Anjalika Sharma – A Beautiful Eye

By Amy Lilly

Photos By Jan Doerler

When Anjalika Sharma invited me into her home to be interviewed, the first thing she did was offer me homemade chai. Within five minutes, she had pulled a painted Indian chair up to the threshold of her small kitchen, seated me in it, started a pot of milk on the stove, and snipped off the ends of tea bags as she told stories about her experiences in Vermont. I wished I could have turned that movie camera of hers on herself, to capture this garrulous, purposeful, unpretentious woman in a long skirt and loose hair who speaks with perfect British-Indian diction.

Sharma grew up in Bombay (“I cannot seem to remember to call it Mumbai!”) but she was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, where her father was stationed with the Indian Navy. “I was born in the snow, so of course my mother says that I was meant to end up in Vermont.” Sharma moved to the United States in 2001 to join a sister in California; while there, she reconnected with Dhaval Sejpal, whom she had dated at the age of sixteen, and who was working in the U.S. for IBM. They were married soon after their reunion and she moved to Burlington.

Sharma’s dedication to Vermont’s underprivileged is no accident. She grew up in a middle-class family, next door to a large slum. At the time, her mother was a school teacher at the highly-regarded Cathedral School in Bombay, where the city’s wealthy citizens send their children. Sharma attended for free, and so grew up with a heightened awareness of the unequal distribution of wealth. Her first film came from that experience: “Meena Jha” is the comic and touching story of two convent girls, one very rich, the other middle-class. It was her diploma film for her post-graduate degree at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkatta, and it won India’s National Award for Best Debut of a Director in 2001.

Of her own family, she says, “Ideas and principles — like not harming other people, for example — were more important than material goods.” These are the basic tenets of Hinduism, which her family lived rather than preached. When Sharma called her father to say that she had been offered the job of making a film for the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger (VCECH), but that she wouldn’t be paid for it, her father said, “Of course you should do it; people like this will pay you in other ways.” And they did; she received the Marianne Metropoulos Humanitarian Award for “outstanding efforts in promoting the mission of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger.”

Having arrived in Vermont with a national award under her belt, Sharma soon found herself “straining at the bit.” After a class in film editing at Burlington College, she attended a job fair, where she agreed to donate her services as a filmmaker to the Salvation Army. The result was a 30-second advertisement for the Women’s Center for Hope, a rehabilitation center. After that, word of her talents got out, and eventually reached Robert Dostis, who heads the VCECH.

“He told me that we needed to put a face on hunger in Vermont, and my initial reaction was, what hunger in Vermont?” Sharma recalls. She took on the project, she said, to answer that question for herself. “You look at how beautiful Vermont is, with the green hills and the flowers in the summer, and you think, ‘Where’s the problem here?’” Her point of comparison was India, where poverty is very visible—as close as the slums she passed every day on her way out the door. “Poverty is hidden here,” she says.

Sharma began her project by volunteering at the Chittenden County Emergency Food Shelf. She distributed food and got to know the regular clients, who looked forward to seeing her. Some were “really old people,” others mentally ill. A homeless woman named Miki, who is featured in the film, struck Sharma as articulate and intelligent; the sight of this “grown woman crying” during their conversations over her lost job and inability to buy food helped Sharma to see the reality of the problem.

Wanda Hines, the director of the Food Shelf, put Sharma in touch with people at schools and food banks throughout the state. Sharma had mastered the public bus system in Burlington, but going out of town meant using a car, and she had never driven one in her life. She found a cheap used car, and taught herself to drive. “Going fifty-five was a big deal!” she laughs, hunching up her shoulders and gripping an imaginary steering wheel. “And some of these places were out in the middle of the countryside—take a right at the barn, left at the cow, that sort of thing!” Sharma drove to schools from East Haven to St. Johnsbury, interviewing cooks, food shelf workers, teachers, and principals. The problem of hunger in Vermont became clear.

She planned to interview one family in their home, contacting them through the Vermont Nursing Association. But the family eventually refused to be filmed, even though they understood that Sharma would edit out their faces and names. The shame was simply too great.

Sharma dedicated three months to filming on location around Vermont. For editing, she sought out Public Access Television and was put in touch with Robin Lloyd, who offered Sharma the use of her equipment and a new editing program that neither Sharma nor Lloyd had ever used. Again, Sharma figured out the program on her own. About filmmaking, she says that it is “that connection with humans” that she seeks first, but “editing is the most personal part of creating a film.” Sharma spent three months editing her film, making a total of nine months spent on an unpaid project.
“It really helped me to know and understand Vermont,” she says, of her work. “And it helped me to acclimate myself to non-Indian society.” In India, she says, you are constantly talking to people, from shop owners to auto-rickshaw drivers. “Here people don’t volunteer to talk to you — not because they aren’t friendly, but because it’s not the custom.” Sharma initially feared that her accent and color kept people at a distance, but her husband, whom she describes as “unusual among Indian men,” helped her to see that that was “all in my head.”

First inspired to make her own films at age twelve, when she saw “Salaam Bombay” by director Mira Nair (better known in this country for her recent “Monsoon Wedding” — a favorite of Sharma’s), and inspired by PBS when she reached this country (“It was my dream to work for PBS”), Sharma hopes to continue making documentary films. She has recently completed another documentary — her first paid job — about college fraternity hazing and its wider social context. “Unless a Death Occurs” was produced for Mountain Lake Television and aired in May. Her goals are to start her own production company and become an independent filmmaker.

Amy Lilly is a freelance writer from Burlington.

PLAY IT FORWARD

“Hidden Hunger” Video Challenge

For years the staff of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger made every effort to illustrate the insidious, often-elusive effects of childhood hunger in Vermont. Then they met filmmaker Anjalika Sharma.

For months, Sharma traveled the roads of Vermont meeting people who struggle to put food on their table and those on the front lines trying to win the battle against hunger. “Hidden Hunger” is the result of Anjalika’s dedication to the mission of VCECH and its commitment to tell the story.

The Play It Forward “Hidden Hunger” Video Challenge is an opportunity for Vermonters to become involved in the VCECH’s work.

How It Works

Show the video to a group of people — friends, family, co-workers, community groups — and invite the audience to also accept the challenge and “Play it Forward.” The goal is to have 5000 people see “Hidden Hunger” by Thanksgiving 2004.
To date, more than 250 people have accepted the PLAY IT FORWARD challenge and more than 1,900 people have seen “Hidden Hunger.”

To accept the challenge, call the VCECH: 802-865-0255. They will send you a video, sign-in sheets, and instructional materials.

Unless a Death Occurs: Hazing Examined will air again on Mountain Lake PBS on Monday, Sept. 6 at 10 p.m. and Wednesday Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. On Oct. 3, it will be released nationally to 57 public television stations.