[Reader-list] What's pain got to do with it?

Sun Sep 2 19:14:38 IST 2007

Dear Gargi

  You presume my youth. I am not one. You presume I had anything to do with "stopping of
Jashn-e-azadi". I did not. I have no means either of stopping it. I am not part of any "strategy" either.

  Gargi, does criticising/attacking a film that would otherwise have been ignored, give it publicity and arouse interest in it? Yes most times and perhaps every time. But, not all situations analogously and automatically lend themselves to that maxim being valid as the sole reason.

  Sanjay Kak's film had it's scheduled screenings before the "stop screening" incidents of Mumbai and Delhi. The audiences comprised of some very well known personalities and a good number of "activists" They were there not because some Kashmiri Pandits wanted the screenings stopped. That came in the future. Even after that the film had it's screenings.

  Let's flashback to the making of the film. One has to be fairly well informed on the situation in Kashmir and the "go" areas, the "no go" areas for an ordinary film-maker and only then will one appreciate that only a fool would accept Sanjay Kak's declarations of the "acceptances" he received by venturing into Kashmir without an agenda.

  As you possibly know Gargi, in the film there is a preponderance of "found footage" used by SK for his narratives, imageries and motifs. "Found footage" could hardly be pre-scripted in a film that purports to  be Sanjay Kak's journey of discovering the Kashmiri in himself. Would it be unfair to presume that the "found footage" was delivered to him? Is it difficult to profile those who made the "deliveries" of the "found footage"?

  Gargi, whether it is the "celebrity" and "activists" audiences, or the serendipity of "found footage" you can map out the networking. 

  Membership of the 'group' that participates in various "sit-downs" or a blatantly dishonest translation for a Legal Testimony, they all fit in. No puny bunch (that you grouped together) and certainly not me can make a dent into that "club". The visibles are only a part, they have the support of the "whats this nonsense about a Nation" voices, some of the voices being very pervasive and influential. Then there is in their corner the Media (mostly English) who get their bread and generous dollops of butter from the Nation, but will not hesitate to undermine that very Nation and support (directly or indirectly) those who attack the Nation by word or act.

  Gargi, perhaps you do understand the pain but you connot come anywhere close to feeling it. You are from a refugee family. You would feel the pain if you yourself were a displaced refugee. Even for your Grandparents, the displacement perhaps took them into environments that mirrored in very  many ways (language, food, song, seasons) the lands they had to leave. Perhaps I said. To understand how dissimilar the displacement of the Kashmiri Pandits has been you will need to know a lot more about Kashmir and the rest of the country. If you did, you would not take for-granted analogy. 

  You are not to be  blamed, most Indians have a very limited understanding. Unfortunately all that some of them want to recognise is the "Hindu" connection with Kashmiri Pandits and that is a trite one.  

  One has not missed how after talking about "pain" you trivialised the issue by your suggestions linked with "Komal Gandhar" or talking about "strategy". It is easy and "painless" for you to indulge in intellectual jugglery

  Incidentally, the Maharajah of Kashmir had a "standstill" agreement with Pakistan and never acceded to it. 

  Gargi, wish you well in your avowed "cause - that of showing and screening all films to everybody." 

  Would you do it, to use an extreme example, for a pornographic film? I do not think so. "All films to everybody" ???? Perhaps you would. Perhaps you would set limits to "freedoms"

  Ultimately it boils down to perspectives and sensibilities. To, what you treasure, what you rue. To, what you value. For me, there is a conscious recognition of what nurtured in me and in other ways allowed me to be the person I am. I value that.  I will not look kindly upon anyone to seeks to undermine or destroy that, whether by word, act or film.

  Kshmendra Kaul

Gargi Sen <sen.gargi at gmail.com> wrote:
  Hello everyone,
I am a self-confessed lurker on this list. Till date I have only read
postings and followed a few debates. But the recent spate of mails had a
stunning effect - to paraphrase Shuddha &shy; and stunned even me out of the
zone of silence into speech. And as I spent most of the night in reading the
incredible number of recent mails, I may as well stay up and write. And
despite the circumstances, I am happy to become visible, albeit virtually.

This mail though is addressed to 5 young men called Aditya, Rashneek ,
Kshemendra , Pawan and Rahul. And my apologies to the rest of the list for
length of the mail.
Gargi

Dear Aditya, Rashneek , Kshemendra , Pawan and Rahul,
You know you are probably going about it &shy; it being the stopping of
Jashn-e-azadi - all wrong. You probably do know that the more you talk¹
about a film/ book/ art/ food anything, the more you spread an interest
about it. Any talk of banning¹ send interests zooming sky high. And to
point to uncensored¹ you hit bulls eye. Really. The best course probably
might have been to simply ignore it. Indifference probably kills faster than
any kind of engagement. But you have done what you had to and now the damage
is done. And the more you try and stop it, the more you will push up the
interest button. Its kind of inversely proportionate. Is that really what
you want? 

But I understand your pain. I understand where its coming from. I too come
from a so called refugee family. Both my grandfathers lost everything &shy;
their land, their trees, their homestead, one even lost his entire life¹s
savings in 1947. Incidentally but not so coincidentally both came to
Calcutta - you see this was before my parents met or married &shy; a city quite
hostile to the refugees as also to their dialect and culture. My nuclear
family moved to Delhi roughly when I was born. I grew up with the knowledge
that home¹ was some place else.¹ But where exactly no one could tell.
Functionally it was Calcutta. But logically, it should have been either
Barishal or Jashore, where we couldn¹t go &shy; don¹t get me wrong, visas were
given, we just lacked the cash. I grew up in Delhi feeling quite alienated
from my classmates who had roots, deep root: they had villages they knew and
visited, ancestral homes, common cultures. I had none, or they were
somewhere else. And any attempt to find roots was a lost cause because where
or what could they go into? Bangladesh? It didn¹t exist when my grandparents
exited. East Pakistan? That doesn¹t exist any longer. So my childhood roots
could only go up in air.

But coming back to the pain, I wonder who can I draw as enemy, who can I
blame? Who caused the pain? Because for certain my family, and families,
went through pain. Extreme pain. Loss rings deep. Even today wedding
invitations carry markers like ABC (name of the father of bride/ groom) of
DEF (place in Bangladesh) at present a resident of XYZ (somewhere in India)
invite you to the wedding of.... Do you understand? 60 years after our
families left we, at least those who do the correct¹ things like marriage,
still claim our lineage to a land which has ceased to be ours 60 years ago.
So who¹s the enemy? Who truncated that umbilical cord between land and
culture? 

The problem was that that was too complex. I couldn¹t really think that one
through. So I though let me see if locating an identifiable enemy is beyond
my capabilities is there at least an errant cousin, a filmmaker who rides on
pain to claim fame? You know I gave it some very serious thought indeed and
I think Ghatak might just fit the bill. Ritwik i.e. Especially his Komal
Gandhar. Which is a less celebrated film than his more celebrated ones. But
the storyline, the form and especially his protagonists and their ideology
is great for our common endeavour that I am gong to suggest in a minute. But
have you seen the film? Do see it if you haven¹t. It uses a theatre group to
shamelessly propagate an ideology that has been rubbished even on this list.

I suggest we call for a ban on this film. Imagine what mileage we¹ll get. Or
do I mean the film will get? Whatever. We can claim that all independent
filmmakers are fundamentally fundamentalists and unable to connect to pain.

Apart from that you see I also have a vested interest. Komal Gandhar happens
to be my personal favourite, probably because personal taste is not dictated
by popular consent. And I am often a little puzzled as to how less it is
rated compared to Ghatak¹s other films. So see, if such a campaign can be
started, the film will for certain become extremely popular. Very popular
indeed. Many people who don¹t know about the film will come to know of it.
It will get screened in different cities and halls &shy; we are after all
celebrating THE 60th year &shy; and this film does address the P word .
Academics might start to write about, even high-brow lists like
Sarai-readers list might comment on the film, and for all you know, even
Shuddha might write about it. I recall reading a great piece by him on the
motif of the bahurupiyas confronting two errant children in an abandoned
airfield in the film Subarnarekha. But I can¹t remember or at least haven¹t
seen anything by him on Komal Gandhar.

Over the last 6 months I watched all of you and learnt that that is
sure-fire strategy. I am impressed by your dedication and strategy.
Especially your strategy. And your dedication to continually evolve it. So I
am suggesting this. Why make a hero out of Kak? He is such a
johny-come-lately. Why not strike at the roots of all such films? Komal
Gandhar probably is the precursor to, or the grandfather of, films like
Jashn-e-azadi. So hit the root. The branches are sure to fall off.

Let me know your thoughts.

Coming back to the narrative of my family and pain allow me to tell you a
little about my father &shy; I¹ll leave the mother-motif for another sleepless
night. My father, who is now dead, was once young. Probably at your age
Aditya he joined the Socialists. You see he didn¹t have the hind-sight of
history so he did what his heart and conscious dictated. He was quite close
to Lohiya and JP and in his twenties became the president of the Western
Railwaymen¹s Union. But he was recalled from Bombay to Delhi by JP who
wanted him to work on some new initiative. Anyway, he did as told, also
married, and I make an appearance on the scene. In the late 60s, when I am
4 or 5 one of the tasks he carried out was to provide a safe meeting place,
in his house, for Sheikh Abdullah and Mridula Sarabhai to meet and
confabulate. Do you know what they &shy; not my father but the other two &shy; were
talking about? The RIK certainly does, no? Its recorded history after all.
On Kashmir after all.

Recorded history does not always record the stories foot soldiers. My
father, by allowing a person under house arrest, to meet another who was
soon going to be put under house arrest, called on himself the ire of the
state. Or is it nation? Or nation-state? Whatever. But as a 4 or 5 year old
I knew meaning of words like intelligence¹ shadowed¹ and the dreaded word
CID. At least I think that was the dreaded word. My father continues on his
chosen path. All as a socialist. No hind-sight you see. And I watched from
the side-lines of the side-line. When I was 12 I learn about MISA, learn to
live with a missing father¹ who¹s underground,¹ watch countless raids into
our homes; for some strange reasons totally beyond my comprehension all
those raids¹ were carried out by the IT department!

But all that was as a child. With no real understanding. Only feelings. It
wasn¹t till much later that I learnt that that tall, bald headed man,
wearing a crisp, white Kurta-pajama, the one who towered over most men by a
foot or so, the one who sat on our verandah talking endlessly to a woman in
crisp white salwar kameez, the man also known as the Lion of Kashmir, had
led battles against various causes one of which was the choice of accession
to the republic of India. Funnily, my classmate - or was he my brother¹s
classmate, whatever &shy; his grandfather who was once the King of Kashmir had
actually opted to go with Pakistan.
A Kashmiri Pundit, a maharaja to boot, wants to secede from India while a
Muslim, leading a tribal brigade, wants to remain. Now I think I¹ve lost the
plot altogether. 

But coming back to my father, a refugee who makes democratic choice, in a
democratic country/ nation/ nation-state/ whatever, to go into politics,
albeit oppositional politics, is continuously hounded by the country/
nation/ nation-state/ whatever for you know what? His political beliefs. The
story doesn¹t end at Emergency. Then there was the Kudal Commission. JP was
already dead. He, alone, battles the government/ country/ nation/
nation-state/ whatever for a simple reason: a wrong¹ allegation, a
mistake.¹ For 6 years. Alone.

I write about him because I read many of your mails tonight and he came
back. He¹s been dead almost 13 years now, but reading your mails I got
another perspective on the man, a mere foot soldier though. He paid the
price of choosing the wrong political set up at a time when democratic
systems and institutions were even less mature. No hind sight you see. But
that apart, in my personal recollection I don¹t remember any litany of pain.
He laughed instead. He was an extremely funny and fun loving man. Deeply
irreligious he had immense faith. He couldn¹t believe in God so chose to
believe in men. Had he not suffered? Of course he had. Had not seen trauma?
Of course he had. He was almost a youth at partition. And like every other
family, ours too has horrific stories. And he was a witness, not even spared
by age. So, I am feeling a little puzzled tonight. Why didn¹t he complain?
At least he could have called for a ban. On Komol Gandhar perhaps? Maybe
then he might have made it to recorded history as a punctuation mark? Or at
the very least he should/ could have spent his life complaining, bitterly
about all those fame seekers, trouble makers, the salt rubbers.

I wonder why didn¹t he do that? At least he could have hidden his obvious
love for life, remained a victim? Was it necessary to be so blatantly in
love with life and living? And tonight I begin to see¹ that it was this
inexplicable love he had for life that made him choose unpopular causes.
Too, too many to even list, forget recount. But I am grateful to all five of
you for helping me to see¹ the obvious, for helping me to connect to my
father, now dead, in a completely new light. But you know, how sometimes you
can miss the very obvious simply because its staring you in the face? So
thanks yaar.

And there is one more thing. The Kudal Commission showed to me, and
hopefully to a few others too, that even the entire might of the mighty
state is often unable to make false charges stick. So what¹s the point,
yaar? 

Anyway, you see I read many of your mails tonight and I thought of pain.
Impossible to define scientifically. I mean is it at all possible to use
some sort of measure to see whose pain is deeper and hurts more? But tonight
I thought it might not be a bad idea to try and make a measuring instrument
like that. Then we could compare all of us who have experienced pain &shy; my
father, I albeit from the side lines, all of you &shy; whose pain is greater? Or
should we leave that &shy;it - to the crux of the film Hiroshima Mon Amour?

I am not sure any longer. Actually to be sure of anything is getting
increasingly difficult. I am sure you don¹t know what I mean.

If you have read till here, thank you for your patience.

I can¹t really ask God to bless you, but I do wish you lots and lots of
abundant energy for your cause, for your cause can only help my cause - that
of showing and screening all films to everybody.

Gargi Sen 

_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

---------------------------------
Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. 