With a white band tied on their head and written ‘mahila uttpidan ke virudh hazar crore’ on it and the posters hanging over there with the quoted lines of crime against women, more than 50 people gathered over Jantar Mantar against female foeticide with the one billion rising revolution. People from Badarpur and students from lady Sri Ram and Miranda house raised their voice against the issue. This revolution was accompanied by the trailer launch of the film Kajarya which is directed by Madhureeta Anand and the film traces the same topic.
Anand choose a revolution to launch the trailer of her film because she just don’t want people to watch the film and forget about one of the major crime that happens in India, she wants that after watching her film people should start thinking on such a serious issue so that a change can be seen in the society. She said, “The film like Kajarya can’t be launched anywhere but at Jantar Mantar as it has a strong point to make. I want this film to become something that can change and affect the society.” She added, “As a filmmaker we make a film, we make money and we go back home and forget about it. But I don’t want to do that, these are my cause and this is what I feel for and I want people to change after watching this film and I hope this film spark some kind of thinking revolution, I want people to think about at what level this issue has gone.”
The film is a thriller about two women, Kajarya played by Meena Hooda, who lives in the village and has the job of killing baby and the other is a journalist from New Delhi and this role is played by Ridhima Sud. The film traces the journey of two women from different background and condition of women both in rural and urban area through.
She thought to make this film when few years back she read an interview of a journalist and a dai who use to kill girl child in a newspaper. According to Anand, “It was a very horrible interview because the journalist was asking very insensitive questions like she was asking that how do you feel to kill baby girls to which she answered that she doesn’t like to kill and then journalist asked her questions like this is a very bad job, why do you do this. So, at that time I realised that the journalist don't understands the situation of that Dai and this got me thinking that there is one women who is killing baby girls for the society, she is killing for the people around us, she is not mad but everybody judges her. So that really went to my heart and I started thinking about this issue and then I started doing research.”
After the research, Anand found a shocking result and she started writing the script but she was thinking that this might not be a bigger issue as she is making it but in the year 2010, when census came up with the sex ratio then she decided that she will definitely make a film on it.
The director went to the villages of Haryana for the research she spent some times with the villagers as well. “I stayed for few nights in the villages and the experience of living in the villages and interacting with the people is shown in the film and it was very authentic experience,” she said.
Anand also shared with us that she connects herself with the story and creates the character before writing them. She said, “I feel like I have little bit of both the women and I wrote a film about two parts of me one of them is a victim and another woman thinks that she is not a victim but she is. So in a way I am little bit of Kajarya and little bit of Meera.”
The film premiered at Dubai International Film Festival in the year 2013. “It premiered in 2013 December so it was almost 2014 and we have finished the shooting in the month of September. It was delayed by two or three months but this was the schedule to release it,” said the director when asked about the delay of the film. The film has travelled to the various film festivals across the world and is appreciated by everyone. The film is going to release on 4th December.