There is Bhakti Yoga, the foundation of every religion. Bhakti means devotion. That's praying not for personal needs but love of God with all your heart, mind and soul. For this Yoga, it is important to understand the philosophy of Pluralism, 'there are many paths and names to the same One God.'  Hence, Bhakti isn't exclusive just to it's root in the religions of India. A good analogy that presents this is that God is like an infinite ocean, formless, but freezes into a solid state for the love of a devotee.

Jnana Yoga, the path of knowledge. It is like a quest to understand our true Self by asking ourselves "Who am I?" beyond our material body and mind. This Yoga even works for an atheist. Anyone on a journey to understand life and the nature of the universe is pretty much already on this pathway. The deeper we understand the universe, the more we discover our connection to it.  

Raja Yoga, the path of meditation. This Yoga requires a lot of preparation work and hence is known to be the hardest. First one needs to practice many values such as non-violence, truthfulness, celibacy, purity and contentment. Raja Yoga is looking within, and discovering your connection to the universe. 

So the film industry has had a trend recently.. trailers for trailers.. promos for trailers of trailers.. posters announcing the promos of trailers for trailers.. it's the social media world, our attention spans are getting smaller by the day.

Though our film is small.. it is an ambitious project this time.. hence we decided to share something, but differently. Here's the official script planned for our trailer:




I was the average girl..
Phone.. Social Media.... My life...
Then I died.. But it wasn't the end.. I was given another chance..
Another life... A loop of lives.

and that's where I met Him...
He had always been there.. but I had to look for him...
because he was never easy to find..

He made me feel that my name meant something..
My name is Leela

So we had a light-bulb moment, 'how do we make the most of a low budget?' we pondered, pondered again and pondered again. Then it hit us! take a simple story, throw it into a cycle, add deep thought provoking philosophy and we now have the script we have. It's exciting!

We won't give away too much just yet, but this one will be done with a bigger team and a lot more effort and planning. The script itself has gone through 4 rewrites so far. We can give you the titles we brainstormed, because we know that it won't be easy to guess what it's about.
First we called it 'Tara,' (Yes the monkey princess from the Ramayan) then it was 'Ahalya,' then 'Meera', then we called it 'Journey of the Gopi,' and finalised on 'Bhagavad Leela.' Now it's just 'Leela.' 

Our current project is another strange one. Again, it was made with 'practice' and 'coming to perfection' in mind. The original concept was a modern day re-telling of the duel between Shakuni and Yuddhistra in the epic Mahabharata.

When the very talented Alexei Liss approached me with his Sin City style short concept, I played with the idea a little bit and eventually we came up with the script for 'The game of the Ego.' Not a glamorous 'Hanuman Productions' worthy script or theme, but something that still holds a deeper meaning within it.

We decided to play with the idea of the Ego, that part of us which causes the ruin of most relationships.

Watch it as we release it this coming week! EgoGame.weebly.com

Horror films were never really my thing, but for a first project I was pretty nervous about getting my film right. When I thought up the concept for Toutai, my justification was that Horror flicks can be pretty dark, sometimes a black screen. Hence, if I mess up anywhere, I can hope to dark it out in editing. Also, with a low budget and small crew, the creative part of my mind told me if I could bring out a thrill with pretty much no money spent on it at all, I could prove myself worthy of directing a more costly film.

The basic story-line is a girl trying to remember things after being possessed by a spirit.  The idea for Toutai isn't original, a film buff would pick that up almost instantly. I sampled ideas from films all around the world, all for the sake of exploring directing and special effects. Films that inspired me for this script included Identity, Old Boy, A Chinese Odyssey, Kill Bill, Anniyan and Insidious. 

I can't say the film itself was a great success, but the learning curve definitely was. Sound errors, lighting issues, continuity problems, I made them all. As a director, what I found tricky was building a convincing romance plot, not a genre interested in and hence that was the films biggest flaw.

To watch the movie, check out Toutai.weebly.com