Poorna Malavath (left) with Aditi Inamdar
The August of 2015 posed a difficult task to Rahul Bose. That of selecting the right girl to convincingly portray Poorna Malavath—the youngest girl to have climbed Mount Everest at 13—in the recently released Poorna, which he has produced, directed and acted in. According to Bose, the team auditioned more than 500 girls over four months. It was strenuous. “My casting director Mayank (Dixit) almost had a nervous breakdown,” said Bose.
109 kids were shortlisted. Aditi Inamdar was the 110th, who Bose discovered while going through the audition videos. Now that the film is out, the 14-year-old Inamdar is stealing the show. At one point in Bose’s directorial, the girls at the Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS), are playing a game where each person has to say something humorous beginning with “I am so poor that...”. Call it wit or just the real-life situation surrounding her, Inamdar as Poorna Malavath, deconstructs her name thus, “Mere toh naam me hi poor hai...” (There is poor in my name...). The naivety and innocence with which she delivers the line is invigorating to say the least. There are many more moments that follow.
“You can teach an actor to climb, but you can’t teach a climber to act. You can’t necessarily teach a tribal girl to become an actor,” Bose said talking about the time he finalised Inamdar, who isn’t a tribal like Malavath, to play her part.
“When I sat with Aditi, I could sense in her eyes—wisdom, talent, understanding, empathy—all of it. I saw talent like I would see in Tabu or Koko (Konkona Sen Sharma). Aditi is very shy, not very good at speaking too, but she is a lovely, talented kid,” said Bose.
Malavath, who, over the past year-and-a-half, has bonded with Inamdar over the shoot and promotions of the film, thinks that she has done an amazing job.
After training in rock-climbing in Telangana, Malavath went for a rigorous schedule in Darjeeling followed by Ladakh, after which she and Anand Kumar (who she refers to as brother Anand Kumar) were selected to climb Mount Everest. And to play the part of Malavath convincingly, Inamdar, two years younger to Poorna, too, had to go through a similar intense training. “I was trained for a month before the shoot of the film began,” she said.
But not without Malavath’s help. While Bose had a team to train Inamdar and “she was a quick learner too”, the instructions were to “imitate Poorna”. “While she was being trained at the Bhongir Fort in Telangana, I was called there too to show her how I do it,” said Malavath, as Inamdar continued, “I was asked to observe her when she climbs, and then do the same,” she said shyly but with a sense of pride because she completed the task successfully.
Inamdar, set to begin her class 10, is hugely inspired by Poorna's grit and determination.
While we sat with both the girls a couple of days before the release of the film, a sense of pride could also be seen on Malavath's face. She had always believed that ‘girls can do anything’ but never expected that her life story can become so big, so inspiring. “I had never thought before climbing the Everest that my story will have such a power. I can’t express the feeling and happiness in words,” said Malavath, for whom it’s like a dream.
Excited about the film as they are, none of the two girls want to compromise on studies. Malavath, in class 12, wants to immerse herself in studies completely so that she could become an IPS officer like R.S. Praveen Kumar (played by Bose in the film), who motivated her to take up mountaineering, and empowered her in more ways than one.
Inamdar, as influenced as she is by the entire experience of working on the film and by Malavath, is not sure if she wants to take up mountaineering. “I am not very skilled, but I don’t mind training in it,” she says. She doesn’t even want to pursue acting. Her goal is to enter the fashion industry and has already started studying for it. “We have an option, just like crafts, to study fashion and my teacher thinks I will do well in it.”
