00:00Remember I got a shock diagnosis out, it was a bolt from the blue, and it meant that in my
00:06case, because I'm also wary of letting it sound self-congratulatory or retrojecting any kind of heroic martyrdom into it,
00:14but essentially it became a kind of coping strategy or a way to deal or dissociate or displace the terror
00:22of what you've just been told, because there's always this kind of sudden zone in which you don't know if
00:27it has...
00:28There was a three day period when I wasn't entirely sure if it had metastasized or whatever, so in that
00:33way what you can do is to have a mediation device in front of you, in my case and that
00:37point it began with literally a phone, and then of course it mushroomed into a far bigger production.
00:42Initially it was just about if I can have an aesthetic filter between me and the experience itself, it helps
00:49me narrativize it differently and treat it as creative fodder.
00:53So basically it was a kind of in some way an escape portal, and in my case the relationship between
01:01the particular and the general will only kind of become clear to me once the film itself is done, because
01:06right now my immersion in it is a bit too entwined and entangled.
01:11The film was a way to kind of not look directly at a scary thing, and in a way to
01:20kind of aesthetically convert it into a project, so that you don't have to stare it in the grim eyes
01:27of what it actually is.
01:28And it kind of pulls wool over your own eyes, it's like a clever sleight of hand of convincing yourself
01:37that it's not this terrifying thing, but you're instead thinking about how to narrativize it, how to emplot it, and
01:45what its cinematic vocabulary should be.
01:49So I guess it's a kind of a con job that one pulls on.
01:54And what I loved in it is a surgeon, especially when you're doing difficult surgeries, the ability to completely lose
02:01yourself, be immersed in the absolute present.
02:05And that feels meditative and contemplative and it's a kind of melting away of everything extraneous and you're in the
02:12pinprick of the moment.
02:14And that's the highest form that any kind of artistic practice, even when you're filming, when you're totally in a
02:20state of flow and everything else is melted and you're losing a sense of time.
02:26It's this kind of an escapement from time that surgeons were able to access that I found transfixing, like I
02:34found it magical, I found it otherworldly.
02:36I guess now when I'm thinking about it, it also if somebody is dealing with the fear of an early
02:43snuffing out of life, like an early expiry date or mortality or any kind of finitude of life,
02:48the ability to expand the moment into the infinity, which is what happens when you're completely immersed in a moment,
02:54is what gets very attractive.
02:57So that was one aspect and also one of the surgeons that I want to, that I have been filming
03:03for the last two years has been incredible.
03:06So it slowly moved from being a story about myself and my sickness to actually being a dense character study
03:13or a portrait of a surgeon.
03:15My first ever film was a film called Cities of Sleep, which had to do with the homeless population in
03:22Delhi and how they sleep, etc.
03:24So it was about rough sleeping and looking at the urban through the optic of sleep or through a kind
03:30of horizontal axis.
03:32Eventually, I started thinking of what it would mean to look at the city through a vertical axis.
03:36So all that means is about the sky and the ground.
03:41In both these films, the city is, it's the city I've grown up in, I did my bachelor's, master's, PhD,
03:48everything in this city.
03:50And I've always made work within the city.
03:52This kind of ineffable, vague substance, right, of what it is that is exactly carcinogenic, we don't know.
04:00It's still quite muddied.
04:03So this film kind of became a reaction or my kind of coping mechanism in terms of the giant churn
04:15happening in my relationship with the city.
04:42I'll see you soon.
04:44I'll see you soon.
04:45Wait a minute.
04:46You're doing that.
04:49Can I watch you soon?
04:49That's what I see you soon?
04:50Is that the right thing?
04:50You're doing the right thing.
04:50I'll see you now.
