You hear a conversation in the background. On the screen is a bridge and three men sitting on three stones. One says it is such a nice place they live in, for there was a girl running the other day, and some people running after her to pacify her. “Such nice people, right?” he asks. The second man says, he saw four people attacking one girl, but she was not crying or making any sound. “Why do girls become this way? Is there no one to ask for them?” he asks. The two men walk away, one with his cane, the other guiding him – a blind man and a deaf man. And the third one sitting back says only he knows the truth for he can see and hear but he cannot talk, so the truth won’t come out.
Our society is made of these three types of people, says the less-than-three-minute short film Neeyum Njaanum Avanum. Those who don’t know what’s happening around us and those who won’t even try to know — a world of blind, deaf and dumb. “The longer short films I have been making before this have not had any reach. So when my friend and writer Vivek Raj came up with this theme, we decided to make this film,” Rahul Ramachandran, the director, says.
Rahul, who works in a Thiruvananthapuram–based hotel, got the passion for cinema watching his film-loving dad who would some days watch four shows at a stretch. “It was in class IX that I made my first short film, on a mobile phone. It was called Joker. After that I have made a few films like Anja Chakra (Third Eye), It’s just a Dream, Chin Sin Si, Resolution and Aval.” Neeyum… has been made in a tie-up with a private radio channel, and all the actors and voice-over artistes are RJs – Musafir, Maheen, Vyshak and Rahul.
