Shivam Sharma to recite 'Sabse Khatarnaak Hota Hai'

Shivam and Anant; Stills from the music videos

Shivam Sharma stands in front of a wall filled with sketched posters of Parveen Shakir, Avtar Singh Sandhu (Paash), Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Firaq Gorakhpuri. He looks straight at you, talking about horrible things - not robbery of hard-earned wages or police torture but the death of our dreams.

Sharma is reciting Sabse Khatarnaak Hota Hai, the Hindi translation of a Punjabi poem by Paash, one of the key poets of the Naxalite movement in the 1970s. The black-and-white video gets the barest of colours from the subtitles, in stark white and bright red. This is not just a normal poetry recital, you could call it a version of spoken poetry. This is the Mansarovar Project (TMP).

TMP is a multimedia effort to popularise Hindi and Urdu poetry. "I love Hindi poetry - I read a lot growing up and have written my own poems. I wanted to put this poetry out there in a novel form," says Sharma, a business analyst based in Pune.

It all started in September, when Sharma posted a video on Instagram reciting a Hindi poem that he had written. "I wanted to actually work on a podcast but this was easier," recalls Sharma, who has completed a course in filmmaking from FTII, and is comfortable with making films. "It picked up traffic and I got a lot of feedback."

One such suggestion was the addition of music. Sharma teamed up with his friend, Anant Nath Sharma, a guitarist who works in IT sector. The two decided to create music videos for the poetry, simple ones that played on the words of the poem or just featured Sharma reciting the poem with a guitar gently strumming in the background (there's a puppy featured in one too!). Now, TMP has nine videos featuring Hindi and Urdu poetry and the one translation of the Punjabi poem by Paash. The latest video is Mirza Ghalib's Bazeecha-E-Atfal (The World is a Playground), in which colours and images merge into bikers doing stunts inside a Wall of Death. The gentle strum of the guitar accompanies the poet's lines questioning existence and death.

"There are many people who have videos of themselves reciting poetry but their reach is restricted to people who understand the language. I want to appeal to those who haven't heard of this poetry and help them feel the emotions and the mood behind the words," adds Sharma. Each video comes with subtitles, sorely needed if you cannot understand the intricacies of the language. Sharma does the translations himself. The suggestions for poems come from friends and he is now spoilt for choice.

In the future, expect videos in other languages and bilingual pieces - English and Hindi.

The duo is also planning on doing a short film, a jam or a performance piece.

LOG ON TO: The Mansarovar Project on YouTube