Ramnarayan Tiwari, a Brahmin (uppermost caste as per the caste system in India) is a peon in a government undertaking, where recently, a Dalit (lower caste), has risen to become a big officer. Tiwari burns with resentment towards this officer’s hierarchical superiority because he considers himself superior as per the religiously ingrained caste system. Tiwari is also frustrated as his promotion has been overdue for years. The officer’s bathroom’s drain has choked. Tiwari tries to look for the official sweeper, also a lower caste man. This role-reversal story is about how Tiwari’s need for promotion, and his caste prejudice towards the officer, counterbalance each other to solve the problem of the choked drain.

Director Biography - Mudit Singhal

Mudit is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and a Post-graduate in Communications Management. With a total corporate experience of 18+ years, he currently runs Storycentre as a content development and digital marketing agency.

He is an aspiring screenwriter and director, having written two feature-length film scripts so far, the stories of which had been shortlisted in the first round of Cinestaan Scriptwriting contest in Mumbai, India, in 2018 and 2019.

Before 'Yes Sir!', he has made two short films, Vortex (2015) and Closet (2018), the latter of which was picked as the 'Short of the Week' by Royal Stag Barrel Select ‘Large Short Films’ in 2018.

Director Statement

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, known as the Father of the Indian Constitution, in his undelivered speech 'Annihilation of Caste' in 1936, had mentioned the following:

"Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the Hindus from commingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a state of mind. The destruction of caste does not therefore mean the destruction of a physical barrier. It means a notional change."

It is this notion of caste that unfortunately prevails in India (and the subcontinent) even today, and we are still very much caged inside it. 'Yes Sir!' is a story of how a notional change can still

happen, albeit only slightly. The attempt is to show this in a lighter vein, as it is a story where the typical roles of an officer and a peon are reversed - a Brahmin serving as a peon to a Dalit, a DGM at a government undertaking - and how this role-reversed hierarchy creates an awkward, and funny situation for the peon because of a mundane problem that needs to be fixed, almost like how the issue of caste needs to be fixed.

From a visual perspective, we have attempted to hint at this narrow-minded notion by filming the story in 4:3 frame which opens up to a wider frame only in the closing shot, and also not showing the peon and his officer in one frame (from his POV) until the point where his mindset starts to change a bit.