P. Chidambaram with Poojita Chowdhury at the screening of Bender Gender at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre

Is she a filmmaker to watch for? Or, is she a businesswoman who will construct a giant empire? And what about a life in politics? Poojita Chowdhury doesn’t seem too certain at the moment. She has just made a documentary, Gender Bender that’s dedicated to the girl child and she’s determined to challenge stereotypes. “There is no job a woman cannot do,” she says determinedly.

Certainly, plenty of doors are open for Poojita. Her mother Renuka Chowdhury is the Culture Minister and firebrand politician who has been photographed driving a tractor ? to prove that any job a man can do, can be done better by a woman. Poojita’s father is a Hyderabad-based businessman who owns a company called Oxyco, which makes medical and industrial gases. Poojita may be a committed filmmaker but she’s getting back into business in the near future. “I was busy with the film for the last five to six months and now is the time to join dad full-time at work.”

And what about politics? Poojita dismisses that query instantly. Sure, she keeps track of the comings and goings in the world of politics but has “no inclination to join it”.

But she isn’t about to abandon filmmaking either. In fact, she has already lined up her next project, which will be about Hyderabad’s Hindu-Muslim culture and it will be called The Biography of a Hyderabadi Biryani. “The film is going to be about the fusion of the people in Hyderabad. And how food is the glue that keeps these people together,” she says.

But Poojita feels passionately about women’s issues and it shows all the way in her movies. The documentary, Bender Gender profiles women performing unconventional tasks, which are still considered to be men’s prerogatives. The film profiles women barbers, priests, hand pump mechanics and auto drivers ? all have carved their own niche in the man’s world.

Take for instance the fact that Tata Steel in Jamshedpur has women bulldozer drivers, engine drivers and crane operators. How come? The company took the initiative and conducted a training programme in 2002 for 13 women who had low-paid jobs as tea girls. Now, they make Rs 10,000 a month, which can go upto Rs 23,000 with further training.

“I have put all my passion into telling the stories of women who are the icons of change,” says Poojita who travelled all over the country during a five-month period to make the film. “We travelled to different parts of India from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, to Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Kerala to shoot the film,” she says.

“I’m a girl child too. I have made the film in the hope that these stories become the norm. It is not the government alone that is responsible but the civil society that is responsible for bringing about changes for the better,” adds Poojita.

But what made the young lady with a double Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, English Literature and Political Science from Beloit College, Wisconsin in the USA take up movie-making? She started her career in an advertising agency in Delhi, but soon realised that she didn’t like the work. Around this time she met movie-maker Vinta Nanda. The result was that Poojita ended up as an assistant director making White Noise. It was a life-changing experience in some ways because it made her realise the enormous power of the medium of film and how it could transmit messages that would reach the common man.

Soon after she made her first documentary film called Sand in My Nostrils. The documentary was on foeticide which was part of a bigger series on BBC in 2004. Gender Bender will also be shown on the Snapshots of Change series. In fact, the shorter version of her movie was featured on BBC South-Asia as part of the same series in 2005.

Nevertheless, the young director has a strange confession to make: “I have never been a hardcore film buff,” confesses Poojita. Her kind of cinema is more offbeat and parallel cinema. She loves the films by director Nagesh Kukunoor and loves the sensibility that he portrays in the film. His movies are very close to the kind of films she would like to make.

But does being a politician’s daughter make life easier for a young filmmaker? “I have definitely learnt a lot from my mother. I’m sensitised to a lot of issues because I have seen her work on them. But there is always a thin line where people assume that you have it easy because you are a politician’s child, which is not fair because I have worked very hard on my own. I don’t think filmmaking has any connect with politics,” she says.

What about becoming a politician? She doesn’t want to go down that route although she has a great admiration for her high-profile and outspoken mother who has carved out her own niche in politics. From her mother, she has understood the power of making a loud statement. “The strength of speaking out even if it is not the norm and if there is some merit in that,” she says.

Even though she has other projects on the anvil, the family business beckons. “It is very important to be financially independent. With documentary filmmaking, you don’t earn a living at all, but I would like keeping up films with it,” she reasons. “As of now I don’t have the inclination towards commercial cinema,” she says.

Nevertheless, she’s not going to stop making movies even if she does go into business. Says Poojita, “The journey has just begun and I have miles to go.

Photographs by Rupinder Sharma