Will you carry it?

This film is the documentation of a series of conversations that I managed to have with Kitsumo, a resident of the village of Fakim in the hills of Nagaland, India. The town is a small settlement with a history steeped in the woods of the mountains and the great forests that surround them, and Kitsumo is yet another among their ranks. Working as a log-hauler, a popular occupation amongst the youth of his village, he frequents a job that provides one of the few sources of income that are available to the residents of Fakim. Owing to the terrain and the conditions of the location, the entire activity is an effort of intensive physical duress.

Starting off as an attempt to gain insight into the brutal conditions of the job, the film turned into a far more personal take owing to the stark difference between our lifestyles and the keenness of his mind. Instead of being an account of the job and his thoughts on it, it became an account of the series of spontaneous and personal conversations that arose between Kitsumo and me about life, relationships, and aspirations...

His enthusiasm for life is contagious and his efforts at equating and relating our two distinctly different worlds are at once humorous and heart-warming.
The extent to which he opened up to me, and the amount of wisdom that he generated at the spark of a lighter and over the smoke of a beedi, convinced me that this was something that needed to be shared.

This film is a documentation of everyday life as seen through the eyes of Kitsumo.