Jitank Singh Gurjar’s Vimukt (In Search of the Sky) is a poignant indie that captures rural poverty, faith, and resilience through the story of an ageing couple and their mentally challenged son. By Saibal Chatterjee.    

Vimukt (In Search of the Sky), directed by Jitank Singh Gurjar, is a powerful Braj-language indie film that premiered at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. Featuring standout performances by Nikhil Yadav, Raghvendra Bhadoriya, and Meghna Agarwal, the film explores rural poverty, faith, and resilience through the story of a family’s pilgrimage to the Maha Kumbh Mela. With striking cinematography by Shelly Sharma and an unflinching look at marginalization, Vimukt emerges as a deeply moving cinematic gem rooted in the struggles of India’s hinterland.

Jitank Singh Gurjar’s Vimukt (English title: In Search of the Sky) is a deep dissection of grinding rural poverty and the impact that it has on an ageing couple faced with the added responsibility of caring for a mentally challenged 26-year-old son.

The Braj-language indie film, which premiered in Centrepiece section of the ongoing 50th Toronto International Film Festival, maps the boundaries of fate, faith and fragility as a family with their backs to the wall go on a pilgrimage to the Maha Kumbh Mela hoping to be healed and freed from their misery.

Gurjar, a Mumbai-based filmmaker who cut his teeth in theatre in his hometown of Gwalior as well as in Delhi, brings his familiarity with upcountry socio-religious dynamics to bear delicately upon a poignant portrait of the horrors that marginalization brings in its wake.

A Poignant Portrait of Faith and Survival

Beyond the larger picture of material want and privation that it paints, Vimukt is an empathetic look at the trials and tribulations of a young man subjected to great indignities because of the way he is. He trusts unquestioningly, a trait that makes him vulnerable to society’s meanness and manipulation. 

Gurjar’s filmmaking, studiedly shorn of the superfluous and making full use of his resources, is commendably lean and unpretentious and yet hugely effective. Gurjar gets to the heart of his thematic concerns with disarming directness.

The characters dangle between hope and despair, and resilience and soul-crushing reverses. The benighted souls are in search of redemption but destiny offers them no easy escape routes. Yet, when all seems lost, they still are not entirely devoid of hope. The Maha Kumbh, they believe, could be their doorway to liberation.

The Performances that Power Vimukt

Vimukt, written by Gurjar and the film’s producer Pooja Vishal Sharma, derives a great deal of its coiled intrinsic power from the performances of the three principal actors.

It helps that the cast members are all from the world of theatre that the director himself has emerged from. They work in perfect harmony to create an instantly moving film centered on the plight of those that society consigns to its fringes.

But can a lunge at the divine deliver Naran (Nikhil Yadav) and his impoverished parents, Jasrath (Raghvendra Bhadoriya) and Vidya (Meghna Agarwal), from distress aggravated by a growing belief, owing principally to the barbs and unsolicited advice of acquaintances and neighbors, that their wretchedness is punishment for sins of past lives?

Given their penury, the trip to Prayagraj is no cakewalk. Jasrath, whose father was robbed of his land by a powerful villager in collusion with the patwari, works in a brick kiln and plays the dholak with a group of folk musicians at village fairs and temples. But there is little music in his own life.

His wife makes cow dung cakes to bring in a few extra rupees. What the couple earns, however, is never enough. Vidya suggests selling her jewels to fund the Kumbh journey.

But once they reach the mela travelling by road, rail and a boat, things take a turn that Naran’s mother, whose love for her son is unwavering, could not have anticipated.

A Visual and Emotional Triumph

Naran is obviously the film’s fulcrum and Nikhil Yadav fleshes him out with such immersive conviction that one cannot but marvel at the depth that he imparts to a character who is always a small step from slipping away from a world that does not care to understand him.

Vimukt hinges on his journey from darkness and drudgery to the possibility of a surprising form of salvation. Naran is a man-child who knows no better than to take everything and everybody, even those that are out to harm him, at face value. He ends up getting mocked and bullied but never loses his innocent cheerfulness.

In one sequence, two village men hand him a lit beedi. He smokes it from the wrong end and burns his tongue. Later in the film, a sadhu gives him a chillum. He takes a puff and coughs violently. He carries on regardless. A beedi or a chillum, a sadhu or a pair of bullies, Naran takes all in his stride.

His glee knows no bounds when his father buys him a damru. The sound of the instrument transports him to a universe that is probably well beyond his ken. Or is it?

Naran has no way of knowing that his best friend in the village, Raju, a much younger boy, is the son of his father’s tormentor. Jasrath, who has for long been at the receiving end of exploitation and humiliation, has turned cynical to the point of being cold-hearted. He is prone to impulses that test his belief in both providence and humanity.

Cinematographer Shelly Sharma, also the film’s executive and creative producer, imparts to Vimukt two distinct textures. He uses contrasting palettes for the dusty dreariness and bucolic serenity of the village on one hand and for the crowds, the colours and the chaos of the Maha Kumbh on the other.

Between its two striking visual ends, Vimukt contains a powerful, moving story of apathy and abandonment. It adds up to a genuine, applause-worthy gem.