An art director’s crusade for women’s safety

As street protests for the Delhi gang-rape victim thin out in the city, 36-year-old Sukant Panigrahy has held on tight to the hope of making a difference. Despite a hectic schedule as an art director for Yash Raj Films, Panigrahy visits Jogger's Park at Lokhandwala in Andheri every evening from 7.30pm onwards with his friends, with a message to make the world a safer place for women.

Sometimes he has an audience, at other times he walks up to individuals and strikes up a conversation about women’s rights.

“I cried bitterly after the incident. I felt like it had happened to me. I wanted to get our people together to get them talking and thinking about solutions,” he said.

His Facebook page, ziddihaihum, became very popular too.

While the issue of women’s rights is an emotional one, it is not the only cause he espouses. Panigrahy also started the M.A.F.I.A Project years ago, where he “takes young professionals for two days to out of Mumbai where there's no phone network so that they can interact”. He has taken 300 people on such trips and thousands have joined his group's Facebook page.

Panigrahy finds time to do plenty more too, from teaching street kids to collecting books and clothes for the underprivileged to organising youth camps for young professionals and spreading awareness about the degradation of the environment through art.

“I grew up in Aska, Odisha. The sugar-mill belt was a hub for criminal gangs and all the violence that came with it. It is like City of God. Not much has changed since. You can't step out of your home by 7pm, it is risky.”

Always keen to do something constructive, he remembers protesting as a student during the Mandal Commission days. “My parents never supported me. By the XII grade, I left studies and ran away to Mumbai.” That was the first time Panigrahy saw a train.

But life was about to get tougher for the teenager in 1994 as he made Mumbai home. “I came here without a ticket, no money. I wanted to get into cinema or the mafia – wanted to do something to make my family proud. I had no plan. I lived on the streets for a fortnight. I started selling film tickets in black for a day until they ganged up on me. Then I worked at a restaurant in Dadar as a cleaner, where I was almost gang-raped,” recalled Panigrahy.

Addicts, police, street gangs kept the teenager on the edge. Always hungry, Panigrahy improvised and kept himself alive until he landed in Sewri one day, outside the home of a doctor who had an Oriya name. “I managed to lie my way past the security guards. I was filthy, they would've beaten me up had the doctor said he didn't know me. I introduced myself. He probably thought I was a patient.”

Coincidentally, the doctor's younger brother was his friend from back home. He had found his safe haven and found direction for his future profession. “The doctor's brother was an art director and for a year I worked very hard and followed his footsteps. I started off by cleaning his car. Because I was young in the industry, I was picked on a lot,” said Panigrahy.

Panigrahy's first stint on his own was when he painted Ghetto, a pub in South Mumbai. “I joined the place as a cleaner and got the painting job. My first reward was free lunch in that place for about two months,” he said with a laugh.

While Panigrahy waited outside film studios to do odd jobs, he got picked up by Yash Raj films. Since then, he hasn't looked back.

“I never save. All my money goes in my projects. That makes my wife unhappy. My job is something I do to feed myself. I'm not proud of it. I've worked on Heroine, but I haven't seen it. It's embarrassing.” Panigrahy agrees in fact that Bollywood is responsible for the objectification of women.

He has also set up Kapala, an installation made of e-waste, at Kalaghoda Fair this year.  'Kapala' (forehead) exists to invoke awareness of the dangers of electronic waste.

 “I want to spread awareness about environmental degradation through art. I've used cow dung in the centre of the installation and have had so many reactions. Some kids have not even seen cow dung before,” said Panigrahy, who has a 10-year-old son.

Panigrahy, who believes he will see a better India, started the BYOFF (Bring Your Own Film Festival) in Puri a decade ago, which has turned very popular. “Now it includes all art forms. We don't charge much and we don't use sponsors.” He also set up Muskaan Foundation, which operates in slum pockets in the city. “When I tried to register Muskaan, they asked me for a bribe and insisted I speak in Marathi. They've been giving me dates for years now.”