Short film ‘Keel’ brings to fore Himachali culture

Kuldeep Chauhan

At 37, Aryan Harnot, a shot film-maker and director of TV shows, scarcely needs any introduction in Shimla, his birthplace. The son of SR Harnot, a popular Hindi writer and a story-teller of Himachal, Aryan is also a singer and a writer and has chosen Bollywood as his ‘karmabhoomi’, where he has been working for the past 15 years.    

Aryan won accolades for his short film “Ram Bharose” that won 16 awards for him in 2016. But his dream of making a short film on “Keelein”, a short story written by his farther, SR Harnot, came true only recently. His new short film, both in Hindi and Pahari, is also named “Keel” that brings out Himachal’s ‘Daivi Sanskriti’ and unveils some of its weird practices to the audience.

Sponsored by the Department of Art Language and Culture, the film captures and highlights the story of a rural boy, Kalmu, who studies in a government school and grazes cattle at the same time around a temple in a village dedicated to Nanga Devta in the Karsog area of Mandi district.  Both the story and the film bring out the age-old shackles of caste and weird religious practices around which revolves the life of village communities in remote areas. 

According to a local tradition of the Karsog village, devotees thrash a statue of Nanga Devta with their shoes and nail a ‘keel’ on its chest in order to please the deity to win his favours. 

Kamlu sits there watching the devotees thronging the temple and nailing the statue. It has a profound impact on his mind.  

Arayan has created a niche for himself by dint of his talent alone, as he has no godfather in Bollywood to support him. He had a stint in a local TV channel and has been writing scripts for many short films. He has also directed TV shows. He has been promoting his shows from Dubai to Dublin on the basis of his rich voice and talent. 

“It was a challenge to shoot the film in eight days for all of us because the temple has no road connectivity.

“This film is special to me because a few local villagers have also worked in it who saw a camera for the first time in their life. But they were confident and natural.”