Engineering students' 'Sweet Cheat' takes on corruption

HUBLI: Akash R Yaligar is taking a jab at our conscience. The fifth-year architecture student of BVB College of Engineering & Technology has teamed up with his peers as well as the non-teaching faculty and has made a short film, 'Sweet Cheat', to highlight how people often shut their eyes to what they perceive to be an insignificant corrupt practice.
While Yaligar directed and edited the film, which is a little over 5 minutes long, another architecture student Jayashree L Habib produced it. Yaligar and classmate Manoj Javali wrote the screenplay. Prateek, an automobile engineering student of the college, and Ameyavikram, an architecture student, handled the camerawork. Architecture students Shrinivas Habib and Ganesh Hadapad as well as the college peon, Hanumanth K, were also involved in the production of the short film.
The film's narrative is linear. It begins by showing a hearing- and speech-impaired child plugging in earphones without connecting the pin to a device. The child draws the attention of a milkman quietly adulterating his supply under a water tap. He then moves on to a grocery store, where he finds the shopkeeper giving a customer a chocolate after receiving payment for a purchase, claiming to be out of change. The shopkeeper's box containing change, however, tells a different story as it is filled with coins. When the customer figures out the child's physical disability, he gives the chocolate to him. The child then makes his own purchase at the shop, during which the shopkeeper again hands over a chocolate. To outwit the cheating shopkeeper, the child hands over to him both the chocolates he earned and asks for money in exchange.
Yaligar says 'Sweet Cheat' is an attempt to lay an emphasis on prevalent methods of cheating. "Cheating has become a part of our daily lives. People cheat one another directly or indirectly. Everyone is a cheat. We have screened this short film in our college and soon, we will upload it on YouTube to reach out to the masses."
He explains that the film not only nails the shopkeeper's deceit but also the child's.