Devashish Makhija has written and directed the full-length award-winning feature films ‘Joram’, ‘Bhonsle’ and ‘Ajji’, all three of which screened at numerous international film festivals, winning awards widely; and the multiple-award-winning short films ‘Cycle’, ‘Cheepatakadumpa’, ‘Taandav’, ‘El’ayichi’, ‘Agli Baar’, ‘Rahim Murge pe Mat ro’, ‘Absent’, and ‘Happy’. ‘Bhonsle’ (winner of a National Award in 2021) is streaming on Sony Liv. ‘Joram’ (winner of two Filmfare Awards in 2024) and ‘Ajji’ are on Amazon Prime Video. Makhija is a multi-practice artist. He has had his own solo art show ‘Occupying Silence’, and is a prolific writer, having written the bestselling children’s books ‘When Ali became Bajrangbali’, ‘Why Paploo was Perplexed’, ‘We are The Dancing Forest’, and the multiple-award-winning YA novel ‘Oonga’.
<p>Time is arguably our biggest enemy. And memory, perhaps, our greatest curse. Which makes forgetting the hardest thing to do.</p><p>Identical-twin rickshaw drivers are wrongly suspected of terrorism in paranoid Bombay; a Calcutta merchant envies each saree he sells for the intimacy it’ll share with the woman who buys it; an illicit love affair is conducted over nine potent text messages; a lonely astronaut sings out loud, hoping his voice will find an ear somewhere; adivasis, jawans, Naxalites, policemen and journalists in Orissa are caught in a web of violence unleashed on them by both their own histories and that of a nation helplessly repeating it.</p><p>Here are forty-nine stories that speak to the power of forgetting.</p><p>Stories of difficult pasts, and the struggle to leave them behind.</p>
