There has been, for many years, a labour migration from across Nepal to India ’s cities. This short film is set in the underground parking lot of an apartment building in Bangalore, in South India. One Way follows the livelihood of a security guard named Shyam Bahadur, who lives with the rest of his family in the electric switching room of an apartment block, to whom he provides service for the sake of survival. The narrative of the journey he made 35 years ago, from the mountains of Nepal to the southern plateau of Bangalore, punctuates his day-to-day life in and out of the basement. As his personal story unfolds, the hills of Nepal are being rocked by “the people’s war,” yet another historical disturbances that has forced Nepalis to emigrate for work.
Ayisha Abraham was born in 1963 in London, and currently lives in Bangalore, India. She received her BFA in Painting at the MS University, Baroda, India, in 1987. In 1991 she participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. New York City. In 1995 she completed her MFA at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She has had several solo exhibitions in New York and India, as well as being exhibited in numerous group shows. In September 2005 her film Straight 8 was screened at the Srishti exhibition at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria. In 2005 she was an invited artist at the Khoj residency in Mumbai. Her short film One Way, was screened at the Directors Fortnight at Cannes, May 2007. She exhibited her film Enroute at the Pompidou centre, Paris in 2010 and I saw a God Dance, a film about the dancer Ram Gopal at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2010. Both films showed at BAR1 ( Bengaluru Artists Residency), in Bangalore in 2011. She is an artist in Residence at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore and a member of the Artists collective BAR1.