Seasonal emotions

An intricate observer of his surroundings, screenwriter Manish Singh has become privy to various nuances of Mumbai in the last decade that he has spent living in the city. And, bringing those nuances to the screen is his short movie Season’s Greeting.

The 14-minute film brings to fore the mental and emotional struggle of a common man through the seasonal transits in the city.

“As soon as monsoon hits the city, I see people of the lower middle class getting quite worried about how they will manage for the next five months. They get upset over the damage caused during rains,” he says. With the struggle, the rains also bring some fun elements. “Once I saw a man embroiled in a fight but as soon as it started raining, he ran away in the middle of the fight,” he laughs.

With a Special Mention at the eighth Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival, a semifinalist at the Los Angeles CineFest and screening at the recently held third Indian World Film Festival in Hyderabad, the film addresses the subject of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a mood disorder related to changing seasonal patterns.

“It is basically mood swings. One doesn’t feel like moving out of the house or go to work, and sometimes one doesn’t even feel like talking. I spoke to a few doctors who explained that it happens because of the lack of sunlight. There is a light treatment for it and all you need to do is to keep yourself active,” says the screenwriter.

Began in 2016, the film has been shot in real seasons and it took the writer-director two years to shoot the entire film. With narration by actor R Madhavan, Season’s Greeting is shot in Malad surrounded by slums to show the chaos of the city in an attempt to show the world through the perspective of the lower middle class.

A short film explores a mood disorder in Mumbai, primarily because of changing seasonal patterns.

Through the seasons, Singh attempts at presenting how the thinking changes as one moves from one season to another. “I have started with a different season and not monsoon. I tried to show how a person living alone in the city is furious at the rising temperature and waits eagerly for rains. He then waits for the rains to subside. When the rain ends, life comes back to a full circle. I have shown all these aspects,” narrates the 35-year-old while adding that human psychology has a huge role to play in SAD.

To present how the lower middle class tackles the struggle that every season brings along, Singh picked random people to act in his film from his surroundings, like the maid who comes home to do the cleaning or the boys house hunting. “As I was shooting in different seasons, I needed actors who would come whenever the right time demands,” he smiles. Since the actors were not professionals, working with them came with its own set of challenges. “I had to keep warning them about their dialogues. I told them to say one line at a time and even made the lead character stay with me on location for few days before we began shooting,” adds the screenwriter.

This is not his first film that has drawn inspiration from Mumbai. Singh’s first short film Sucks’s Story showed the struggles one faces in the film industry and his next film is also inspired by the city of dreams. “It talks about the magic of Mumbai. I keep observing things around me and since I live in Mumbai, my writing is just a reflection of those observations,” he concludes.