Inventing a new tongue

When Ayushman Kirar was a firstyear foundation student at the National Institute of Design in 2023 like most juniors in the hostel his gallivanting was cut short by a senior enlisting him in a project Kirarrsquos skill at voiceacting was wellknown and Tejaswant Kadam a finalyear student told him thatrsquos what he would be doing for his projectFour months later he was summoned to the Bhopal campusrsquo sound studio and handed a script written in an unrecognisable script An unspoken language was introduced to the world Kadam had created an entirely new vernacular for his graduation projectmdashPandariIt is an animated historical fantasy series about an eponymous protagonist caught in the middle of a war against the newly crowned queen of a fictional kingdom called Anga set in the golden age of the Silk Route He spent seven months on the projectrsquos initial draft of which two went into developing Angae ldquoWorld building is of utmost importance to merdquo Kadam says ldquoThe language represents the class structure within the storyrdquoThe world of Pandari is inspired by three Indian cities including MumbaiThe story is a critique of conflict war and morality ldquoWe forget that in war itrsquos people who suffer regardless of the side they pick Pandari is a cautionary tale about a commoner who is far removed from those who lead the fight but bears its consequencesrdquo Kadam tells midday over the phonePandari is creating buzz on the festival circuit and even won the lsquoBest World TVWeb Series Pilotrsquo award at the World Indie Film Awards WIFA 2024 His favourite part during interactions with viewers post screening is when they ask which language was being spoken only to be told itrsquos the directorrsquos inventionThe language is reflective of Kadamrsquos own cultural heritage as a Maharashtrian in Bengaluru He studied archaic forms of Hindi Telugu Marathi and Kannada to create Angae ldquoI started with studying old Devanagari scripts and moved onto understanding patterns of speech progressionrdquo he says He deliberated on intonation of the words and sentences and developed a scriptTejaswat Kadam director and screenwriterHowever unsure of what would sound authentic in that time period he explored regional languages but differed from them as well fearing it would limit the workrsquos reach and came to a middle groundPramod Kumar Marshal his guide at NID was reluctant about the original language ldquoGiven that animation is still in its developing stage in India my instructor didnrsquot think it was a good idea to make the audience get used to a new medium as well as a languagerdquo But Kadam stuck to his decision and international accolades have only validated his convictionKirar who voiced the primary antagonist says Kadam was meticulous about voice direction ldquoHe colourcoded the script to indicate tone and enunciation It was mindboggling because he was the only one working on the languagerdquoThe voice actors were stoked to be on the team and went through a weekrsquos training To get them comfortable with Angae Kadam broke down established patterns of speech ldquoWhen yoursquore used to a certain language yoursquore used to its sounds But we broke that conditioning through constant practice we made the voice actors speak gibberishrdquoSome voice actors are now comfortable enough to not require warmups Arya Lede who voices Pandari was able to grasp new dialogues in minutes and record for reedits Kirar cheekily admits that he randomly slips his dialogues in Angae in normal conversation and he does so with us during our chatThe language is only a small part of a larger storymdashKadam cannot wait for the audience to discover the mythical creatures that inhabit Anga Pandarirsquos journey is far from over and the artist is currently looking for producers to complete the show