From where I am, it is fortunate that I can get a Qing Qi to the main road and then walk a ways and hop on a van to some far off places. Vans are pretty cramped and it takes a while, but once I was in, we were on our way.

Haider Ali and Ali Salman of Phool Patti dropped by in the morning. I went out to pick up some halwa poori, while Umar fixed up the place and made some tea.

I shared the reasons for my decision to go home and not shoot “Risalo” in Pakistan. The director of “Manto” dropped by to see some progress on a project he was working on.

It always makes me sad to see these remains. The dead buildings seem to echo the anguish of all those displaced and murdered to make way for what exactly, I do not know.

Besides that, it was just nice to take a break from sitting in isolation waiting for time to pass. I left in the late afternoon to head back to the other side of town.

I looked at more cloth that could make for an interesting river background. I had figured out the mechanics for the design that I thought would work.

Having seen the video folks that same friend recommended, I don’t see how I would have fared better with his audio friends. People have all the answers when they are not actually doing the work.

I was very glad to see them take that initiative and with my blessings to adjust the strings and figure out new ideas, they ran with it. We figured out that certain movements will require multiple people to manipulate a single puppet.

So here he was, sitting at this table, a quiet older man along with some more worn, emaciated puppeteers.

I head out early in the morning and hopped on a Daewoo bus to Multan.

I need to keep tabs on all the people involved as well as to do way more tasks myself than I really should be doing, but that is the nature of my resources.

I can’t just dwell on the obstacles if I am going to bring all these elements together and make this film happen.