Part 4 of the Surabhi Diaries by Suhail Tatari: This chapter journeys through Madhya Pradesh’s cultural gems, forgotten histories, remote tribes, traditional crafts and evocative landscapes while revealing how stories, people and unexpected collaborations reshape a filmmaker’s inner world and creative vision.

This chapter of the Surabhi Diaries explores Madhya Pradesh through unforgettable encounters—from prehistoric caves and antique car restoration to ancient weaving traditions, remote tribal life, Mandu’s poetic romance, and Ujjain’s unusual fairs. Rich in culture, craft, heritage, and human resilience, it captures India’s heartland through intimate storytelling and cinematic insight.

Arrival, Anxiety and the First Test

My next schedule was to the heartland of India; Madhya Pradesh. As the team was set to leave from the VT station, I got the news that the DOP finalized for the filming was not going to be available. Instead a new rookie cameraperson by the name of Satya Prakash Rath (FTII) would be part of the team. I was extremely upset at this last minute change and met him with apprehension and trepidation, as it was an extremely long schedule, with the burden of two documentaries for MP tourism, along with the Surabhi schedule.

Satya was simple guy with a constant smile on his face, but that didn’t instil any confidence in me. I was pretty sure that the schedule was going to be a disaster. We reached Bhopal the next morning. In the afternoon we set out for our first days filming at Bheem bhetka. Nearly 45 kms away from Bhopal these are caves, that is a UNESCO heritage site, and indicate the existence of human life during the stone age in India. They have wall and stone paintings which are of the prehistoric era dating back to nearly 10000 years ago.

But my mind was not so much on the history for the first couple of hours of filming, but on my DOP Satya. I sat him down and briefed that I wanted the subject to be shot with a wide angle feel & in a dramatic way. I checked every frame and camera movement with a hawk eye for the 2 hours. To be fair to Satya he followed the brief to the T and shot it extremely well. His hand was steady as a rock despite his thin body frame and hardly did any retakes for movement. We maintained the half lit lighting pattern along with the source. At the end of the day’s shoot he asked me, are you happy with my work?” I smiled and said with a nod, “YES!”

Deep inside I was still tentative as I had not seen him light up any characters as yet. People from the industry know it fairly well that the Director-DP relationship is unique; much like that of a spouse. If you hit it off, the end result can be magical. If you don’t…well! In the night we returned to the hotel and shot a sequence with actors for the documentary. By late night I was sure I wasn’t going to have any sleepless nights over the photography department.

Machines, Magic and the Artisans of Madhya Pradesh

Our Surabhi filming started at Indore. Manvendra Singh a well-known man known for antique car restoration. We reached his massive workshop in the middle of the city. He had nearly 40 odd cars at various stages of restoration, that included Rolls Royce, Laquanda and Buick. Some were part of his personal collection as he belonged to the royal family himself. It was a childhood passion of antique cars that took him into the vocation.

Restoration of antique cars meant intense research; studying the history of the cars, the models, colour combinations. The next step would be finding its pictures in the original state and procuring or sourcing its mechanical & body parts. It was painstaking work as a lot of cars and their manufacturers didn’t exist anymore. It had to be sourced from clubs, museums, collectors all over the world, at an extremely high price tag.

Manvendra amusingly told us the he had even approached chor bazaar and junk markets to access parts to get the car moving. Some of its body parts would also be procured from Donor cars; one that was a similar model and its parts are used, specially the decorative parts. Starting from the shell or the basic structure was the first step in the cumbersome restoration process.

We tried to follow the restoration of a 1932 Rolls Royce, that belonged to an erstwhile Maharaja. Through sandblasting the old paint is removed from the various body parts of the car. The chassis had to be put in place, with the help of the drawing to get the structure right. Antique cars involved a surprising amount of woodwork, and this too had to be carefully reconstructed — almost every restoration demanded a complete redo of these wooden elements.

Once the framework was secured, the corroded or damaged metal components were replaced with newly fabricated parts. The basic painting work would begin in the exterior portions, while leather upholstery, which was another unique feature of antique cars would happen simultaneously. A restoration could take months, sometimes years, depending on the model and the complexity of the work. For Manvendra, each car was more than a machine; it was a slice of history. To restore it, he said, one had to understand who owned it, the purpose it served — whether a procession car, a hunting car, or a royal touring vehicle. To grasp the psyche behind its creation was to understand the era itself.

Chanderi, a small historic town near Shivpuri and Lalitpur famed for its master weavers who conjure magic on traditional loom, producing exquisite sarees and dupattas.

Before entering the massive gate for the city, we witnessed a large standing Mahavir, carved from a mountain, reminiscent of an Indian echo of Mount Rushmore. More recently the movie Stree, a box office superhit, was shot in Chanderi. What made the sarees special was they are extremely lightweight, its breathable fabric and intricate artistry with use of gold and silver zari threads along with cotton & silk threads, often numbering up to 5000.

Only a deft weaver, with years of experience on the loom could bring the end result, with the design and texture. Jaqard machine used in the process gave an idea of the design to the weaver to follow the pattern. As a director I was overawed by the overall process but I somehow found it an expensive buy. However my female AD bought an exquisite green colour dupatta, I imagine, at a fairly high price. Why I mention it, would be detailed out later.

Patalkot and the Untouched Worlds Below

Our next halt was at Chhindwara, where a mysterious gorge stretched before us — a colossal wound carved into the earth nearly 1600 feet deep, formed several thousand years ago due to a violent tectonic shift. This was Patalkot, a place wrapped in myth and isolation. No camera team had ever managed to penetrate the gorge, not even reaching its initial ledge at 1000 feet. In hind sight the exuberance of youth makes you attempt the impossible.

We left at 11 AM post our breakfast. Perhaps in two hours we reached the bottom of the gorge at the Karyam village. It felt like we were witnessing a civilization of another era, stuck in time. People with extremely basic lifestyle lived there, totally dependent on nature for their survival. The Bariya tribes were the primary inhabitants who indulged in animal husbandry and agriculture, cultivating corn in abundance as the soil didn’t support any other grain. Storing it was a necessity as it had to last a year. Fruits were however grown in abundance.

We stayed with the locals for the night and shot their traditional song & dance with merely bulbs as the power wasn’t enough to take the load of our lights. Next morning was another novel experience for a lot of us; jungle paani, an absolute first for me, with the wind swirling around us! However the locals told us about another mysterious location that we needed to visit. Raja khoh, another 600 feet below that level. We witnessed nearly 200 feet long mango trees there. By the time we reached it the overall temperature had fallen by about 10 degrees. Flowing streams, medicinal plants and untouched forests was the hallmark of this place, that once served as refuge for the local king, escaping from the British East India company officials.

Patalkot is where the relationship between nature and human civilization stands fully exposed — pure, interdependent, and fragile. Yet this purity comes with a stark reality: the modern world has bypassed these communities entirely. The locals lament how they must climb immense heights just to access basic necessities or complete the smallest chores in the outside world.

Mandu, Ujjain and the Stories that Stay Forever

Next we were at Mandu; a city with a rich history of the Parmar dynasty, followed by the Khiljis and the Mughals. A city with the unique palaces of Raja Baaz Bahadur and Rani Roopmatis, whose timeless tale of love continues to echo even after centuries. I was racking my brains as to how to capture the element of love and poetry through my visuals.

This is when I asked my Assistant Director, to get me her beautiful Chanderi dupatta for a few shots. I wanted this dupatta to fly against the various monuments of Mandu. I had the Dupatta thrown in from various vantage points to get the correct shot. By the 5th take the dupatta was getting crumpled much to the dismay of the AD, who didn’t appreciate my madness. This madness with huge dependence of the wind factor went on for nearly two days. I eventually requested the Production Head to pay her for the dupatta since it had lost a lot of its sheen and texture with every passing take. I was told that the shots did look amazing after the edit.

Mandu was breathtakingly beautiful. The Jahaz Mahal rose before us like a ship eternally moored on shimmering waters, its reflections giving it the illusion of sailing through time. The Hindola Mahal, with its slanting walls, still seemed to echo with the grandeur of the durbars once held there. The Jami Masjid stood apart in its serene simplicity, while Hoshang Shah’s marble mausoleum whispered stories of an era long gone.

But what truly binds Mandu together is the timeless romance of Roopmati and Baaz Bahadur—the warrior king and the poet-singer queen whose love for each other was inseparable from their love for music. Their melodies still seem to linger in the breeze, giving the city its unique soul.

And I take this opportunity to apologise to my AD Shilpa for ruining her beautiful dupatta… 35 years too late!

In Ujjain we did two very unusual stories. There was an event called Gadhon ka mela. Donkeys from nearby and far flung areas were brought each year, for sale. When the brief for the story was given at the office one took it all too seriously with virtually no idea as to how the story was to be tackled. The event was organised on a massive ground and slowly asses of all kinds and colours began to descend on it. By mid-day the ground had swollen into a massive event with thousands of asses. Connoisseurs who had an eye for the right breed, were looking for the animal of the right age, (which was determined by a look at their teeth), right strength (looking at their overall physique).

In 1992, a young and healthy animal was sold for as high as 25 to 30 thousand rupees. The business was no lark but a very serious one. The fair was also an opportunity to devour on some local food, primarily the litti chhokha of the Malwa region. Apparently the trade on the given day went into several lakhs of rupees.

My observation, while staying among the asses, was they took themselves rather seriously and conducted their affairs with surprising dignity. Most of them seemed lost in a deep state of contemplation, and contrary to popular perception, they were anything but fools. I wanted to carry that same emotion into the commentary, and my writer, Ishan Trivedi, penned an unforgettable line that still makes me smile: “Agli baar kisi ko gadha kehne se pehle sochiyega — kya woh iss izzat ke layak bhi hai?

In the city Ujjain was another story that I almost didn’t want to do. A woman artist who made simple art with palm leaves that included jhaadu, lamp, toys like a swan, hanging birds etc. Honestly I was peeved after having been told about the stuff she produced. Her art didn’t deserve a Surabhi story, which had featured several stalwarts, was my angst. However while I had almost made up my mind to cancel the story I was requested by my Production head Kshimendra Ganjoo, to meet her once.

Reluctantly I did so. She lived in a mud-walled hut with her four small children—the eldest barely eight, the youngest held close in her arms. A young widow, who survived by selling her palm-leaf creations in the local market, stretching each day just enough to keep her children fed. One look at her life, her circumstances, and the quiet pain in her eyes made my resistance melt away. I turned to my DOP, Satya—by then my favourite person in the unit—and asked him to recreate a lighting style Ramani once used, for a story in Madras, by bouncing sunlight from outside.

The mud walls, the sparse furniture, a few battered utensils, the complete absence of luxury—everything came together with a raw, honest texture. It was so real, that it perfectly mirrored the economic fragility of the artist herself. Sometimes providence intervenes.

As I was searching for the penultimate shot, I noticed a scrap of a Hindi newspaper pasted to her window. It read: “Dukh apna, kaase khoon main sajni.” It was haunting—an accidental gift that summed up the woman’s entire tragedy in one line. I no longer remember her name or even her face. It hardly matters. She could have been Lajjo, or Kunti, or Shabana—any woman fighting to keep life afloat. But the story was powerful, evocative, and remains etched in my memory even today.

My final image of her is vivid: carrying a baby in one arm, a basket full of her simple yet painstakingly crafted art delicately balanced on her head, her eldest son trailing behind. That was our last shot. After the episode aired, a few letters arrived at our office—from viewers wanting to help her financially. That, for me, was the lesson: that art may not always move mountains, but it can, without doubt, move hearts.