Giddh Review - A Human's Pain Behind Earning Livelihood From Deaths Like Vultures

Directed by the National Award-Winning Director, Manish Saini, and featuring Sanjay Mishra as the protagonist, Giddh recently emerged as the winner of the Asia International Short Films Festival, which makes it officially qualified to compete at none other than the Oscars. I am sure not many of us know it here on the internet and on social media. Even I came to know about it suddenly and was lucky enough to have an exclusive preview of this amazing shirt. I am thankful to the team because my 25 minutes were spent on worthwhile stuff.Giddh's title gives you an idea of its subject, and it's quite a known fact globally. But I just want to ask: did you ever feel like being a Giddh (vulture) yourself? Many poor people did. There is a famous saying in Marathi, which goes like this: "मयताच्या टाळूवरील लोणी खाणे." Sorry, I couldn't translate it in English because I have been hearing it just as it is since childhood. So basically, it's about 'death business'. Somebody's loss is somebody's gain. We all know that, right? But how many of us are in the death business? I mean, there are plenty of businesses that are dependent on people's deaths, and I don't wish to describe it further and make things awkward here. Giddh is about that pain one human has to go through while earning his livelihood from dead bodies. Feels weird and compassionate, but that's a fact for many people around us.

The short film is about an elderly man who has no job at the moment but plenty of expenses. After the death of his son, he is left all alone in his house with a dog. Since he cannot find a job to earn his bread, he decides to take butter from dead bodies. He steals the clothes of dead people from the crematorium, washes them, and takes them to the market to sell. That Chorbazaar kind of sale, you know. While his stomach is satisfied, his soul isn't at peace, and that is very natural. The conflict between earning his life and the deaths of some people is used as a metaphor, and the pain is extremely believable and haunting.Sanjay Mishra hardly has any dialogue, but he acts through his eyes, body, and expressions. Every single frame is focused on him, and some pauses capture the beauty of his terrific acting talent. The three frames that I liked the most are: first, when he is immovable and is taking money from customers without even telling them the price; second, when the lady says, "Baccho ke nahi hai Kya?; and third, when he sees the news of a school bus accident on TV. We are lucky to have an actor like him; if we could just care for him more than we do for our expressionless superstars.. the industry would be a different place. The cinematography, screenplay, background score, and editing are all just nice. Manish Saini gets full credit for his brilliant writing and fantastic direction. His artistic vision surely deserves a bunch of awards, but above all, I am in awe of his social sense to look at things that are happening around us. Less fiction and more reality—that's how you craft a cinematic burn. Thanks, Manish, for letting us know the pain that's been around us, but we never felt it in our AC rooms and offices.