little narratives can tell big stories. By ‘little’ is implied not the commonly understood synonym for small, but rather independent, small budget, somewhat set aside artistic/literary endeavours, such as The little Magazine or the little Theatre Group (which Delhi readers might recall), not to mention the famous lTG auditorium in Mandi House. The subject of this piece is not theatre, but a motion picture. Watching Jahmu Barua’s (Maine Gandhi ko nahin mara fame) recent Assamese feature film Baandhon (Waves of Silence) at its national premier in Delhi recently, I could not help but connect the dots marked by the little and the big in a dynamic and demanding India.
The story is tragic-comic, tracing the life of an elderly couple who have migrated to the city from their small village world, clearly on the back of their successful son, now dead. With even the daughter-in-law having passed on, all their hopes are pinned on their grandson, a student at IIT, Mumbai. The old couple squabble like the lockhorns (the famous cartoon couple who are fated to remain fantagonists forever). Their periodic appeal for divorce is processed by a kindly lawyer who was a paying guest with the couple before he married and settled down. The old man and woman inhabit a tight and closed world, outside the ambit of big events. Once asked about the Iraq War, the old man says he knows nothing about it. “We don’t make these wars. We know nothing about them. The big men make them. We only suffer the consequences.”
The small world of the couple is presented within the framework of domestic tiffs, getting this or that done at Government offices (like the gargantuan task of transferring the property they own in their grandson’s name), run-ins with the domestic help, visit to the bazaar, a peek through Assamese newspapers, an occasional tipple, and a bit of gardening (to emphasise the old man’s rural and agrarian lineage). Jahnu Barua’s precision with details, and his keen eye for authenticity brings alive the subtle nuances of quotidian life in contemporary Assam.
Having grown up in Assam, and being familiar with the specific codes of social existence there, the film allured me into a world of nostalgia. The reach of relationships beyond relations, the sensitivity to the elderly amidst the frenetic pace of modern professional lives, and the sheer humanity of a people (the Assamese) who continue to value human relationships over cold objective criteria (like money, connections, etc) are at the core of Baandhon’s narrative integrity.
What is startling is the way in which the comic turns to tragic, how the small world of idyllic Assam gets sucks into the bigger picture of nation and cross border terrorism. The film, dedicated to the victims of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai by Pakistan sponsored terrorists, get swept into the quagmire of events generated by that fateful attack. The little world is suddenly engulfed by arguably the biggest story (media, real, political, international, whatever) in recent Indian memory.
With the pace picking up, the frames getting racier and the emotions turning poignant and heartbreaking, Baandhon transforms into a telling message for the greater idea of India. No incident is isolated, no lives separate.
Distant Assam with its own politics centred on extremism and violence stands abreast with Mumbai. Probably Jahnu Barua is also making the point that violence can mark out the most ordinary for sorrow and betrayal. In doing so, he is also gesturing towards the entire culture and psychology of violence that has underscored life in Assam for the past thirty years, shattering the innards of its pristine and idyllic way of life.
The humanist in Jahnu Barua has an important message for India, coming as it does from distant Assam. Through his low budget (Rs50 lakh) movie (financed by Assam Film Finance & Development Corporation), Barua seeks to embrace the shared pains and joys of India across regions that are seemingly separate and disconnected. It is this emphasis that makes Baandhon an important film. It reaches out from the ambit of small cinema and small concerns with the desire to be heard by a larger audience across India, urging people to recognise the common thread that large events and national concerns weave amidst the myriad peoples of this complex country we know as India.