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In August 2014, a low budget film by an Indian director barely out of film school in New York, won the best feature film award at the Rhode Island Film Festival. However, unlike the usual festival fare from India that paints colourful pictures of an exotic culture, M Cream takes viewers on a trip to an India the world hasn’t really seen before. It’s a world where people live comfortably in middle-class affluence, listen to jazz and name their children after their favourite operas. “People at the festival came up to me to say that they’d never imagined this side of India,” laughs director Agneya Singh, a self-confessed product of this world.
Starring Imaad Shah, Ira Dubey, Barry John, Tom Alter and Lushin Dubey among others, M Cream is a story about four Westernised students on a quest for the mythical M Cream, the famous hashish found at Malana in Himachal Pradesh. In their own ways, all four are rebels, but none of them quite understands why. Their lives change when they set off on a road trip fuelled by alcohol and angst from Dharamshala to Manali. En route, they encounter spaced-out hippies, community protests against a luxury hotel coming up in the hills and a village threatened by displacement. Eventually, they end up on a road quite different from the one they’d started on. Their gritty yet dream-like adventure makes them realise that rebellion and social activism can often be two sides of the same coin, teaching them much more about real life than their years of education ever did.
The movie is marked by good cinematography and a jazzy soundtrack. The editing could have been tighter, especially in the second half. The story, even though it is a tad predictable, is interesting enough. “I’ve always been fascinated by the visual medium as a way to connect with people,” says Singh, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Singh penned the story of M Cream himself, basing it on what he calls a ‘real’ myth circulating in college campuses in urban India about a secret place in the Himalayas where the best hash grows. The essence of M Cream lies in its skillful capturing of the mood of an oft-overlooked generation. “Audiences abroad have a very stereotyped image of the Indian youth. They imagine them to be living in villages, speaking only in Hindi. But there is a growing demographic of youths who have had Western education, who are as comfortable in English as they are in Hindi,” says Singh. In many ways, the movie is Singh’s paean to his generation, often reviled for being different, even rebellious. “In the last few years, I’ve seen something unique happening to people like me. While we’ve had many more opportunities, access to resources et cetera, there are many more amongst us who’ve questioned established social beliefs and sought solutions to issues,” says he.
The responses to M Cream have been varied. Clearly, its protagonists, urban, Westernised students of Delhi University, don’t necessarily connect with mass audiences. “Older audiences have been scandalised, but many of the younger people who’ve seen it have connected with the film,” says Singh. “When we screened it in Goa, two older ladies walked up and thanked me for letting them know exactly what their own kids could be up to!”
Relying mostly on crowdfunding, it wasn’t easy to chalk out a budget for M Cream. Bollywood producers were not interested in it at all, but that’s no surprise. “We didn’t have any commercially saleable stars in our cast, our characters were hip and urban — most producers I contacted told me it was difficult to find investors for ‘niche’ films such as mine,” says Singh. He plans to start another round of crowdfunding to participate in several film festivals in the coming season and release the movie in India.
How audiences react to M Cream remains to be seen. For now, all one can say is that it’s interesting that a truly indie film has finally come home to roost in Bollywood.
