knock-offs of the latest Bollywood hits. And with more than 300 channels, television is moving the furniture in India’s social system. On the set of the popular soap opera “Bidaai” — the delicate issue of skin color is tackled head-on, challenging viewers in a cou
From the shimmering beauty of the Golden Temple in Amritsar to the desert barren lands of Rajasthan, MOTHER INDIA shows us how food unites and food still divides in today’s India. Modernity and tradition collide and merge in a spicy and delicious episode that looks at how this sprawling, diverse land feeds itself at a time of unparalleled change. “Kings and beggars” eat together at the holiest shrine of the Sikhs and wealthy potato farmer Raghbir Sing Gill is happy to serve up the daily free meal to all who come. But he worries about the poor farmers around him who must “grow big or go under” to feed the appetites of a growing middle class.
A celebrity chef introduces olive oil to adoring fans while a dalit cook returns to herding goats when higher-caste children refuse to eat her food.In Lucknow, a dignified Kabab King suffers in silence as his nephew takes his 100-year-old recipe and peddles it in one of India’s fast food malls.
A determined young dabawallah weaves his way through ever-growing crowds and jam-packed trains to deliver home-cooked lunches to Mumbai’s office workers.Special Economic Zones and shiny supermarkets crowd out farmlands and market stalls, challenging time-honored methods of growing, and selling, food.Caught between tradition and change, MOTHER INDIA captures the splendor and the turmoil of “the land of a thousand dishes” with a fascinating cast of characters and stunning location images.
