Love in the time of riots

In Kaya Taran, Sashi Kumar has given a poetic translation on celluloid of N.S. Madhavan’s story dating back to the dark days of November 1984, writes Nirupama Dutt.

Neelamari and Neeta Mahendra in the film

A little Sikh boy wearing a deep red patka on his head hides under a table for fear of death. The scene brings back the sorrows of the cruel month of November 1984 when innocent people of one community were singled out for mass killings. Yet even in times when all reason is lost and brutalisation becomes a way of life, love and reassurance come from unexpected sources. And for this little boy called Jagpreet it comes in the form of a forefinger gently offered by a veiled Sister Agatha. This is a poignant scene from TV anchor-journalist-turned-filmmaker Sashi Kumar’s Hindi feature film Kaya Taran previewed in the Capital last week.

The decade-and-a-half of terrorism in Punjab and the notorious killings of the Sikhs in November 1984, following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inspired much literature not only in Punjab but in other languages too. Although much of it falls in the class of instant emotional outpourings, yet there are some poems and short stories that seemed to have passed the test of two decades and promise to live on. In the short fiction category are stories like Bhayia Express by Hindi writer Arun Prakash, Na Maro and Bhajji Bahin by Punjabi writers Ajeet Cour and Waryam Sandhu and curiously a very moving tale, tellingly titled When Big Trees Fall by Malyalam writer N.S. Madhavan.

It was this story that Sashi made the subject of his debut film Kaya Taran, a Hindi word which means chrysalis. The film is not set in a refugee camp but in a convent for aged nuns in Meerut and Sashi says that this is what attracted him to the story. "It was already set at one remove." Sashi says that he sat on this story for many years intending to make a film on it but post-Gujarat, when one saw small children at press conferences telling of the unhappy events that engulfed their neighbourhood, the story seemed to fall into place. The film opens with a young pony-tailed journalist called Preet going to Meerut to do a story on conversions. He goes to the convent but a nun there directs him to the Bishop because the convent is just a retreat for aged nuns to say their prayers. After interviewing the Bishop, he returns to the convent for another reason.

The story is told in flashback. The convent is a grim place indeed with just two nuns to attend to old nuns. As Sister Agatha, played very convincingly by Seema Biswas, says, every winter one old nun passes away. In the midst of the old age, loneliness and depression suddenly comes a five-year-old Jagpreet and the mood of the convent changes. Jagpreet and his mother are victims of the anti-Sikh riots. The young boy’s father and brother have been killed and hoodlums are chasing them. The mother and son seek refuge in the convent and gradually the mood of the inmates changes. A child will be a child even amidst death and unhappiness. He brings cheer in that world of black and white robes and a life of denial. Finally the nuns arrange the escape of the mother and child by lending a robe to the mother and chopping the hair of the wailing boy and hiding him in a coffin till the railway station. The story, thus, works at many levels and Jagpreet’s return as Preet to do a story on conversions is ironical for he got at the convent the humanity that seemed to have fled his town and neighbourhood. When he returns to Delhi, the turban that he had shed for fear long ago is back.

The film does not dwell on the riots as such, for that was done commendably by the Press then and once again after the Gujarat massacre. A work of art has to transcend journalism and be something more than history written in a hurry. And this is what Madhavan’s story and Sashi’s film achieves. Sashi says, "The film is set against the backdrop of the two riots, but does not frontally engage with either. It is a distanced look at nurturing one’s identity in a multicultural society that borders on the volatile."

The casting of the film is very good and Bhanumati Rao and Joy Michael do a great job of their bit roles as nuns. Neelambari Bhattacharya as young Jagpreet and even the tall loose-limbed and somewhat awkward Angad Singh as the grown-up Preet are convincing. The Sikh woman’s role has been essayed well by Amritsar actress Neeta Mahendra. Navtej Jauhar’s dance sequence complements the painful sequence of the nuns chopping the wailing boy’s hair. The film is offbeat and Sashi has, indeed, been brave in tackling the subject. The only other feature film on those times was Gulzar’s Maachis, that had a love story woven into its narrative. But the love in the time of riots in Sashi’s film is of another order and the viewer comes out of the theatre brooding.

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