SAN­DRA L BLOOD

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Neera Var­sha Parsan de­cid­ed to put her Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence qual­i­fi­ca­tions in In­di­an Clas­si­cal Mu­sic ac­com­plished at the Bharatiya Vidya Sansth­haan, and her vi­sion to utilise her knowl­edge of Hin­di and Clas­si­cal mu­sic, to op­ti­mum use.

Com­bin­ing them with sto­ries her grand­moth­er told both her and her sis­ter Darpan Varuna Parsan about their an­ces­tors, they formed Parsan Pro­duc­tions (PP) in 2018 work­ing on a prod­uct, Aag­man (the ar­rival).

The cre­ative di­rec­tor and doc­tor al­ways want­ed to pro­duce a movie, a dream of hers, to man­i­fest her cre­ative vi­sion and share with the world. The sis­ters are de­scribed as the two halves that make every­thing whole. Neera cre­ates and Darpan ex­e­cutes. Darpan said she takes Neera’s vi­sions and makes them come to life.

Af­ter mak­ing the de­ci­sion to ex­e­cute Aag­man, they soon re­alised that they need­ed a le­gal or­gan­i­sa­tion to man­age the af­fairs of PP, which be­came a reg­is­tered NGO in 2019. Oth­er found­ing mem­bers: Leela Ma­habir, Dr Hugh Ja­cobs and Avinash Kissoon.

Aag­man pre­mieres No­vem­ber 27 at South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) at 6 pm.

Neera, said to be flu­ent in Hin­di, teach­es the lan­guage. She com­pos­es the songs and writes the scripts for the live plays and films, in­clud­ing Aag­man. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she for­mats the mu­si­cal con­certs, while Darpan works on mar­ket­ing, ad­min­is­tra­tion, op­er­a­tions, and video edit­ing, among oth­ers.

Darpan, too, has been vol­un­tar­i­ly teach­ing Hin­di and mu­sic for many years, and the film, Aag­man, in­volves a few of her past stu­dents.

PP looks for­ward to gain­ing the sup­port of the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor to cre­ate an ap­petite for qual­i­ty lo­cal con­tent, es­pe­cial­ly film, and put Trinidad on the world map for the same.

“We want Trinidad to be known for the rich tal­ent of our peo­ple…,” stat­ed Darpan. “We would like to make this ven­ture a vi­able av­enue for per­sons wish­ing to get in­to per­form­ing arts as a ca­reer.”

The sis­ters al­so en­vis­age the pre­miere of Aag­man to be a launch­ing pad to help ac­com­plish such.

“It has been a bit chal­leng­ing. We ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting peo­ple to con­cep­tu­alise some­thing they’ve nev­er seen be­fore. Many peo­ple are think­ing it is a doc­u­men­tary on in­den­ture­ship when it isn’t. We are hop­ing peo­ple will come out to the launch and see what we are ca­pa­ble of.

“Our fa­ther, the late Gan­garam Parsan, was a singer who passed away with­out ever get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share his tal­ent with the world. Our grand­moth­er, the late Bas­daye Ma­haraj, fond­ly told us sto­ries about her grand­moth­er who came on the boat from In­dia. We have ded­i­cat­ed the film to both of them for their knowl­edge, teach­ings and in­spi­ra­tion.”

Aag­man is a 100 per cent Trinida­di­an-fea­tured film based on the per­son­al lives of the East In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, with an all-lo­cal cast and crew of al­most 80 and sev­en all-Hin­di songs writ­ten and com­posed by Neera.

The video, edit­ed by Darpan and Ja­cobs, and while the movie re­ceived some fi­nan­cial sup­port from var­i­ous peo­ple, the ma­jor­i­ty of the movie was fund­ed out of pock­et, re­vealed Darpan. Film­ing be­gan three years ago, in 2018, and the launch was post­poned due to COVID.

De­spite lit­tle to no guid­ance, sup­port or ex­pe­ri­ence, the Parsan said, look­ing at their first set of scenes, and fol­low­ing the pro­gres­sion of the film, one will eas­i­ly see how they grew as time pro­gressed. “As we filmed more and more scenes, our cast base grew as more and more peo­ple be­came in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing part in the project.

Aag­man is very spe­cial and unique be­cause a film like this has nev­er been done in T&T be­fore. We are mak­ing his­to­ry and we are thank­ful to our cast and crew mem­bers for help­ing make this a re­al­i­ty.”

With nar­ra­tion by Lutch­min, grand­daugh­ter to Si­ta, the hero­ine, Si­ta learns of a threat to a fam­i­ly mem­ber who she helps to es­cape In­dia and go to Trinidad. On their way, tragedy be­falls and Si­ta is forced to go in­stead. The film al­so shows the cir­cum­stances that led oth­er char­ac­ters – Budhram Shar­ma and his fam­i­ly, Gopal, and Ah­mad—to leave for Trinidad. When they all ar­rive, they be­friend and sup­port each oth­er as they all nav­i­gate their new lives.

Jee­van, the song, will be fea­tured dur­ing a piv­otal point of the movie that changes Si­ta and Sub­hadra’s lives for­ev­er.