The Gulf on the Malayali Big Screen: an outline history

Mohamed Shafeeq K. 

(Shafeeq teaches Comparative Literature at University of Hyderabad and can be reached at shafeeq.vly@gmail.com)

The first Malayalam movie to refer to what is called the Gulf came out in 1980, and was called Vilkkanundu Swapnangal – Dreams for Sale (dir. M. Azad). Who did the selling was not clear, but there were clear buyers, the Malayalis being foremost among them. Written by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, the movie begins with a voice-over telling us

[how] we [were] always attracted by the promise of a land where we can harvest gold.  Once upon a time it was Ceylon, then it was Malaya. In the last one decade there have been stories doing the rounds of a land where you end up being rich if you somehow, even selling off the roof over your head, you can manage to reach there. Thousands of youth now found a dream to cherish – Dubai.

The movie depicts the hardships and perils of the journey of the days then where many did not even make it to the other shore alive.  It also offers other conclusions:  as the protagonist of the movie, Rajagopala Menon, discovers, (i) Gulf can make you rich beyond your dreams, (ii) but all the richness of it, the villa there, the house in Kerala – none of it – can help you win your love, Sridevi, who would bang the door of her crumbling Nair tharavadu (feudal household) on your face, and (iii) there are more migrants on the way. The movie offers glimpses of what Dubai used to be back then and is thus a rarity.

IO STO CON LA SPOSA: A Video-Graphic Review

Tommaso Manfredini

(Tommaso is a Doctoral Student in the Department of French and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University and can be reached at tm2538@columbia.edu)

EU Regulation 604/2013 remains the latest attempt at legally harmonizing the processing of asylum-seeking and protection claims across all EU Member States. Its origin can be traced back to the 1990 Dublin Convention (ratified in 1997), followed by the Regulation’s original 2003 draft which, through several amendments, led to the adopted text of 2013. Commonly known as “Dublin Regulation” or “Dublin III”, the regulation establishes that the Member State where applicants first lodge a status application is responsible for reviewing that claim. This means that an asylum-seeker has only one chance and, formally, one choice: he or she must lodge their application in the country where they would like to be admitted and eventually reside. “Lodging an application”, however, is not exactly an act of free will. In theory, an application for asylum will be filed on behalf of an undocumented migrant whenever and wherever this person comes into contact with a European state representative. If a person enters the EU through Italy but wants to live elsewhere, as is the case of the characters in Io sto con la sposa, he or she must make their way to the country of their choosing without being intercepted by “state representatives”—police, train controllers, highway patrols, etc.Io Sto con la Sposa is thus a statement about and against the growing inadequacy of the Dublin Regulation and its power of fragmenting the purportedly borderless space of the European Union.

Fratricide: A Review.

Madhurilata Basu

(Madhurilata teaches Political Science at Gurudas College and can be reached at basu.madhurilata@gmail.com)

Director: Yilmaz Arslan

Cast: Erdal Celik, Nurretin Celik, Xevat Gectan

Running time: 90 mins

‘As moths drawn to the light, many took the road to the Promised Land’, hoping that, ‘at the end of the tunnel, shines the light of money…’

The movie Fratricide (Brudermode; Germany: 2005), tries to capture the aspirations of migrants in Europe, in this case an unnamed German city, their struggles at various levels— to have a life, to live with dignity and be accepted as well as the struggles of competing with other migrants for assimilation. Yilmaz Arslan's Fratricide, traces the journey of a young Kurdish shepherd boy, Azad (Erdal Celik), to Germany, with the help of his elder brother’s (Semo, Nurretin Celik) money, in order to support their struggling family.

When Azad is all set to leave in a truck full of teenage boys or young men from nearby villages, all suited up, Azad’s father picks up some soil and puts it in his shabby coat pocket. At that moment, the words of a fellow passenger that in a new land one might lose a brother to find another,  might seem to be harsh, based on the timing, but as the film unfolds, it would seem that harsh is another name for the reality in Azad’s life. On arrival in Germany, Azad stays in some kind of a refugee shelter. He comes to know that Semo has become a pimp and he, unlike his brother, sets off to earn his living by shaving beards and trimming the nose hair of the customers from a neighbourhood hangout. It is at the shelter that Azad meets Ibo (Xewat Gectan), an orphaned Kurdish boy and forges a friendship and brotherly attachment towards him.

“Pura Handa Kaluwara” (Death on a Full Moon Day) a film by Prasanna Vithanage

Anuradha Gunarathne 1

Sri Lanka is a country which has the experience with the three decades conflict between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam. The civilians both in the North and the South were suffered due to this protracted conflict. Thousands of civilians died. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, wives and relatives were suffered due to the lives of their sons, husbands, fathers and relations. No one was there to talk to the hearts of the suffered. Some of them were psychologically affected.

In 1997 the famous film producer Mr. Prasanna Vithanage produced a film named “Pura Hada Kaluwara” (Death on the full Moon Day). It explores collective life of the island the ethnic conflict that has engulfed Sri Lanka during conflict. The movie does not portray the conflict directly. Instead, it focuses on the trauma brought about in the lives of a few chosen people by the ethnic conflict.

The film tells the story of Vannihamy, an elderly blind farmer from one of the Sinhala villages in the northern dry zone of Sri Lanka. He has two daughters and a son. The elder daughter, Sumana has married and moved away from home. Sunanda, the younger daughter, lives with Vannihamy in expectation of her marriage. Vannihamy's only son Bandara has joined the army. Bandara, resolved to join the army with the aim of earning enough money to build a small house and take care of his sister's forthcoming wedding.

In the opening sequences it shows land purchased by a long drought, and the villagers, including Vannihamy, undergoing great hardship due to the scarcity of water. Vannihamy, even though he is blind, is an experienced farmer and predicts that rain can be expected within few days.

A few days later, on the Buddhist full moon poya day, the body of his soldier son's is returned by the Army in a sealed coffin. He refuses to recognize the fact that the sealed coffin bearing the body of his son was brought back and buried. The officers of the army had intimated to him the fact that his son was killed in battle. However, he stubbornly believes that his son will return alive. The contrast between the father's unshakable faith in the return of the son from the battlefield and the brutal realities of life fuels the narrative.

Sunanda, the younger daughter, silently accepts her father's decision and finds a job in a garment factory. But her boyfriend Somay, her elder, married sister and the local Government officer pressure Vannihami to sign the papers which will entitle the family to the Government's compensation payment for his son's death in action. They thought that, that is the only way to earn for decent living. The customary alms giving period of three months, after bandara's death is fast approaching and money has to be found to pay for the food. The local Buddhist monk wants to construct a memorial in the name of the valiant son of the soil who gave his life for his country.

Faced with this pressure from villagers and relatives blinded by desperate poverty, day to day hardships and empty glories of being nothing more than canon fodder, Vannihami retains the clarity of vision, which gives him the wisdom that reaches far beyond what the eye can see.

He pick up the mammoty (hoe) to dig up and open his son's sealed coffin by doing this he knows he will invalidate the compensation claim, but his greater purpose is to believe that the war cannot kill his son. This is the most emotionally powerful moment in the film. A young woman who comes to the village tank to fetch water sees Vannihamy and informs the villagers. They rush to the scene and take on the job of unearthing the coffin themselves clearly with the intent of laying to rest the doubts assailing Vannihamy. They retrieve the coffin, break the seal and open it. Vannihamy, who is alert to everything going on, eagerly fingers the contents. All that is in the coffin are some pieces of wood and a large stone nothing that could prove the death of Vannihamy's son. As he leaves the graveyard Vannihamy is neither a defeated man nor spiritually broken. It is clear that he still believes his son is alive.

The old man's refusal to believe in his son's death becomes completely plausible only when it is viewed as the result of an unconscious protective mechanism operating against the unbearable reality of his son's death.

In the final sequences of the film Vannihamy as confident man as he was at the beginning comes to the village tank to fetch water, and listens eagerly to a ripple of laughter coming from the children bathing in the river. A scarcely perceptible smile comes to his lips perhaps he remembers how his son used to play in the river.

In this film face of Vannihamy represents the soul of a nation suffering 30 years of civil strife as the state and Tamil fighters continue their war of attrition. It's an observational realist movie which uses a spare medium concerning the grievances of the poor due to the civil conflict.

Notes
1.The author works as a National Coordinator of the National Projection and Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Unit of National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka and independent consultant for several human rights events.

Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks by Break Through

Suha Priyadarshini Chakravorty

Despite the Obama Administration’s assurance to alter the functionality of the Detention System, not much has been done. The much ambitious Detention System is stretched across over 500 country jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities, with immigration detention being a $ 1.8 billion business (estimated to hold approx. 442 941 detainees in custody in 2009 alone). The accounts from these detention centres portray horrifying depictions of ruthless and brutal existences of detainees where they are denied basic facilities such as visitation, access to lawyers, medical care, and are subject to regular physical and verbal abuse. Vulnerable people including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents as well as US citizens find themselves amongst those detained in these centres.

The short video ‘Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks’ by Break Through as part of the Restore Fairness Campaign is a similar vignette that depicts a dismal chronicle of the US detention system, whereby transgender detainees undergo severe mental turmoil and physical abuse in centres which are meant for protection. The video deals with plight of Esmeralda, a transgender who seeks asylum in the United States of America, which she considered as having a more conducive environment than her home country, Mexico. Her aspiration to lead a ‘normal’ life at a free environment of the US turned out to be her worst nightmare. Facing discrimination at Mexico even from her family she wanted to pursue her ambitions at the United States and therefore had applied for asylum in the country. Subsequently she was detained. At the detention centre she was (like other transgender detainees) kept in a segregated cell and would even be taken to the bathroom in handcuffs. She says, “They would handcuff us as if we were murderers and were trying to escape.... but we were not trying to run away.” Esmeralda was also not allowed to drink or do anything that the other detainees were. Further she faced severe sexual abuse by an immigration guard who forced himself on her since she was handcuffed in a cell and could do little to defend herself. Additionally, when she protested against it and the immigration guard was sentenced to jail for a 6 months term, Esmeralda began to be watched even more closely for the guards were angry with her on telling on one of them. She felt so claustrophobic and suicidal that she wanted psychiatric help, which she was further denied. Following this, she cancelled her asylum and went back to Mexico and on applying for it the second time, she was detained with male detainees which was further more shocking for her and for as long as she lived in the detention centre, she lived in constant terror. Finally, she was granted asylum in the US. Esmeralda currently finds herself as a successful advocate fighting for the cause of sexual violence and its survivors in the US. Thus even while on the one hand, the video exudes a strong pessimistic undertone it ends on an optimistic flavour of ‘hope’ for positive change.


Watch video at: http://restorefairness.org/2009/11/esmeralda-a-transgender-asylum-seeker-speaks-out-against-immigration-detention/

Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda (2000) [Duration: 55 minutes]

Suha Priyadarshini Chakravorty

Of the modern day marvels that mark the fulcrum of ‘power equations’ and ‘development’ globally, nuclear power finds itself in the most coveted zenith. It is in this context that mining of Uranium is critical to the unfolding of such ‘power equations’. Uranium was not a useful element when it was initially discovered during the 18th century but it was after the success of the atom bomb during the World War II that it became a key ingredient towards generation of not only cheap electricity but also nuclear power. Among the numerous radioactive elements that contaminate the earth’s surface and that of the atmosphere when mined, uranium is abundantly available in the Jharkhand region and is therefore uncontrollably mined and milled. The region also faces additional problems of radioactive waste management. It is in the wake of this uranium mining in the East Singbhum district of Jharkhand that the psycho-social, political, economic as well as the physical health of the ethnic communities had been suffering in the region for long.

Winner of the Grand Pix of 8th Earth Vision (at the Earth Environment Film Festival), the documentary by Shriprakash, ‘Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda’ remains one such vignette of displacement and dispossession (as a result of uranium mining) that takes one through a journey of the quintessential adivasi land of Jadugoda (originally known as ‘Jaragoda’) in the state of Jharkhand. The name ‘Jadugoda’ according to a version was only a replacement to the former since the natives believed that evil spirits and black magic has now grasped the thick-forested land they once called home, so much so that their land was cursed despite being resourcefully rich.

Set against the backdrop of the land of Jadugoda, (situated in the eastern peninsular area of the Indian sub-continent in the state of Jharkhand) portrayed in a visual essay of forests and rivers and home to adivasis (such as the Santhals, Hoas, Oraons, Mundas) the film bears testimony to the land that has now come to witness one of the deadliest decays of modern-day inventions. Rich in minerals and natural resources, the tribal region continues to suffer state repression and exploitation of both its natural as well the human resources. Displaced from their ancestral land by force and made to live in inhabitable radioactive environment, the adivasis have their voices heard through the film.

The film smoothly delves into the dynamics of radioactive mining and the way it engulfs the entire tribal community. The extent of their exploitation becomes even more visible as the lenses zero in on to Kalipada Murmu, a native who recounts that the community is not even once warned by the UCIL management of the detrimental after effects of uranium mining. Mangal Soren maintains that they are not provided with precautionary devices such as masks or respirators to protect themselves from the harmful radiation while mining as casual workers. He additionally holds, “Only the engineers get the masks and respirators.” The adivasi men, women and children suffer from birth deformities, congenital diseases, hyperkerotosis, skin diseases, tumors, downs syndrome and other abnormalities that are but the result of radiation. It is principally in this region that the number of disabilities out-numbers the national average. Also peculiar to the region is the problem of sterile couples together with the rampant rate of natural abortion due to excessive radiation. The UCIL authorities have an altogether different version on the occurrence of the aforesaid diseases when R.N. Singh, a supervisor says, “It is due to alcoholism and the extreme unhygienic conditions the tribal people live in that they suffer from diseases like cancer.” The film further elucidates another major quandary in Jadugoda, i.e. the management of radioactive waste; the way in which radioactive waste is dumped into the Subarnarekha river at Jadugoda, from even distant mines of Hyderabad and Mysore. As the camera pans on the rainwater overflow at the tailing dam it is seen that as it enters the rice fields, those in turn get washed away with the radioactive substance thereby facilitating radiation to enter the human body through the food chain. Dr. U.C. Mishra’s (Bhaba Atomic Research Centre) remarks, “You can handle uranium by bare hands and nothing will happen to you,” remains a significant prototype of the functioning of the so called scientific research centers in India and that of responsibility of the Indian government.

The film through its occasional rejoinders in the form of sharp tribal songs coupled with crisp dialogues set against the bright contrast of the tribal culture manages to underscore the high voltage drama of the black overtones of the socio-political struggle of the adivasis. The film thus not only reflects personal narratives but also remains phenomenal in articulating the plight of people living in the Jadugoda region; the saga of their ‘landlessness’, ‘alienation’ and ‘exploitation’ in enunciating their vision of belongingness and commitment to the land that has now turned into monochromes of surrealism.

An Investment in Peace

Aditi Bhaduri

[Currently working as a freelance journalist based in Kolkata]

Aditi Bhaduri re-examines the significance of dialogue and community participation through personal narratives of women of the conflict ridden Kashmir valley. She unravels the personal trauma through the reading of the film “Athwas: a Journey”. It is a 30-minute documentary in English, Urdu, Hindi and Kashmiri, with English subtitles, produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT). The article about the film has been reproduced from The Hindu, Magazine 1 March 2009.

Rebuilding Relationships: Highlighting what was once a Common History and Heritage

For those who know her, Ashima Kaul is an avowed secularist, committed to non-violence and communal harmony. She is simultaneously acknowledging and proud of her Hindu heritage as she is of her Kashmiri identity. “I feel more comfortable with Kashmiri Muslims than with non-Kashmiri Hindus,” she says candidly.

Yet when in the winter of 1996 Kaul, now a resident of Delhi, made that long journey back to her native Baramullah, she found relationships frozen. What greeted her were deafening silences — of gutted and abandoned Kashmiri Hindu houses and Muslim graveyards where tombstones jostled with each other for space. Kaul’s intense pain set her off on a path, different from those of political rhetoric and militarised spaces.

A Personal Battle

In the memorable winter of 2008, as more and more Kashmiri women battled it out in the political space, contesting elections and casting their ballot, another Kashmiri woman has launched her own battle — for dialogue and rebuilding relationships. Kaul has just captured on film the turbulent and moving journey of Athwas — an initiative of Kashmiri women. In 2000, “Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace”, a Delhi-based initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility, brought together a few Kashmiri women from diverse backgrounds who had experienced conflict in different ways. The idea was to enable them to listen to each other.

The rationale — for women the personal inevitably blurs into the political and it is the feminist principles of compassion and healing, of reaching out to the other that ultimately triumph. The group called itself “Athwaas” meaning ‘handshake’ in Kashmiri. The core group of Athwaas later travelled to different parts of the Valley and also to the camps of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu, listening to the stories of pain, suffering and, also, of resilience.

“Athwas: a Journey” is a 30-minute documentary in English, Urdu, Hindi and Kashmiri, with English subtitles, produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT). It does not attempt to explore the roots of either the militancy that erupted in the Kashmir valley or the state reprisals that followed. It apportions blame to no one. It simply deals with and tries to heal the trauma that haunts the inhabitants of every community living in the valley. A gendered narrative of the collective trauma of Kashmir’s people, it highlights the fact that there remains a constituency for peace. It uses the only methodology that works: dialogue. Interviews with women of different faiths and communities, from different walks of life, lawyers, social workers, students, teachers and housewives build up the many personal histories that comprise the complicated issue of Kashmir and its multiple realities.

No One View

The film steers clear of simplistic reductionisms like innocent Kashmiris vs. iron-fisted state or that of Kashmiri terrorists vs. Mother India. All are given space and no one view is privileged over the other. The camera highlights the changed silhouette of Srinagar where police checkpoints and barbed wire have been integrated into the landscape.

But Kaul does not stop there. The camera zooms in on narrow filthy alleyways and claustrophobic one-roomed tenements where adults flee away from the lens of the camera — ashamed of the reality of their current lives.

New Geography

A new kind of geography came up on the outskirts of Jammu too in the wake of the armed insurgency in Kashmir and Kaul captures on film the “migrant camps” that sprouted overnight to accommodate fleeing Kashmiri Hindus from the valley. Purkhoo, Mutthi, Mishriwalla still tragically remains unknown and unheard of words for a majority of Indians and, of course, for the world at large. Yet they accommodate camps where live, what till today remains India’s largest ethnically cleansed population, the Kashmiri Hindus. The coming new year will see them enter their 20th year in exile without any signs of repatriation to Kashmir in sight.

“Athwaas: A Journey” tries to highlight what was once a shared space, a common history and heritage. The haunting strains of the azaan blend in with the joyful chiming of bells from the Shankaracharya temple. The voice of Mir Munir, a Muslim poet and singer singing the vaks of Lalla Ded, a Shaivite mystic who 700 years ago had implored Kashmiris to remember that Shiva lived in all beings often forms the backdrop to the interviews. Kaul has attempted, through dialogue and personal narratives, to bridge the fissures that erupted in this shared space and to bring back a fast fading syncretism that had been the dominant way of life in the not-so-distant past of the Kashmir valley.