Vision

From PhalkeFactory
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The family, consisting of the child Phalke and his parents, leaves for Bombay. 1879 - 86 - BOMBAY The train moves on.

After a time, it enters a cave-like Victoria Terminus, almost as though entering a camera obscura, and halts.

A crowd gets off.

Phalke is separated from his family and gets lost.

Darkness descends.

He is alone in a deserted Victoria Terminus, bewitched by the carvings of gargoyles, lizards, lions, tigers, flora and fauna, like in a fairyland.

Suddenly it starts to rain, and everything comes to life.

Streams of water pour out of the stone mouths of mythical monsters, frothing at the jaws.

Phalke is shaken, shivering with cold, crying for his father in the dark.

But it is in a still unreal twilight outside VT station that a group of boys from the JJ School of Arts sits with hammers and knives, carving out figures on the terraces and the tops. The cotton loaders are teasing a Victoria look-alike, a mad woman at the fountain outside.

Picking up leaves as if to build a nest, small birds move above.

A Victoria enters and drags the woman away by the hair.

A mad dog chases Phalke through a backdrop - streets, railway lines, ships and factories.

He enters a palace and finds the princess stretching her arms and calling his name, and then metamorphosing into a frightening old woman.

With a jerk, Phalke comes awake.