Pyaara remains obstinate during the shoot of Pyaari Dulhan

Eighteen months ago, when Sharmila Sankar decided to make an independent short film, she was clear that her protagonist would be a donkey. “I think a donkey’s ability to suffer in silence has made it one of the world’s most abused animals. I wanted to give them a voice,” says Sankar, founder of WilderIndia, a publishing house that releases books on modern Indian wildlife stories for children.