In conversation with Filmmaker Ashwin Gokhale
“The day we spent walking with the Rabaris was really hard. Our physical limits were truly tested.”
‘Rabari: The people of the Leopard’ is a visual delight in every sense. The film tells the story of a Rabari family living in the Jawai-Bera region of Rajasthan — the land they share with the leopards for many generations. As the title suggests, the viewer starts watching the film with the anticipation of getting to know the relationship between Rabaris and the leopards, and the conflicts of this co-existence. However, Gokhale, a wildlife enthusiast, struggles to find the lens through which he would want to tell his story, oscillating between the Rabari and the leopard.
The region, due to its leopard population, is now attracting a lot of tourists, which is a point of conflict between the Rabaris and the resort owners. The film brings out various facets of life in the Jawai-Bera region but does not tie them together in the end, leaving the viewer with a lot of questions in the mind. Still, the cinematography leaves the viewer spellbound till the very last frame.
Rabari: The People of Leopard’ was made by Ashwin Gokhale for his Master’s thesis and was screened as part of the Living Lightly Film Festival. Here is an excerpt from a conversation between Gokhale and Bhawna Jaimini from the eighth edition of Pastoral Times.
BJ. How and why did you choose to make Rabari: The People of Leopard?
AG. I had a chance to visit Jawai-Bera while during college and I found it to be one of the most exciting places on this planet. There are these 70 odd leopards living in caves on the hills surrounded by villages, where the Rabaris live with their animals. On my first visit there, I heard a 25-year-old incident where a leopard took a child and dropped it outside the village without any harm. I come from Maharashtra where leopard attacks are very common. It was very intriguing to know that despite living in such close contact, there were such few incidents of violence involving leopards and humans.
BJ. The film has some really stunning shots of the leopards. Aren’t leopards shy and not very easy to spot? How easy or difficult was it for you to get these shy creatures to act for you?
AG. We shot in January last year (2020) and because it was winter, the leopards were often out, basking. I was also told by the people of Jawai-Bera, that, because leopards usually reside in caves on the hills, they find the altitude comforting and are confident to come out easily.
BJ. When the film starts, we hear a Rabari man talking about his life as a pastoralist which he explains with a lot of pride. However, when the film ends, we hear the same man denigrating his life as he compares himself to animals. This felt odd to me as I didn’t want to leave the film with a sense of pity.
AG. I agree with your observation and I too felt that contrast and conflict during my conversations with the Rabaris. Somewhere the challenges faced by the community did not come out that well to help the viewer make that connection between the pride they feel and the issues they face for their survival. There is severe mismanagement from the government which doesn’t pay severances to the Rabaris when the leopard takes their animals away. A lot of resorts are being set up which are employing people from the outside, instead of giving employment to the Rabaris. I think he compares his fate to that of animals to make it easy for us city folks to understand their reality.
BJ. Ashwini, what were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of making the film?
AG. The day we spent walking with the Rabaris and it was really hard! Our physical limits were truly tested. But this challenging day also turned into the most rewarding one, when in the evening we got to shoot the leopards mating.
BJ. Would you like to go back and film again in the region?
AG. I definitely would want that. I am thinking of making a series of documentaries around the human-animal conflict in different regions of India. The process of making this film made me understand that no matter how many national geographic articles you read on wildlife, the realities on the ground always hit you differently.
Ashwin Gokhale is a keen-eyed cinematographer and documentary practitioner, whose work spans five continents. He is especially interested in ethnographic and environmental issues and strongly believes that they are interdependent. He has a penchant for bird and animal watching, and often can be found out birding in the woods, or hiking in the Himalayas.
