serendipityoucity

I met Madan in India when I was there in November.  He is a totally great character who is truly committed to documenting people’s stories in India and to empowering his students to do the same.  He gave me a copy of the film below which i watched with my son.  Let me say, that it ain’t pretty, but i belive they needed to show and tell the story as it is. 

Let me know if you want to see it or show it.

PAPPU PARK - A FILM ON INTRAVENOUS DRUG ABUSE AND HIV

Background
On the banks of the river Yamuna that flows beside Delhi is a locality called Yamuna Bazaar. Each day about 100 or more addicts congregate at a park here known as Pappu Park. All of them are Intravenous drug addicts who inject themselves with a mixture of Avil, Norphine and Diazepam. Due to their poor economic condition they share needles and syringes quite often and therefore constitute a, ‘high risk’ group with regard to the spread of HIV. Three years ago an NGO called Sahara intervened and began outreach operations which later spanned out into an out patient care centre on location, a crisis centre for detoxification, a rehabilitation centre offering long term in house treatment and care and finally a midway home that sets up reformed addicts with jobs. In these three years the intervention has had a significant impact and today nobody shares needles at Pappu Park anymore. Counseling has also helped many turn around their lives.

The film
Pappu Park, strives to outline this success story through the eyes of an ex addict, Satish who today works with Sahara and helps suffering addicts. It demonstrates the link between IDU and HIV and shows how Sahara first assessed the situation and then moved in to the area to provide a bouquet of services for these addicts. The film is presented from the viewpoint of this once suffering but now reformed addict who is now fully engaged in helping his brothers’ reform themselves. Issues like harm reduction, high risk behavior and HIV are some of the issues the film deals with. It is also an attempt to showcase the immense success that Sahara has had in being able to make a difference and the strategy adopted by them in realizing this objective.

Rather than focus on hard statistics and numbers, Pappu Park seeks to address this issue from the grassroots level and the addicts themselves endorse the immense help they have received from the organization. In addition it also reveals how the local community living in the area has come to acknowledge the stellar contribution made by Sahara in addressing this serious problem.    

BIO - Madan S. Rajan

Has been a filmmaker working in the video industry in Delhi for the past two decades. He was part of the first batch of Mass Communication students from the Jamia Millia Islamia University in 1985 and has been working in various capacities since then. Though he began as an editor for the first seven years he has now gone on to venturing into other areas of filmmaking like scripting, cinematography and direction. He has also been teaching visual communication as a visiting faculty in institutes in Delhi and is currently teaching at Amity University NOIDA and the Institute of Home Economics in Hauz Khas. In addition to making his own films, he has also been involved in a number of student projects as in an advisory capacity.