In the name of my mentors who had guided me—Amrit Gangar, Maithili Rao, Iqbal Masud (FG Jilani)—I recently conducted an online Basic Course in How to Curate Films for Festivals for the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) last week. It was my way of paying it forward. Helping create a younger generation of film curators whose good taste in cinema could help generate a sustainable demand for good cinema. The participants came from all over India, including Imphal, Patna, Chhattisgarh, Kasargod and Belgaum, apart from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Trivandrum. I was overwhelmed by the effusive response from the participants, and the high point was doubtless having veteran director Shyam Benegal as Chief Guest at the valedictory function. Although busy, well into his 80s, with his new film Bangabandhu on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, first prime minister of Bangladesh, he graciously agreed to address the class. And so, we got to learn about Shyam Benegal, the Film Curator.

Shyambabu (as he is fondly called) spoke of his early initiation into cinema, and I’m paraphrasing some of his wonderful talk here: I was just getting into college in Hyderabad, and tried to start a film society. Hyderabad State was then a multilingual state, so several languages were spoken in the street, and we also got to see films in the commercial theatres in multiple languages—Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Kannada and Marathi—and of course Hollywood films. There was a cinema close to my house, that catered to the Army garrison in Secunderabad cantonment, and they showed films from all over India and Hollywood. So we grew up with the idea that we are a multilingual country, and that shaped our mentality. You thought in terms of different languages and a world beyond your own.