The vicissitudes of a small world

BLURB: Navigating through the twisting and spiral pathway of Iewduh, also known as Bara Bazaar, the 94-minute film delves into the bitter and sweet realities of a handful of working-class characters

Dipankar Sarkar

At the 24th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), 2019, Pradip Kurbah’s Khasi language film Iewduh became the first film from Meghalaya to be screened in ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ segment along with some of the best films from the continent.

It was nothing less than a triumph, a feather in the cap of independent filmmaking clan of the Northeastern part of India. But when the film won the Kim Ji-Seok Award at the festival, it also got christened as the first film in the history of Indian cinema to win such an honour.

Navigating through the twisting and spiral pathway of Iewduh, also known as Bara Bazaar, the 94-minute film delves into the bitter and sweet realities of a handful of working-class characters of the region. The array of primary characters, inhabiting within the narrative framework, includes an aging man Lamare (Richard Kharpuri), who has been abandoned by his family and suffering from a memory disorder; a young boy Hep (Denver Pariat), who has been rehabilitated from his dependency on psychoactive substances; and Priya (Baia Marbaniang), a cloth vendor, who is suffering psychological and emotional wounds of domestic violence from her alcoholic husband, an attractive tea seller — Edwina (Lala Yomeca), who is in a secret relationship with an individual outside her community. The following characters’ lives link up with protagonist Mike, a cleaner at a public toilet, and that connects multiple lives over a while in a chronological pattern. The personal changes and development of characters are devoid of traditional binaries and they share a common space of pain and attachment. Themes emerge, such as the death of individuals, the resentments of present generation, the failure of early promise, the way all plans and ambitions can be undermined by sudden and unexpected events and sets the notion that individuals are helpless against the forces that control them.

The market itself can be perceived as a refuge of a large number of ethnic groups, who came from different directions at different historical times. Symbolically, it occupies a distinctive place within the milieu of the film, primarily due to its social, cultural, and political features, which criss-crosses the identity of individuals. There are two events in the film that underscores such cultural fluidity. For instance, when Edwina marries someone outside her community, she becomes an object of discussion between her drunken, jilted, one-sided lovers. Secondly, the shop owner Mr Sharma, a non-tribal, who initially is disturbed by unending dowry demands from her daughter’s in-laws. The tension is creatively depicted over an off-screen landline conversation. As the narrative progresses, he accepts the return of her daughter to her paternal house without any reservation. The plight of her daughter can be drawn parallel with that of Priya, a tribal, where the latter had to take a drastic step to break out from her husband’s abuses.

The motif of guardianship is beautifully touched upon with a not so overtly melancholic paean. Mike does not share any blood ties with Lamare and Hep, yet he stands in the position of a protecting and defending figure. Such altruistic concern in a way crops up from the fact that Mike himself has been an orphan and hence, needs to fill up the unrequited void of care and compassion, resulting from his repercussive alienated past. His recurring dreams of a woman, named Corrina, are further a sympathetic hearing. The result is a deceptively rich and rewarding drama. The film can be summed up with the notion that our lives are not our own, but bound to others’ past and present, and by each act of karma, we birth our future.