No tags yet.
While researching Charlie Chaplin, I came across a website that made a claim that Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley and Pablo Picasso were all descended from Roma community who have Indian roots from nomadic tribes such as Dom, Banjara, Gujjar, Sansi, Chauhan, Sikligar, and Dhangar .... It startled me to see that Vishnu's tribe, Banjara, was in that list---but of course Vishnu is related!
Ok, it could be some website fakery on the world wide web, but so specific!
It was a little over a year ago that we made a pact that we would make some Charlie Chaplinesque-yoga-farmer-guru film for Vishnu to star in. This was a working title for awhile:
Vishnu had been watching Charlie Chaplin films on Youtube whenever we were on some wifi connection. It made sense in a way, since language was not a barrier, and the humor pretty universally understood, but I thought it funny to see a young Indian person so enamored with a film character so old-timey. Charlie is still getting around. Vishnu was about to start an intensive one month yoga program at an Ayervedic College, as well as signing up to finish regular school by long distance learning. Also on topic while I was visiting, we discussed future plans of starting a permaculture farm- creating a healthy home where he and the other kids could know they are welcome to be if needed.
I returned to the states, and Vishnu went on to the yoga intensive, doing regular school long distance, and later continuing to learn permaculture while living at Aranya. The next December I returned for what would be a month of filming and travel, figuring out green screen, segments to film with the location we had, and basically jumping in over our heads to do our best with what we had.
By the way, I wrote to the Chaplin estate, Charlie Chaplin's Roma roots are confirmed!