A man wades through rolls of clothes. Five men take turns as they carry and unload fabric stock in the godown. Two men are sitting as reels of fabric pile on, right in between them. The metaphors are subtle, but they get loud once you start reading into them. Who controls what? Man controls machine or vice versa? A kid is zoning out due to sleep, as he keeps fabric flowing out of a machine from folding. The machine’s occasional screech keeps pulling him back from sleep. He lets out a very contagious yawn. I yawned too. The images draw you in. There is constant sound of clanking, and of machine parts rubbing off on each other. Sparks, tubelights, smoke, reels of fabric, oiled metal and wet floors make up the harsh images of this documentary.

This is a striking look at the toiling hardwork of workers in a fabric/dye factory. It is also about the disconnect between the man at the lowest job and the “Seth” owning the place. The former cribs about never having seen him, the latter judgementally complains about how fifty percent of them don’t give a damn about their family. This disparity is as striking as the one between man and machine. The cinematographer positions one human at a time, in the middle of huge man-made machines. These shots feel like photographs coming to life. When the most satisfying images of a documentary on labourers happen to be that of men sleeping like babies upon the dumps of stock, you know it has done the job. But it also gives you much more to chew on.