Tuesday, February 3, 2009

2 Tails : Year 2000

Can you imagine waking up at 3:30am hearing a shrew’s piercing squeak!!  You switch the table lamp on and peer through bleary eyes at the dark corners of the room trying to get your fuzzy mind into some working order.  You spy the shrew under the study table and your thinking process sluggishly pulls into second gear.  You rise cautiously to chase it out of the room.  You manage to get it half way across the room when it seems to disappear into thin air!!  You poke around in vain and finally give up and climb back into bed.

 

               The light is switched off and you are feeling nice and drowsy when you hear several sharp squeaks from the direction of the table.  Muttering to yourself you switch on the table lamp again and start to rise when you see a second shrew.  You freeze with one leg on the bed and a book in your hand, poised, waiting for the next move.  You decide to wait and see what happens, your environmental, photo-journalistic curiousity dominating all other emotions.

 

               You briefly wonder whether the shrew has had babies which is why the commotion under the table or if a shrew invasion is imminent, as in the story The Pied Piper of Hamelin!  Your thoughts are arrested by a strong pungent smell, (usually released by a frightened shrew or an aroused one) which permeates the clean night air.  Then you see two shrews circle one another, nip each other and ‘wag’ their tails!!  With each action the smell gets stronger and stronger.  After about five minutes of this, one of the shrews (named Tom for convenience) takes a few steps towards the door, stops, looks back and wags his tail till the other one catches up. (The door has been deliberately left ajar by you). They cover three-fourths of the room when they disappear from sight behind a flowing curtain.

 

               There seems to be a scuffle and sharp startling squeaks are emitted (lover’s tiff?).  Then you see Tom dart out of the room (one down, one to go!).  But there is no sign of the other one.  You grab the nearest defense weapon (which happens to be a newspaper) and proceed cautiously towards the curtain.  You shake it, nothing.  You lift it, nothing.

 

               ‘Drat’, you think, (a night’s sleep gone wondering if the shrew will be invading your bed next) now what?  You sit on the bed to ponder and plan your next move when near the door (which is now shut to keep Tom out) you see a long nose twitch inquisitively, the rest of the body is hidden behind the cabinet. You slither out of bed and slink your way to the door and open it a bit. You sigh a breath of relief as you see the shrew race out of the room.

 

               Finally, at 4:15a.m. you sink into bed and your last thought before you drift off to sleep is that if you oversleep and are late for class how on earth do you tell the staid professor that you spent the night watching two shrews ‘make out’ in your room!!

SANTOSH: Year 2001

The Hunt for Santosh

The highest of the highs, lowest of the lows, hottest of the hot and rainiest of the rainy!!!!!!! Overwhelming emotions, contrasting landscapes,  photography and creativity all encapsulated in 5 days across Rajasthan.  

It was a bizarre goose chase - that we were to have fun on the way was inevitable. 10 years ago my boss had filmed the status of the girl child in Rajasthan through the eyes of a 9 year old Rajasthani girl called Santosh. Now they have to make another film with her..........BUT all the files on her were lost - so we were going with photographs to the remotest regions of Jodhpur and Udaipur to look for her.

Initially we scanned all the old footage tapes (28 one hour tapes in 2 days) for any signs of anything that would narrow the search. Signboards on shops, milestones, forts anything - but amazingly NOTHING - and of course the original film had no mention of  her whereabouts - it just said RAJASTHAN -!!!!!!! We also spoke to the five original crew members  - each mentioned a different district - AJMER, JAIPUR, JODHPUR and UDAIPUR!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway - to cut a long story short we finally decided to go to Jodhpur –

Santosh : Where are you???

Day 1 - 4th July 2001 Train: Mandore express to Jodhpur Time: 9pm Location: Vimla’s house - Verandah - Where is Bhajan (our driver)????? Almost missed the train thanks to Bhajan but also reached well in time thanks to Bhajan. Reached from GK to old Delhi railway station in 25 minutes!!! (a normal driver would take 1 hour) Had a good sleep on the train - reached Jodhpur at 8am.

Day 2 - 5th July 2001 Kusum was there to meet us at the station.  Vimla recognized her from the film footage. Kusum Purohit was the Prachita (field officer) who had accompanied the team 8years ago.  She took us to her house to freshen up.  Showed her the photographs as she excitedly talked - with each photograph her memory was jogged.  There were two aspects that she pointed out - 1 that the houses in the location shots had a lot of greenery not found in Jodhpur and the architecture of the huts was also different - she pointed out that jodhpur houses have thatch roofs while in Udaipur one would find roofs made of tiles. Then over a lovely yummy meal of Paranthas we showed her the VHS tape - VCR was brought from outside. The taxi Driver who later become a great guide also watched - major discussions

The landscape for 90% of the film is that of Ghantiyali, Chadi, Kelansar and Moriya in Jodhpur.  She recognized the family with the little girl who begs and some of the girls who were interviewed - she was 99.9% sure tht Santosh was Ajuram Bhai’s daughter from Moiya village - BUT - the greenery behind the father - the Makka fields do not exist in Jodhpur - They are found only in Udaipur. To add to that the mothers face and dressing style was from Udaipur. Her dialect was that spoken in certain pockets of Udaipur. Driver Gopal singh who has worked in Udaipur for 15 years nodded his head in agreement and added his two bits. With each revelation Vimala and my face light up and droop depending on the prevailing emotion and discussion!!!!!!! By now it was 11:30 am and we were getting late so we moved on to Kamalas house - (the head of the ICDS department in Jodhpur).  The photographs were aain pulled out and more discussions but nothing concrete emerges. But she too insists that the greenery is not found in Jodhpur.

A short stop to pick up water (it was a sweltering 39 degrees) and film rolls and a road map. We decided to take the same route that the crew had taken - through Mandore, Daijar, Manaklav, Mathaniya, Umednagar, Nevra, Osian, Pindji ki Dhani, Raimalwara, Kapuriya, Punasar, Chadi, kelansar, back to chadi then Au, Bhojasar, Ghantiyali, Moriya, Khichan Phalodi and then back to Jodhpur. Somewhere before Kelansar we picked up a sathin (village representative) - she took one look at Kusum and burst into tears!!!!!!  I was in a constant state of bemusement by now and had great difficulty in acting with dignity as befits someone from Scotland yard in search of a missing person!!!!!! 

Kelansar was the first stop - she showed us the school where the team had filmed girls sewing. we went over to the sarpanchs place where we met an old old man.  The sarpanch was not at home had gone to Phalodi – in fact the whole village was deserted. Then we dropped the sathin back and went on to Bhojasar - there we were introduced to om prakash - he too had accompanied the earlier team. He remembered the team but he too says that the makka and landscape is for sure from Udaipur (looks like we have to make a trip - at that point both Vimla and I are a little worried as there are almost no leads in Udaipur) Large crowd gathers around the car each one with his/her own opinion about the photographs. Each time I felt like a film star giving autographs - .........my 15 minutes of fame.

Now we decide to carry on to Ghantiyali anyway since we’d come so far and didn’t want to leave out any place, just in case. In Ghantiyali we met a lovely lady whose daughter had been filmed begging in the earlier film. She invites us into her little hut which we noticed was sparkling clean. The one thing we noticed in this area was that all the women we met were extremely confident, were voicing their opinions and their submissive demeanour noticed in the footage tapes was absent. 

We moved on to Moriya hoping to find Santosh though very doubtful. It was 2:00pm by now and extremely hot. We reached Moriya and met Ilum Din and various other people who all remembered the shoot and shake their heads looking at the pictures. The Udaipur trip is now confirmed - 4:00 am the next morning. Then we head off to Phalodi break for lunch it is 4:00pm by now. Then of course the car had  to break down, brakes failed and took him one hour to repair. The time was 6:30pm we’d already travelled 415 kms through dusty sand covered roads in the blistering sun. Met several villagers from many villages to no avail. Spirits were at an all time low. We still had a 4 hour journey back to Jodhpur. After a long journey we checked into the RTDC hotel Ghoomar. It was already 11:00 pm

Day 3: 6th July.

We spent the whole day making contacts with everyone that we could in Udaipur from Manjari, to Madhu to Sarla, who further got in touch with Manju, the Prachita who accompanied the team earlier. Great news, there is a Santosh!!! Then we fix up the taxi to leave for Udaipur at 4:00am the next day. We were told the journey would take 5 hours. Day 4: 7th July. We are all set at 4:00 am but our driver doesn’t seem very set The man had just got back at 3:00am from a previous schedule. We are worried he’ll fall asleep on the way but he insists he’s fine and we head off. Inspite of his brave words promptly fell asleep at the wheel -  Vimla decided to keep him company and dropped off too - there was just one problem - the man was still driving - on the highway!!!!!!!!!!! - naturally I panicked..........But as always everything happens for the best - to give our exhausted driver a break we stopped at a lovely hotel - a quaint place with huge windowsills on the inside where they had put mattresses and made a sort of a sit out - After many stops and an uphill climb we came to the gorgeous Aravalli range - Now this was a big shock for we had not realized that there was such greenery around - I mean it’s bear and leopard country!!!!!!!!!! We stopped at a Jain Temple in Ranakpur - exquisite marble architecture - By now Vimla and I were completely stumped and since we were also very sleepy it was an extremely surreal experience.

8 hours later we reach the ICDS office in Udaipur. It was 12:30pm already, but fortunately the officials had heard of Santosh so we headed off for Madri Santosh’s hometown, it is 2:00pm. Madri is Santosh’s native village we learn that she’s married and now lives in Oghana. So now of course we had to go to Oghana -  and guess where that is - YES - two hours away through more potholes roads - my driver still hadn’t had a chance to sleep he had been driving for over 24 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ........the road was so bad that every now and then our driver would evict us to clear a pothole or climb a hill. And then finally we were there.

All the elation felt at meeting santosh was mingled with a helpless rage at what life had dealt her - she is now about 17 years old she is married to a man 12 years older than her and a good man but with no thoughts of a future . She has two children - both boys - The younger one is 5 months old and the elder 1 and a half  years, both in need of medical attention. She herself is about 4 and a half feet, anemic and suffering from Malaria. Much poorer than ever before - it was as if everyone had made money on her and then packed up and forgotten her for 10 years.  The only thing that hadn't changed was her spirit and her smile   - that’s one thing they haven't been able to take away from her.  I have never felt so humbled by my inadequacy to change the world. - or even just one persons life. But this time no one is going to forget santosh. The way back to the hotel nobody spoke - we reached Udaipur at 11 pm tired, elated but sombre.