Symbiotic living

The Elephant Whisperers (Tamil/Jemmu Kurumba; 2023)
Director: Kartiki Gonsalves

This is the utopia that the modern world is looking for. A world that is all lush green and man living in harmony with Nature. A world where animals are cared for and the forest is respected. Add Indian mysticism and simple living to that, and what do you get? An Oscar-winning documentary.

 Kartiki Gonsalves, a filmmaker, went with her camera to record the daily activities of a tribal couple, Bomman and Bellie, who had been assigned to care for an elephant calf after his mother was killed by an electric fence. The forest department had given up hope on caring for an elephant calf as the outcome was not so promising. 

Bellie had just lost her young daughter. As a divine calling, she thought nursing the baby elephant would give her some relief. She named the elephant Raghu. Later somebody gave them another orphaned elephant calf for them to care for. 

Karthika Gonsalves spent a good five years filming the couple with their baby elephants to come out with this documentary. In the process, she also managed to capture the picturesque scenery around the reserve with the Kattunayakan tribe members and the animals inhabiting the forest. Hey, that is how people in this part of the country have been living all the while. They live off the jungle, harvesting fruits, collecting honey and such. In one scene, the indigenous people mentioned that, as a form of respect to the forest, they remove their footwear whenever they enter the jungle for work. This feel-good documentary shows how the barrier between the human and the animal world can be broken.

Bellie and Bomman
(the main stars of the documentary)

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Of police brutality and power politics...

Jai Bhim (ஜெய்பீம், Tamil, 2021)

Director: T.J. Gnanavel

The Sivakumar family, by default, has come to be known as the first family of Kollywood. Of late, their production company has been churning out movies that dare to question the status quo in their state. With their clout and close association with the state's ruling party, DMK, they are often accused of pandering to the party's political agenda. Political analysts familiar with the Indian political scenarios are quick to highlight such glaring examples. (More of it later!)

The real Judge Chandru with his celluloid representation.

We have seen countless movies painting cops in a bad light, showcasing their inefficiencies and manipulative skills in 'fixing' cases. It is not all fiction. In fact, the truth is stranger than fiction. Ask Judge K. Chandru. He has thousands of such issues and more examples in his illustrious career. This movie is a dramatisation of one such case, which happened as late as 1993. Viewers who have seen this movie would agree that some of the scenes depicted in this film are pretty brutal, unbelievable that a human being, what more a public servant who promised to protect the nation, would resort to such inhumane form of torture on a fellow kind. Surprisingly, when K. Chandru was interviewed on a Youtube channel on this matter, he revealed that police brutality was even worse, much worse than was depicted on screen.

Parvathi (portrayed as Sengani), a woman
scorned by police brutality.

Judge Chandru, a Madras High Court judge, has the unenviable reputation of having presided over 96,000 verdicts in his career. On average, he would listen to 96 cases a day! As a lawyer, he worked on many human rights cases, fighting pro bono for the oppressed population.

Watching the film reminded me of the too many police lock-up custodial deaths that have happened in Malaysia. Much of the media hype surrounding many of these cases 'die' a natural death without anything concrete happening afterwards. The coroner here will accept the cause of death healthy male of early 30s as 'pulmonary oedema' as perfectly normal with no one kicking up dirt. Perhaps we need a firebrand lawyer like K Chandru here.

In 1993, a tribal lady was troubled after the police apprehended her husband and relatives for theft. They allegedly escaped detection and were at large. When she demanded to know what had happened to her husband, as she had witnessed him being tortured, she was given the run-around. No lawyers were willing to help her. Through the comrades of the Communist Party, she was introduced to lawyer Chandru. The lawyer petitioned for a habeas corpus writ at the courts.

As the story goes on, we can see how pressures from the top force the downline police officers to speed up the closure of cases by falsely fixing men from the tribal community. To get their conviction, the police beat them to pulp and creatively devised torture tactics to achieve their goals. Perhaps the mindset of the uniformed body is such that orders must be followed contributed to this. Blind obedience is expected from the subordinates, not the prick from their inner mind of mindfulness! The feudal mentality of subservience and not questioning the independence of the police need to be re-assessed.

There is no secret to K. Chandru's political leanings, even as a judge. He had been an active member of the Marxist Communist Party of India. After Kerala and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu has the most robust network of the communist movement. It shares a cordial relationship with the similarly atheist-minded DMK, which won the Tamil Nadu elections recently. With a name like Stalin, one cannot be faulted for assuming his political leanings.

This movie got a hail of praise from the Chief Minister, MK Stalin. Images of Karl Marx, Ambedkar and Periyar, and proud hoisting of 'hammer and sickle' red flags do not hide the ideology discussed in the film. If one were to scrutinise the story, there were some subtle changes in the name and caste of some characters. It may not be due to cinematographic licence, but perhaps to put forward some self-serving political agendas. The name of the brutal sub-inspector who led the brutality had been changed from Anthony (a Christian name) to Gurumurthy (suggestive of a Vanniyar caste), and the tribal group had been identified as Irular instead of Kurumbar. I wonder why?

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Just a file number?

Liar's Dice (Hindi; 2013)
Netflix

A good 10 years ago, as the mass rail transit tracts were being constructed, amidst all the chaos of redirection of traffic, a restless driver overtook me as I was carefully manoeuvring my vehicle through the diversions. He barged into a blockade and collided head-on with a general worker who happened to just minding his own business, clearing some debris. I saw him being flung into mid-air, landing on his back after doing a full-body somersault. From my rear mirror, I could see the victim lie motionless as the driver alight his car to attend to the victim.

That incident left an uneasy feeling within me the next few days that followed. I often wondered what thoughts went through his mind just before he was hit. Was he thinking of his young daughter, whom he had not seen or wondered how she would react to the present that he had bought? Maybe he was just going back home for Eid? Or was he thinking of pleasant memories of his childhood?  I also wondered what things would be found in his body when he brought to the hospital; maybe his wife's portrait, his child's father, his dream house. 

Imagine, after all the debt, sacrifices, sweat and tears, he is just to return home in a body bag, with shattered dreams, broken bones and fractured bonds. Is it all worth it? Did his sacrifices alter the path of the family? Did all the penances push his family up the ladder of affluence? Or is he just another file number in the statistics of human casualties in the chase to make Malaysia a developed nation?

In a way, this film may give an account of the aggrieved family members of the above example. Kamala has not heard from her husband for the last five months. Her husband had gone off to work in town previously. Kamala lives in the interiors of India, bordering China, with her three-year-old daughter.

The daily phone calls just stopped abruptly, and her calls went into voicemail. Despite reassurances from friends and neighbours, she had a gut feeling that something was not right. One day Kamala took the bold move to go out to town to search for her husband herself. With a little money, her daughter and a kid (a young goat), she embarked on a long journey searching for her husband at the last given address. 

The trip appears to be not as straight forward as she thought. Encountering shady characters at every corner and conman at every turn, she wonders if Nawazuddin, a dice-throwing gambler, is just another fraud with tricks up his sleeves? 

A slow-moving intense low budget drama that brings out human emotions and transports the viewers into a breathtaking spectacle of the outdoors and the scrutiny of the back lanes, as well as the not so savoury glimpse of India that most visitors would give a miss.

(P.S. The running around looking for the missing husband reminds me of a Japanese cartoon that my sisters and I use to enjoy in our childhood - 3000 Leagues in search of Mother, where an Italian boy goes on a long journey to find his mother in Argentina.)

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