Short Stream | In Teen Adhyay, the flight of birds brings a contemplative approach to the pandemic

Subhash Sahoo’s documentary on the interplay of the natural and human world during the pandemic is an atmospheric chronicle that leaves a lot to interpretation

In the past three years following the pandemic, not many filmmakers have re-imagined its impact on human life — all of the silence, the rupture, the devastation and the renewal — in ways that do justice to the scale of its effect on human life and the human psyche. The prism so far has been the hopelessness of government and civic systems, and the grind-down effect it had on relationships and connections. In India, Anubhav Sinha’s Bheed (2023) is the only film that comes close to a robust reimagining of the entirety of its impact.

As seen in Teen Adhyay: A crow building a nest, laying eggs, the eggs maturing to hatch, and the new bird in flight(Subash Sahoo)

Subash Sahoo’s Teen Adhyay is a quiet, exploratory, philosophical documentary film about the pandemic. Over its running time of about half an hour, the camera navigates what the fear and the isolation made us overlook — the continuity of the cycle of life. Sahoo, a renowned sound designer and sync sound engineer in Mumbai’s film industry with credits in more than 300 films, documented an intimate detail of life unfolding in the window of his home in Mumbai during lockdown: A crow building a nest, laying eggs, the eggs maturing to hatch, and the new bird in flight. Shot from 2020 to 2022, over both the first and second wave of the pandemic, the film is without dialogues and has roving, atmospheric shots of Mumbai and its adjoining rural areas enveloped in silence and stasis. The only human actor is Sahoo’s son who appears as he was during the pandemic years: A budding athlete who withdrew to himself after the isolation.

Teen Adhyay has three chapters: Vipatti (Calamity), Utpatti (Germination) and Chakra (Continuity). “In essence, that’s what ancient Hindu philosophy would qualify as existence,” says Sahoo. Each chapter has its distinct classical Indian soundtrack— a Megh Malhar rendition by Ghulam Ali Khan, and original compositions by Vibhuti Gadnayak, a music composer from Sahoo’s home state of Odisha. The natural world, the human world and the world of objects intersect in this poetic film that’s an evocation of a moment in human history — through Sahoo’s lens, the silence and the lack of movement in human quarters starkly accentuate the birth and the flights of birds. Sahoo almost glorifies the movements and fluidity of the natural world — as if we were given time to behold it. The film’s editing by Sahoo’s long-time collaborator Suvir Nath (who is also a co-producer of the film) complements the languorous yet emphatic pace of Teen Adhyay.

Sahoo recalls how the film was made. “At the start, like the rest of the world, my son and I were also gripped by the fear. We started observing a crow nesting on our balcony. With my Canon 5D Mark 3, I started shooting it and got my son also involved. Then it started gathering momentum when I started planning it as a film with Suvir.” Nath, who accompanied Sahoo on shoots across the ghostly city and its rural peripheries, says at a time when anxiety levels were at an all-time high, shooting the film was almost like therapy. “We were trying to make sense of life by shooting this film,” Nath added. The largely two-member team is in the process of sending the film to various film festivals across the world.

Sahoo is from Kendrapara, Odisha, where he grew up taking part in local theatre plays. After securing a degree in sound design from Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in the early 2000s, he came to Mumbai in 2006 with the hope of becoming an actor but ended up becoming a very successful sound designer. His attempts at directing were unsuccessful until the documentary The Sound Man Mangesh Desai (2017), about the legendary and trendsetting sound engineer, which received a lot of acclaim. Sahoo is currently putting the final touches on Mo Bou, Mo Gaan (My Mother, My Village), a personal documentary about his mother set in his ancestral village.

Sahoo, with nearly 20 years in Bollywood, now shoots his own films when he gets respite from his professional work as a sound designer. “When I have the extra money, I shoot. For me, filmmaking is a luxury, it is very personal,” Sahoo says.

Teen Adhyay has all the qualities of a passion project — a unique, oblique way of looking at an event that changed the world, and which the world is in a hurry to forget.

Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but is making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section on hindustantimes.com.

Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at Sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com