'In Search of the Sky' Puts a Face to the Poor Who Are Otherwise Only Seen as a Mass
In the last decade, it’s been heartening to see filmmaking voices emerge from the heartland, drawing raw, earthy portraits of rural life, where more than half of India still resides. We see such films hiding in the garb of a genre: comedy, satire, police procedural etc, especially when the director isn’t familiar with the milieu. Hence, the work of an assured filmmaker jumps out at us. The likes of Natesh Hegde, Anmol Sidhu, Achal Mishra etc, confidently marry sophisticated aesthetics with a lived-in grittiness. Director Jitank Singh Gurjar fits right into this mix as his feature debut, In Search of the Sky (alternate title: Vimukt) suggests. Told in Braj language, it tells the story of a family in rural Madhya Pradesh, which is trying to escape its life sentence by visiting the Mahakumbh.
Jasrath (Raghvendra Bhadoriiya) used to own some land, until he got deceived by his brother to sell it at a significantly lower price. He works as a bricklayer now, approaching what city folks might call a ‘retirement’ age. However, Jasrath can’t hang up his boots just yet. His son, Naran (Nikhil Yadav) has a developmental disability. Cared for by his mother, Vidya (Meghna Agarwal), like he’s still a toddler, Naran, presumably in his late 20s, spends his days hanging from trees, frolicking with a cousin (who is protective of him) – and raising hell on the village folk. Jasrath’s body is about to give up – simply because of the physical rigour of his job.
He can see the end is near – what will happen when his body completely gives up? Already enduring a hand-to-mouth existence, how will the family survive when Jasrath stops working? How will Vidya take care of Naran once her own physical limitations show up– Naran can’t even bathe himself. On top of all this, the village folk aren’t kind to Naran, teasing or bullying him, or taunting his parents about sins of a past life. When a neighbour suggests going to the Mahakumbh, and making Naran take a holy dip, which might wash away his past sins and cure his disability, the family is initially resistant to the idea. But they gradually warm up to it.
When the Mahakumbh took place from mid January to late February earlier this year, we saw and read about hordes of people attending it, often at the cost of their personal well-being. If nothing else, it’s a startling sight to see such unruly crowds assemble in one spot for matters of faith, especially in 2025. A sparkling achievement of Gurjar’s film is how it lends a face to that crowd. Most urban folk tend to look at the ‘poor’ as a monolith. Gurjar’s film contextualises the specific desperation of one (out of a million) families, forced to attend the fair. Religion is all they have left, in a time when it’s become a tool to rile up supremacist sentiments, or self-assertion.
As Vimukt, which translates to ‘liberation’, suggests, Gurjar’s film is looking at many levels of captivity faced by its characters. Jasrath has considered (and quashed) the thought of killing Naran, so he can live in peace. As much as he’d like to rid himself and his wife of the burden of looking after Naran, he would also like to rid his son of a humiliating life in their absence. It’s a difficult emotion to convey, but one the film does well to communicate. There’s also the layer of Jasrath and his family’s social and financial captivity, which they might never be able to escape from. In such circumstances, a ‘miracle’ is their only shot at a silver lining.
In a time when religion and spirituality are viewed with more cynicism than they’ve ever been, Gurjar’s film takes a bold step by reclaiming it from the powerful. Through Jasrath, Vidya and Naran, the film denotes how ‘faith’ is not just a way to mobilise people. The family sincerely grapples with its own religious beliefs, hoping for that ‘miracle’.
There are a couple of scenes when Gurjar highlights the meditative quality of devotional folk songs. Excellently shot by Shelly Sharma, the film skirts the lines of the abstract towards the end. When Naran is offered a hallucinogen by a sadhu, it results in some of the film’s best images. However, narrative-wise, those scenes feel indulgent in an otherwise pared-down film.
Co-written and produced by Pooja Vishal Sharma, In Search of the Sky is at its strongest when it brings us face to face with the people, who have too often either been patronised for their storied resilience, or buried in statistics. Either way, they live far away from our gated societies, and hence occupy an almost fantastical realm – which we consume on our smartphones, or through newspaper headlines.
Gurjar’s film insists they’re not figments of our imagination, and they’re doing all they can to liberate themselves from the generational burden thrust upon them. Especially, using their faith.
*In Search of the Sky (‘Vimukt’) is the first Braj film, and the only Indian film, to have its world premiere in the Centrepiece program of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2025.
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