It isn’t often that anyone cares about what are called ‘sub-cultures’ or ‘alternative cultures’. However, Akshat Nauriyal was interested in just those. It was his idea of documenting the emerging sub-cultures of Delhi from which his company, Now Delhi, came about.
Akshat says that he started the project in 2012 when not many people were actually looking at those who were doing offbeat but extraordinary things. “Being a drummer with the band Hoirong, most of my friends were musicians, painters or artists of some kind. In spite of being immensely talented, there were not too many who knew or cared about them as they do today. Making the web-based documentaries about them was my way of showing people how I saw these communities and scenes that otherwise lie outside the purview of the mainstream,” Akshat explains.
When he set out to make these little time capsules, as he likes to call them, it was more of a personal project for him his attempt at understanding the relationship between an artist and the city of New Delhi and an extension of what he was seeing. “If you see the videos, you’ll find that these very interesting and talented people are all talking about Delhi. For instance, there was a North-Eastern girl band, Vinyl Records, who talked about being women in this city. Then there was metal band Undying Inc which talked about how the city’s chaos inspires their music,” he elaborates. Now Delhi is his attempt to chronicle the timeline of Delhi.
Akshat started his project when there was no one else who was holistically looking at sub-cultures. His videos aren’t just about music, but also about various other things like street dance crews and street art. In fact, he is one of the five co-founders of the not for profit St+art (read as start) India Foundation which organises the St+art Festivals in Delhi and Mumbai. It was during these festivals that many places in Delhi were marked with beautiful works of street art or murals, the most notable one being the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on the Public Works Department building, followed by transformations of Shahpur Jat and lodhi Colony.
“I was already working with the street artists who painted in Khidki Village and Hauz Khas Village. I feel that in recent years, art has got this bourgeoiseness, that it is only for the upper-middle classes or the elite. All that is not true, art should be for everybody. We wanted to bring art out in the public spaces which have the potential to be a lot more interactive rather than being so sterile,” Akshat tells you. His philosophy is Why accept a plain wall when you can get a wall of art and colourIJ
Apart from being a documentarian of the sub-cultures of Delhi, Akshat is an independent filmmaker and director. His production house is also called Now Delhi but none of his commercial projects are on the website. “The website doesn’t make me any money. For a living, I make films. It could be pretty much anything from a short film on fashion to a documentary on a band. I like to pick very different projects. Recently, I was on a road trip in the US and Canada, accompanying the band Sky Harbour and documenting their journey,” he says.
However, Akshat’s path would have been something completely different, not to mention contradictory, if he had followed up on his college education. An Army man’s son, he lost his father when he was only six. After completing his schooling from Delhi Public School, Noida, Akshat took the ‘smarter’ path of studying engineering. With a good rank in the entrance, he got admission at Delhi College of Engineering. But he says that he was clear from the first day that he wanted to be in the creative field. “Engineering is just something I did because of the typical Indian mentality. But I was a creative person at heart. Once I started college, I joined my band as a drummer and that was even more of a distraction,” he reveals. That is why, once he completed his engineering, he got enrolled at Indian Institute of Mass Communication to study radio and TV journalism.
Before starting Now Delhi, Akshat worked as a producer for a lifestyle channel. That is where he got his technical skills from. But being attracted towards the creative side of life was always a part of him.
Enjoying his work immensely, he says that the commercial work is what he does to supplement his personal passion for documenting the lives of various people in the city. Among his most memorable projects, he lists the films titled Slumgods featuring the B-Boying crews of Khidki Village; a video that he shot of band Menwhopause doing a workshop at Tihar Jail; and a music video he shot for Peter Cat recording company.
It is definitely baffling to a lot of people seeing some following their passion so ardently. And Akshat often gets asked why he is documenting people if it won’t bring him any money. To that, he replies: “To each his own. But I choose to live my life for creativity and my passion.”