Would you give shelter to puppies if all you had was a plastic tent above your head? What do you do when a homeless old man approaches you, but you don’t have any cash on hand? Have you ever thought of the lives of those who wipe the windshield when your car is stopped at a traffic signal?
A recent video that has been doing the rounds on social media and has also been shared by pages like ScoopWhoop and The Logical Indian will make you think twice about these everyday situations and how we react to them.
It has been conceptualised and written by Chennai-based short film director Arjun Ravindran, and produced by Sarvesh Shashi and Karthik Reddy, founders of Zorba — A Renaissance Studio.
Sarvesh says, “When I launched Zorba, I wanted to help people both commercially and in a non-profit manner. I decided to start an initiative called ‘Maya’ last Valentine’s Day, just to spread love and peace. I held free yoga classes at the beach, and made donations to charitable organisations as well. The initial idea behind the video was to get some return on investment, but after I heard the story, I was bowled over and just wanted to spread the message.”
The 3-minute-long video has been viewed over 2 lakh times on YouTube in five days and has been shared by a number of celebrities including actor Jayam Ravi and cricketer Sreeshanth. The cast consists of Marula, Shyam Kumar, Pione Suresh, Sai Ram, Roshan, Aditi, Sitara, Surak and Krishnamurthy with Danush Bhasker doing the cinematography and music by Leon James. Others who worked on the project include colourist Nazeer and editors Anthony and Ajay Kumar.
A beaming Arjun says, “I wrote the script keeping in mind Maya’s tagline, which goes ‘Love others to love yourself. Help others to help yourself’. The number of views we have got is way more than we hoped for, so we are ecstatic.” He added that the video took five days to shoot and a good one month to edit.
Under the Maya Initiative, they plan to release one such video every year. “In today's world, everybody needs love. My yoga guru always told me to do one good thing and that nature will repay you with a thousand good things, but not if you are seeking repayment in any way. The initiative is all about selflessness,” says Sarvesh.
