From Bandana to Bonnie

Shoma A. Chatterji

Bonnie Pal (36) keeps running from one place to another to escape the wrath of his family and society, just because he decided to become a man — which he felt he always was, inside. The struggle for survival of one-time ace footballer in West Bengal has been captured in a moving film, I am Bonnie, produced by the Films Division and directed jointly by Farha Khatun, Satarupa Santra and Sourabh Kanti Dutta. The film follows the tragic journey of how Bandana Pal, once considered the best striker (1994-2000), is struggling to keep her body and soul alive since she changed her sex and became Bonnie Pal, now married to Swati, who has been the sole pillar of support for him. In 1997, a national championship for women’s football was held at Haldia where Bonnie’s (then Bandana) golden goal had helped Bengal win the finals. However, Bandana’s life had changed ever since she failed the “sex test” before the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998.

“I was turned back from the airport in Bangkok when I was about to participate in Bangkok Asiad in 2000. They said the sex test proved that I was not a female. I was heartbroken. I am happy to return as a football coach 13 years later,” he says when the camera captures him coaching members of a local club. This, however, is just the beginning of his woes. The very media that had praised Bandana’s strike as the “Golden Goal” when Bengal won the only goal against Manipur, spread the news that she had faked her sex in the forms. “But I knew nothing of this. Overnight, I became a social outcast. I was no longer in the football circuit,” says Bonnie. The registration form with the Indian Football Association states his name as Bandana Pal. At one point in the film, he challenges the directors by removing his shirt to display his well-toned, muscled body to claim that he is indeed a man and not a woman.

The three filmmakers discovered Bonnie in 2005. Then 24, his life was almost over. Between 2005 and 2007, Bandana/Bonnie underwent a series of sex reassignment surgeries, which were done by Dr Baidyanath Chakraborty’s team, almost free of cost. In 2006, he went to Krishnanagar in search of work. Here he started crafting idols of gods and goddesses, a craft he already knew. But the payments were paltry. Renting a room became tougher after he married Swati. The couple was ostracised. The clubs, which commissioned him to make idols, took this opportunity to either not pay or give him a paltry sum.

The couple then shifted to Siliguri in North Bengal. Here too, his payments as football coach never came. Bonnie and his wife were also not allowed to enter his ancestral home in Gaighata.

The sound of a running train in its friction with the tracks, a desperate face looking out of an auto-rickshaw appear again and again in the film as a metaphor of his life where he neither has home nor hearth nor a good job to fall back on. His mother is the only person who understands him. She says, “She was different from the beginning. I even asked her father to consult a doctor but he did not agree.” Her children made fun of her when she expressed grief after Bonnie went missing.

The camera catches Bonnie crafting idols, coaching football boys and girls and cleaning and cooking in Darjeeling where he has fled to with Swati. The film crew could not locate him till 2012. He regretted the day he became a footballer because it destroyed his entire life. He also told his wife that the documentary would not do him any good. And to think that Bandana/Bonnie was one of the finest strikers of Indian woman’s football team in her short career. In the closing frame, Bonnie is standing on the precipice of a hill in Darjeeling, his back towards the camera, while the voiceover says, “I am like a bird in flight, perching myself on one branch of a tree to another, without being able to build a nest.”

At the Kolkata International Film Festival to attend the screening of his film, Bonnie said, “Currently, I am a daily wage-earner and wasn’t sure that I would get leave from work. Thankfully, arrangements were made. I came for the screening, along with my wife Swati and cousin, Nayan Pal, in whose factory I work.” I Am Bonnie is a moving film which has bagged several awards too. Before leaving Kolkata for his home in Gobardanga, Bonnie said, “I don’t know if cinema can change my life. I don’t know if I will ever get a government job. But I am returning home a happy man.”