Varanasi has been at the centre of many filmic journeys of late. Be it love or tragedy, the holy Indian town has served as the backdrop for a number of stories, each moulded around its famous ghats. But beyond the gravity of love, loss and death, Benares still remains uncharted through many of its alleys, especially through narratives that thrill, shock and entertain in equal measure. So when childhood friends Dhiraj Kumar and Manish Kishore decided to set their debut film Kaashi: In Search of Ganga in Kashi, they knew they were doing something unique.
Sharman Joshi, who plays the role of a man who sets out to find his sister Ganga, says, “A lot of Benares is still unexplored. We wanted to show a different side to it, the corners that are not usually seen. Even though it has become a hotspot for a range of films, they are still limited to the ghats,”
Kishore, who has written the story of the film, has been working with Kumar in the media space for a couple of decades now. “We started out very small in 2003, and from Patna we slowly built our way to Delhi and then eventually, Mumbai,” Kishore adds.
The name of Joshi’s character, Kishore says, isn’t merely a coincidence. “We wanted a central character representative of the town, who also has that heroic vein in him. So Sharman plays a man from the Dom community, who burn bodies on Kashi’s ghats. So, when we named him after the town, it was natural that his sister would be named the one thing that is inseparable from the city of Kashi, Ganga,” he says. The writer believes the film isn’t a drab, dark thriller alone, but also offers entertainment in equal chunks of shock and pleasure.
Joshi says playing this character was both challenging and rewarding. “I liked the story, especially the way it ends. Most suspense thrillers fail to add up at the end, but this made so much sense, it was just right,” he says. Joshi had visited the town before to act in plays but his engagement with the town during the making of this film was more personal than ever. “My previous visits here were quick in and outs, for plays that I am working with regularly. But while shooting this film, I built a strong bond with the place. You realise the mortality of life when you see pyres burning on Manikarnika ghat and you feel the zest for life at the Vishwanath Temple. Those extreme emotions—all in the same town—have stayed with me,” says the 39-year-old actor, who was last in thriller drama 3 Storeys.
Not only the actor, but even the director admitted that the groundwork involved in shooting the film in the dingy bylanes of the town was not an easy task.
“Most of the lanes are very narrow and for every scene we shot, hundreds of people would crowd the area. But we enjoyed every minute of it,” says Kumar.
Joshi belongs to a family of theatre artists and this is one of the reasons that he has come back to the form in the last couple of years. “Theatre gives you time, to work on your acting skills. It is also more personal and engaging. I love the space,” he says.
Despite the challenges they faced, Kishore is confident the film will make its mark. “We wanted to make something we knew, from language to even the metaphors we were using. You’ll see that in the film, the way it is rooted in its north-Indian roots. But more than anything else, it will entertain,” he says.