Gurugram-based Mauraya Sharma is just 17 but he dons many hats. He has learned fashion styling, he paints, is a Grade 4 pianist from Trinity College of London, has conceptualised a play and owns a production house, and his latest venture is a short film titled Seeped. Sharma has written and directed the 15-minute film that just released.
It is about paper-making artist Kaivalya, entangled with the tussles on her past and reinvigorated by the exploration of sexuality, pain, and unplanned co-relations.
“Seeped is not about what moments of contemplation can do to us, rather what merely causes it. I have always chosen the more natural side of things. It was no surprise that one afternoon I found myself ruminating, while making paper and compared the process to instances in my own life,” says Sharma, a Class-11 student at Pathways World School Aravali, Gurugram.
The movie was shot at the foothills of Aravali. “I found myself motivated by these pandemic restrictions. Working with all the safety measures in place, there seemed to be a sense of detachment from the human world, which made me connect with nature. It took over eight months to create this short film. We did get our share of scolding from the authorities to be working in these risky times, but we managed, exhaustively,” says Sharma, who has applied for 80 film festivals (including Oscar qualifying).
Previously, he co-wrote and directed short films titled Unbinding, and Looking Through the Bamboos. “All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the personages. In fact, I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person singular. With a high level of sensitivity, I do not intend to be controversial as it usually follows. I’d rather be provocative using themes of sexuality, desire, indulgence and letting go,” adds Sharma, who wants to study film and design in the US next year.
His childhood was steeped in retellings of various mythological stories, which fuelled his imagination and spawned a narrative of its own, “lacking modern-day constraints, and setting a tone for my expression”. But as he grew older, the pressure to choose a gender increased. “After a year of theatre training, I conceptualised a play Two-Headed Lore, on gender binaries that I co-directed with my teacher. It was a ticketed event in Gurugram. What struck me was how society shapes boys and girls, especially in India. But I want to be who I am, not bound by what I am expected to do.”
Making movies was not the very first thing Sharma ventured into. “One of the first crafts I learned as a child was fashion designing. As a child, I loved recycling left over cloth from my mother’s wardrobe to make miniature dresses for dolls. In Class 8, I went to UAL London to do a short course in fashion styling.”
His artworks have been exhibited at various places. “Metaphors for my images come from the earth, aerial mappings, urban sprawl, constructed spaces, maps, geographic images, symbols, and architectural plans. I even started learning piano at a very young age. So, I do not need to ‘handle’ them all together, for me they are all connected and one leads to another sometimes as inspiration other times as an expression.” Next, is a new film project, an auto fiction, “in collaboration with a renowned artist,” he concludes.