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Loha Singh, cutting red-tape and skipping laws for survival

Katiyabaaz: The  Powerless

Invisible in the furore about the Oscar selection, Deepti Kakkar and Farhad Mustafa’s Katiyabaaz has been quietly going places on the international festival circuit. A film about the extreme energy crisis in Kanpur, Katiyabaaz has touched many hearts. Post the release of the film, Katiyabaaz has received a post production grant from Sundance, premiered at Berlinale, Tribeca Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival in London, Stuttgart Indian Film Festival, Bilbao International Film Festival and several others including the latest Mumbai Film Festival.

Born in Chamanganj, Kanpur, Farhad says on Katiyabaaz’s official website, “My memories of Kanpur are predominantly of long, uncomfortable, water-less summers, spent without electricity. As a child I remember relatives facing unemployment due to the closure of the nationalised mills in Kanpur. I remember how in the following years, the power situation worsened. Livelihoods were at stake, and there were always stories about relatives and friends of the family, losing their incomes and businesses.

In many ways Loha Singh is a reflection of the city’s past. The only livelihood that he has available to him is stealing electricity, a highly dangerous, life threatening task. Yet he does it with a panache and grit that is very Kanpuria.”

The story is essentially about the twenty-eight year old dare-devil electrician who goes about the city stealing electricity from the rich to give to those who are bereft of any, and powerless to revoke the often fifteen hour long power cuts. Such is the command he holds, that without him, small scale industries will stop being commercially viable and a lot of people would be plunged into poverty. His counterpoint is the government official who is trying to solve Kanpur Electricity Board’s mounting problem of distribution losses from transformers which worsen the electricity shortage in the city.

While the film does not posit a black-and-white point of view according to its filmmakers, it might be said that it sympathises more with Loha Singh, the only man with some agency in a city mired in a nexus of power politics.

The music for Katiyabaaz has been done by Rahul Ram, and is in sync with the movie’s outlook. In the dystopic scenario of Kanpur’s unlit lanes, the sizzling sounds of power cuts, transformers getting switched off and power being stolen put repetitively throughout the film has added to the film’s texture and depth. It is a sound you associate with foreboding, with things gone awry, with the untruth of the several political speeches which have been recorded in the course of the film. In a Michael Moore-ish tone we see several politicians promising a better power situation if his/her political party is voted back to power. Curiously, all political leaders solely talk about power in their speeches in the film, the issue that is the root cause of other problems that plague Kanpur.

There were several uncontrolled situations during the shoot and the directors and the crew had to deal with drunken mobs, gang fights and such-like. Several sequences are impromptu and add to the urgent pace of the film. Ask Deepti and Farhad about what they intend next for their documentary and they will tell you they want it to contend with Bollywood films as mentioned in their interview with Dear Cinema.

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