"Amu" Stares Down at Justice Nanavati
DELHI DIARY
A. S.
It is late January and the foggy morning has given way to a sunny but cool Delhi street where Shonali Bose's feature film "Amu" is playing in a theatre to full capacity for the past two weeks. .Tickets for the A-rated film (no one under 18 allowed) cost 150 rupees, but are still hard to get. Finally my host manages five seats for a show on the day after my scheduled departure.
Others in my travel group will be able to see it, but I have to wait for another opportunity.My host, a 21 year IIT Delhi grad student who has seen the film and been around during its filming a year ago, gets emotional in response to leaked media reports that the soon-to-be- released Nanavati Commission findings will exonerate some of the culprits of the riots because of lack of evidence. He asks innocently: how can a former judge of the highest court of India cover up the reality of the 1984 riots to a public that was an eye witness? Like the main character of the film, Kaju (played by Konkana Sensharma), my host was a baby in 1984 and is now coming to grips with his own being. Even though he has grown up in Delhi in an activist family, his peers' circle has a bare minimum impression of how the lives of Delhites are shaped by the infamous massacres of 1984.
For him and his peers, the film provides a view of their own life from a close range.The story line in the film unfolds with an adopted Indo-American girl Kaju, who has grown up in Los Angeles, going back to India to find out what happened to her birth parents. She uncovers and confronts the cold-blooded massacre of innocent Sikhs in 1984 that engulfed both her birth parents and adoptive parents, shaping her own life.
The cinematography, acting and sensibility are blended and balanced masterfully by the director to take the audience in a captivating journey with Kaju to discover Amu, the birth name of the baby whose adoption was predisposed by the riots. My host, along with his friends who have seen the film tell me that beyond the storyline, the cinematic rendering of the psyche of the contemporary Indian youth makes this film linger well after one leaves the theater. Whether one has lived in Los Angeles or Delhi, every young Indian has to come to terms with his or her identity and mission - the contradictions of modern India juxtaposed against the past and the future.
The same India that makes one proud also makes one easily depressed unless one discovers the space where the incongruities can be challenged and changed. Amu helps the viewer to place him or herself in the context of the present. Justice Nanavati's callous judicial rendering of an event that stole life away from so many can only make the search for ones identity and dignity as an Indian more urgent, assures my host as I leave.
A. S.
It is late January and the foggy morning has given way to a sunny but cool Delhi street where Shonali Bose's feature film "Amu" is playing in a theatre to full capacity for the past two weeks. .Tickets for the A-rated film (no one under 18 allowed) cost 150 rupees, but are still hard to get. Finally my host manages five seats for a show on the day after my scheduled departure.
Others in my travel group will be able to see it, but I have to wait for another opportunity.My host, a 21 year IIT Delhi grad student who has seen the film and been around during its filming a year ago, gets emotional in response to leaked media reports that the soon-to-be- released Nanavati Commission findings will exonerate some of the culprits of the riots because of lack of evidence. He asks innocently: how can a former judge of the highest court of India cover up the reality of the 1984 riots to a public that was an eye witness? Like the main character of the film, Kaju (played by Konkana Sensharma), my host was a baby in 1984 and is now coming to grips with his own being. Even though he has grown up in Delhi in an activist family, his peers' circle has a bare minimum impression of how the lives of Delhites are shaped by the infamous massacres of 1984.
For him and his peers, the film provides a view of their own life from a close range.The story line in the film unfolds with an adopted Indo-American girl Kaju, who has grown up in Los Angeles, going back to India to find out what happened to her birth parents. She uncovers and confronts the cold-blooded massacre of innocent Sikhs in 1984 that engulfed both her birth parents and adoptive parents, shaping her own life.
The cinematography, acting and sensibility are blended and balanced masterfully by the director to take the audience in a captivating journey with Kaju to discover Amu, the birth name of the baby whose adoption was predisposed by the riots. My host, along with his friends who have seen the film tell me that beyond the storyline, the cinematic rendering of the psyche of the contemporary Indian youth makes this film linger well after one leaves the theater. Whether one has lived in Los Angeles or Delhi, every young Indian has to come to terms with his or her identity and mission - the contradictions of modern India juxtaposed against the past and the future.
The same India that makes one proud also makes one easily depressed unless one discovers the space where the incongruities can be challenged and changed. Amu helps the viewer to place him or herself in the context of the present. Justice Nanavati's callous judicial rendering of an event that stole life away from so many can only make the search for ones identity and dignity as an Indian more urgent, assures my host as I leave.
posted by charcha-editor at 01:13
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