Director Atul Sabharwal's soon-to-release docu takes him back to his childhood in Agra, and a dying trade

Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 15, 2015)

Film-writer and director of Arjun Kapoor-starrer, Aurangzeb, Atul Sabharwal's latest documentary was born in a Woodland showroom in Agra in early 2000. He was there with his father, O P Sabharwal to pick up a pair of boots. As he browsed through the shelves, his father stood in a corner, befuddled, saying, "So much has changed".

It's a moment that stayed with Sabherwal, now 38, who comes from a family of leather craftsmen, becoming the subject of In their Shoes, which will release in theatres next month as part of the PVR Director's Rare Showcase.

Although Agra's footwear trade is said to meet almost two-thirds of the domestic demand, it's an industry that has trundled downhill, especially the small units that are unable to beat cheaper global alternatives and unsuccessful at mechanisation. It's this that Sabherwal had hoped to capture.

Long hours of his childhood, he says, were spent pottering around Bharat Material Store, the family's footwear unit in Agra's Hing Ki Mandi, dating back to 1948 when his grandfather set it up. "My father dropped out of school to help him, after he had a fall-out with his partner," Sabharwal remembers. "That my father didn't have opportunities presented to him is, possibly why he wanted to make them available to me," adds the filmmaker, who graduated in commerce from St John's College in Agra and went on to do an acting course from Barry John's Acting Studio in Noida.

That the Indian government made it easier to export raw leather sheets, earlier banned in 1972, which served as raw material for a string of local crafts, including footwear, affected indigenous units like Sabherwal's. The second blow came from cheap Chinese imports entering India through both, legal channels and illegal ones, like those in the North-East, and the arrival of economical synthetic alternatives to leather. "The situation is akin to the tussle between digital photography and the use of film," he reasons. "Digital took a lot away from the craftsmen who had mastered film." Back then, he was clueless about the industry's gradual decay and debt-ridden reality, but his father found creative ways to keep him away from joining the trade. "He created distractions for me. One day, he'd ask me if I wanted to work with a chartered accountant. The next, he'd suggest I pursue an MBA degree," he adds.

When he decided the next film he'd make would begin in Agra, he took his camera to his hometown and told his father to narrate his story. Through him, he met fellow traders and kaarigars involved in every aspect of shoe manufacturing.

Sabherwal hopes his film paints a holistic picture, one that speaks of protecting traditional crafts while providing a modernisation impetus, but refusing to let the homegrown be decimated in the globalisation race.