A film on the life of Indian Ocean, one of the most original contemporary bands in the country, hits theatres next month -- a first for Indian music and desi film audiences

A film on the life of Indian Ocean, one of the most original contemporary bands in the country, hits theatres next month -- a first for Indian music and desi film audiences

The writing's on the whiteboard. High standards, low expectations. It's the first thing that catches your eye at the Cartwheel Creative Consultancy office in suburban Mumbai. This is where Leaving Home, a film on the life and music of Delhi-based band Indian Ocean, will go under the knife one last time before it reaches the censors. Jaideep Varma, filmmaker and Indian Ocean fan, who heads the entertainment division of the ad agency, tells us that the line on the whiteboard is the band's motto. This is the story of a band which, 20 years on, continues to inspire audiences and bands for playing by their own rules and setting a precedent with its genre-bending style of music. Jaideep tells us, "They're not beating the system. They're operating within a vacuum, and to do work of such high quality with such consistency and with such a touch of lightness is really commendable."

Indian Ocean that includes bassist Rahul Ram, guitarist Susmit Sen and drummer Amit Kilam lost their fourth member -- gifted vocalist and percussionist Asheem Chakravarty -- when he suffered two heart attacks, last year. The film, a lot like the band, has been through some rough times -- what started out four years ago saw the satellite boom, was punched by recession, and a small budget of Rs 12 lakhs has now set its makers back by Rs 70 lakhs. The band and the film are also bound together by the fact that they're powered by conviction.

Today, Jaideep shrugs off the fact that he was shown the door at many meetings when he attempted to find a distributor and exhibitor. "There was one meeting where the head honcho of a company only laughed at me," he says. Finally, when he held a private screening of Leaving Home, a representative from BIG Cinemas showed keen interest in bringing the film to their theatres. "We believe that the role of multiplexes is changing. It's no longer limited to showcasing conventional films. We feel that Leaving Home is an inspiring story with a huge dose of reality. We want to take this film to as many people as possible," says BIG Cinemas' COO Tushar Dhingra. Leaving Home will be screened at six cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Noida.

For fans of the band, this is probably the best chance to see the four together again, reasons Jaideep. For those who don't know the band, Jaideep hopes that the film will run on its biggest selling point. Music. "It's got 60 minutes of music on 5.5 surround sound, in all its live glory. Entertainment does not get better than this," he says.u00a0

On the Indian music scene, everybody who is not making music for Bollywood or advertising is an underdog.

Leaving Home tells one of the biggest underdog stories. Every member of the band has a powerful story to tell.

Asheem, a Math grad who began his career as a soil investigator and switched to advertising, quit everything for music. Sen left behind a marketing job with a music label and Rahul, an environmentalist with a PhD in environmental toxicology took up the bass. There's also the remarkable story of their uncompromising attitudes towards music even as they barely managed to make a living out of it in their early years.

By the time Jaideep approached the band in 2006 to make Leaving Home, they'd released their biggest hits including Jhini, Kandisa and the soundtrack for Black Friday. Jaideep wanted to invest the Rs 12 lakhs that had been set aside from the first year's earnings of his ad agency to make a feature film on them, but the band was "stunned." "Susmit made a comment, 'Why do you want to do philanthropy?' Maybe he half-joked," says Jaideep, "Gradually when we started shooting them, we realised this was turning into a much bigger project because it's more expensive to shoot a live band."

The rushes of Asheem's interviews alone ran into 17 hours. "The level of Asheem's commitment to the film was incredible. He gave it everything he had just like he did with his music. On the first day of the interview, we set up cameras and I told Asheem that we'd go through his life and start chronologically. So I told him that we'd start with his childhood and he was in tears in 15 seconds. That's how the film began, the moment is there in the film. That's when I realised that if he's willing to put himself on line then it's our responsibility to do justice to the band," says Jaideep.

Jaideep lets in that the greatest compliment that he's received so far is from Rahul. "He told me, 'I've got to know things about the other three which I didn't know earlier.' That's the extent to which the band members were willing to reveal themselves. I think the film is an expression of their lives." When we speak to Rahul in Delhi, he confesses he didn't know how lonely Asheem was all through his childhood. "Both his parents left when he was a kid, so he lived as a paying guest and was permanently broke. In the film, he talks about how he waited for anybody to come by so that he could spend time with them."

Jaideep, who has known the band since 2001 says it was easy not to let his work take on an hagiographic glow. "It was more like meeting kindred spirits. I've never been awestruck by them.

Although Rahul too cautioned me about the same thing," he says. Jaideep first met the band after he reviewed the seminal album Kandisa that released in 2000 for a magazine. "One look at the cover and I had dismissed the album, but I was blown away when I heard it," says Jaideep, who later met the band in Delhi to do an interview.

A lot of work has gone in, reiterates Susmit. "It's not a joke; 180 hours of footage has been edited down to 1 hour 15 minutes. I've had a positive feeling about the film from the start. It has always been envisaged as a big screen film."

Jaideep is pinning the release of the 2 hour 35 minute DVD version on the success of the theatrical release.

"We don't have the budgets for editing and formatting the film otherwise," he says, "We'll be lucky if we get our money back."

Although the timing of the film's release could not have been worse, feel some. Leaving Home releases bang in the middle of IPL3. Says Jaideep, "The film was timed so that it could release now because other big films aren't being scheduled for around this time. Also, I don't have any doubt that people will choose a film about India's greatest music band over a domestic T20 tournament."

Leaving home that runs into 1 hour and 15 minutes will release in theatres across six cities on April 2

Missing Asheem

Asheem Chakravarty, vocalist-percussionist (1957-2009)
The last Indian Ocean concert that I attended was at Baajaa Gaajaa 2010 held last month in Pune. Two new musicians -- Himanshu Roy on vocals and Gyan Singh on tabla -- were roped in to replace one. It was difficult to imagine how they would fill the soul void that Asheem had left behind.
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When Rahul dedicated Melancholic ecstasy, an instrumental from the band's debut, it only drove home the fact that Indian Ocean can never sound the same again. I missed Asheem every time Himanshu did an alaap. I couldn't feel the pulse. Sure, when Rahul brings on rousing tracks such as Bandeh and Ma Rewa, it's easy for the crowd to burn away like a wild fire, but the soul was missing. Asheem with his raging Indian classical vocals and charged tabla grooves kept the band firmly rooted. Most importantly, he brought an intensity that cannot be replaced.

I've seen the band a couple of times but the most vivid memory I carry is the one of Mithibhai college's annual fest held a couple of years ago. The sound was unbelievably bad. After a painful sound check, Indian Ocean decides to let it rip. The young audience was hooting for more in seconds. Asheem could easily connect to young minds. He thought like one. One of his famous one-liners was, "Fankaar bahut hai, fun nahin hai."

There are few bands that alter the course your life takes. Indian Ocean is one such band. Some of the values that Asheem built this band on will always stay with me -- he was stubborn in his need to find an identity, an original calling. "Why isn't everybody taught that if something as basic as your fingerprint is different from everyone else, then the grey matter would be infinitely different?" Asheem is an experience, who will always be missed.