In the winter of 2005 Indians switched on their TV sets to watch yet another “breaking news” story, but one which shocked them. In the town of Meerut, police officers, mostly women, swooped down on lovers in a park and began to beat them up. Along with them they took photographers and news cameramen with the promise of an exclusive sting operation. What is the story of this news story? The film looks outside the frames that weave the frenetic tapestry of Breaking News on India’s news channels to uncover a town’s complex dynamics – the fear of love, the constant scrutiny and control of women’s mobility and sexuality, a history of communal violence, caste brutalization and feudal equations. Assuming the tone of pulp fiction and tabloid features it examines the legacy of this kind of story telling, from the relishing accounts of true crime magazines like Manohar Kahaniyan to the double morality of pulp detective fiction to the tabloid news on Indian TV, to unfold a thrilling but disturbing tale of it’s own. As the salacious media frenzy around violent events takes on ever more unscrupulous forms, the story of the film becomes all the more relevant today.
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, writer and dedicated antakshari player, whose work mixes fiction and non-fiction to explore themes of urban life, popular culture, love, desire and gender. Some of her films as director include Partners in Crime, Morality TV and the Loving Jehad: A Thrilling Tale, Q2P, Where’s Sandra,Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City, Un-limited Girls and The Amorous Adventures of Megha and Shakku in the Valley of Consent among others. She is the writer of the fiction feature Khamosh Pani/Silent Waters, several documentaries, the play Ishqiya Dharavi Ishtyle, and the comic Priya’s Mirror. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has been widely published and she writes a weekly opinion column Paronormal Activity in Sunday Midday. She is the founder and creative director of Agents of Ishq, India’s best-loved website about sex and desire.