Film By: Harsh Chetwani, Vedant Patil, Arkja Kuthiala
Mentored By: Sourav Sarangi
City: Delhi
The film ‘Cowboys of the West (UP)’ explores the everydayness of travel for informal milk suppliers (locally called Doodhiyas) from small towns and villages that surround Delhi. As Delhi’s urban spaces continue to saturate with people and things, the demand for essential commodities such as milk keep on increasing. Doodhiyas play a crucial role in forming a link between immediate rural and the urban through the supply of milk. Moreover the film primarily focuses on the train journeys undertaken by a group of Doodhiyas, and sheds light on how travelling together everyday produces a sense of mobility which is intertwined with the sense of home, affective relationships with co-passengers and the work that demands bodily labour. As the sense of everyday envelopes these lives in shuttling migration, this film is intended as a pause to observe how Doodhiyas from peripheries of Delhi make meaning of their travel.