The Wanderer

Pan Nalin (aka Nalin Pandya) is known for making original and deeply moving films that touch audiences around the world. One of India’s first truly international filmmakers, he has had a long and eventful journey from the first time he watched a film in a small town in Gujarat to straddling two worlds and sensibilities. The director, producer and reluctant writer reflects on his filmmaking experiences for POOL.

Success in filmmaking means…

PN: Achieving dreams I have been after. It means joy. It means encouragement. And above all it is the best way to share what you love.

Where was your passion for films born?

PN: I grew up in a tiny village in Saurashtra - actually it was just a railway junction, where many trains crisscrossed, or stopped only to exchange passengers. I spent most of my childhood bunking school. With a gang of kids I often roamed the track, collecting matchboxes and papers. Sometime I helped my father sell tea on the railway platform. Once the train left, I would line up images of matchboxes and try to form a ‘storyboard’ and make up stories. The village kids were the big suckers of my story. Till I was about eight years old I had never been to the cinema or seen any TV; there was no electricity in my village. However nothing stopped us from staging episodes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Our region was like the American Wild West, filled with stories of outlaws and bounty hunters - the ‘Kathiawari Outlaws’. The most popular literature in Saurashtra and Kutch was about these bandits and their adventures and redemptions. It was a great time, because we kids owned nothing, no toys, no games, no fancy clothes and never a pair of shoes. We ran naked in vast fields under the rain and rainbows, chased peacocks, and watched prides of lions.

Then came a day when my family decided to watch a film in a nearby town. That cinema show changed my life. I was blown away. There and then I told my parents I wanted to be somehow involved in movies…make them, act in them, whatever! I was possessed by cinema after that; I saw cinema in light and shadows, I saw stories on matchboxes and newspapers.