Kamal Swaroop’s introduction to “Tracing Phalke”, an illustrated book on the father of Indian cinema Dadasaheb Phalke

To win 5 Free copies of “Tracing Phalke” click here

It was the late 1980’s. I had made a jail break of a feature film. Quite like jabbing away at hard earth with a metal spoon, feeling for dents, I had jabbed away at conversations and language, played with its sounds, pushed at the rocks of a known landscape with bare fingers and nails.

We had attached ourselves to the eye of the camera and burned our minds making bricolage on the edit table, till first sporadic laughter leaked out and then the remembered city exploded under what seemed to have become my joyous landmine: I stood alone where the firecrackers subsided.

As the price of this heresy, I became Om, without the protection of his adolescence.

I needed a large rest.

A psychoanalyst friend suggested education,...