The short film Manthan is premised on a legend from Hindu mythology in which the gods and the demons churn the ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality. Through a romanticized, performative gesture, the film examines the prospects of ecological threat and envisions a process of churning the deleterious waste out of the river Yamuna. Manthan is a refusal to give up hope and implores us to find a solution before it’s too late.
Manthan addresses the global concern for water, the nectar of life. Galhotra had been working with water, the political and economic impacts of this vital resource, whose ownership is being claimed by a select few, not only in India but all around the world. The element water is dualistic in its very character: eternal in its molecular form, yet perishable in the form of water bodies. The plot of Galhotra’s story contemporizes the Puranic myth in the context of the contemporary situation by churning the sludge out from the river.
