That evening, the college campus was open till midnight and the students were allowed to be out and about. It was production time in a Kalady college, and Dhanya, a student of theatre, stood in the campus, in the heavy rain, soaking every bit of the night she was allowed to be part of.
That never happened in the hostel of the Thiruvananthapuram college she used to stay in. Back then she would wait for the 6 pm curfew, and just about watch the orange of the sunset before rushing back.
Sreeram Ramesh seemed to have come to the right person to cast in his music video Oru Sandhya (One Twilight). Dhanya and Naji rode through the roads of Palayam and Statue and Shanghumugham Beach at midnight for the song.
“We took permission to shoot,” he says. No risks this time, the memory of another midnight ride still fresh in his mind. That one, with theatre artiste Hima Shankar, had landed both of them in trouble with moral policing.
“A lot of events from my life, especially this last one, made me want to take a music video with the theme of reclaiming nights for women.” His friend Aswani Dravid wrote the script.
“Now that I have tasted nights in the outside I realise how much hostellers like me miss,” Dhanya says. “The only solution is to ignore all that you hear, but then there will always be interferences.”
Dhanya realised her interest to act when she was cast in a short film in college. She is now doing her MA in Theatre. “We did a play recently on an idea that nature does not disturb us (women) in the evenings, and if it is the boys who do, then why not give a curfew of 6.30 to them and let us enjoy our nights.”
Sreeram has made a short film and another music video before. He works as an associate to cinematographer Sakyadeb Chowdhury.
