Sunday, October 4, 2015

Marathi film Fandry by Nagraj Manjule and Baluta autobiography of Daya Pawar are uncomfortable. They whirl in me. In Fandry, a Dalit family of Kachre Mane (Kishor Kadam) is told to trap a pig with payment promised made by the village sabha. With reluctant son Jabya (Jambuwant Kachre Mane), wife and daughters, Kachre Mane heads the chase with high castes urging with sneers...one is not sure if the pig is chasing the Manes or otherwise... furious ..reminds one of Paar when Naseruddin Shan and Shabna Azmi get some 30 pigs across a deep flowing river...again they are low caste. From Vedic times, the chase has been ..the upper castes fencing out the low castes, poor and unwanted except for pig trapping ....today's gating out of the poor...Also the calls of a drongo and lapwings hum the air. From Baluta of Daya Pawar to Fandry there is no script change.. from words to cameras...Jerry Pinto, the translator writes: This is one of the finest autobiographies I have ever read, and I count it an honour that I was given the opportunity to translate it. Me agrees.  "Its been a while since we've had a good cut of  meat in the Maharwada," many an aged person would be heard saying." Daya moves on: Carrying a dead cow is killing. Its dead weight is enormous but only two men would carry it. All four of its hooves would be tied and a bamboo would be inserted between them, a huge needle threadled through the gap between its legs. It looked as if a palanquin were being carried. When it was a cow, the sight of those pathetic eyes turned sightlessly towards the sky would chill me. Those eyes haunt me still. My mother's eyes and a cow's eyes showed remarkable similarities, it seemed to me. When it was our family's turn to carry the carcass, my mother would have to do it. I could not bear to see her struggle for breath. I wished I were a little older, so I might be able to lesser her burden." Fandry ends with Jabya hurling a protesting stone. Daya Pawar would have assented. India 2015 is Vedic. 

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