Screening of Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Jaa Riya Hu

6 August 2025-6 August 2025

Screening of And, Towards Happy Alleys

Date: 13 June 2025
Time: 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Venue: KNMA, Saket

About the Event

Cine Paradiso talk series
Session 03: Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Jaa Riya Hu
A film by Anamika Haksar
Runtime: 121 Minutes

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director and a conversation between Anamika Haksar and Eshan Sharma

Join our new series of film screenings and talks that invite off-beat and independent filmmakers and creative professionals working in the medium of cinematic arts to share their films, videos and engage in conversation with audiences. The title of the series is inspired by the well-known classic Italian film Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988) by Giuseppe Tornatore. The film is an ode to the love of cinema as seen through the eyes of a young boy, Toto, while he develops a friendship with the projectionist of a dilapidated cinema theatre based in post-WW2 Sicily. In the same vein, this series of screenings and talks will bring together cinema professionals and scholars to decode and demystify the magic that plays on screen, and hope to hone love and appreciation for the cinematic arts. KNMA hopes to invite artists and storytellers working with the medium of moving images, attempting to bridge a gap between popular arts and museum audiences.

The series is curated by Neha Tickoo and Eshan Shrama, founder of Karwaan Heritage

Synopsis:

‘Ghode Ko …’ follows four main characters: a pickpocket, a vendor of sweet and savoury snacks, a labourer-activist and a conductor of heritage walks. We see Old Delhi through their eyes - their lives, hopes, aspirations, dreams - and hear it through their various languages and dialects. Patru, the pickpocket, decides to take people on alternative walks, showing them the underbelly of the city they think they know, but this lands him in trouble with local merchants and the police. That's where he finally decides to conduct one last 'Dream Walk. It is here that we enter the subterranean consciousness of the city's migrant population. Together, these walks create a visual and aural history of Old Delhi from different points of view. And when Lali, the labourer-activist, too joins the fray, giving a speech urging workers to unite, he lands them all in jail. Fusing documentary-realism with magic-realism and true and fictionalised stories with poetry, history and dreams, Ghode ko... is a

Love letter to the syncretic culture of Old Delhi, which is slowly losing itself amidst concrete and smog.

Music composed by Tyrax Ventura, a young rock musician, will have 'Industrial sounds. The music of the film will also move from contemporary Indian music to traditional Indian music. In the film, we will move from neo realism to Indian folk and even to expressionism when it comes to the dreams. The actors of our team are steeped in a deep understanding of theatrical traditions, both folk and contemporary. In terms of genre, the film moves from light irony to black humour.

Biography

Anamika Haksar

This film is the brainchild of Anamika Haksar, an eminent theatre director in contemporary Indian theatre. Having trained first under Badal Sarcar and then B.V. Karanth at NSD, she was one of the few Indians to train at the State Institute of Theatre Arts, Moscow. These influences have led her down an uncompromising path of formal experimentation in theatre that has earned her a prominent place in the Indian Theatre Lexicon. She has been awarded the Sanskruti award in the year 1995 for developing a new theatre language in India. She is one of the few theatre practitioners who was invited to the Kochi Biennale in 2016 to exhibit a theatre installation which was highly acclaimed. Now, having evolved a script of her love for the life and history of Shahjahanabad, Anamika seeks to bring her unique, tried and tested sensibility into the cinematic medium with a complex narrative about the old city.

Eshan Sharma

Eshan Sharma is the young and dynamic founder of one of India's leading student collectives, Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative. He loves reading non-fiction books and talking to people. Eshan studied History at Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi. He has a Master's Degree in Modern Indian History from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He also conducts very interesting history and cinema walks around cities like Delhi, Bombay and Baroda.