How I wish I was a writer and not a filmmaker!
If I
were a writer every time there is a desire in me to communicate something all I
have to is just pick up a piece of paper and a pen and not look for funds to make my film and tug
along a whole paraphernalia with me to express what I wanted to communicate! Maybe
not even that, all I have to do is to just open the desk top in my computer and
start writing. That is precisely what I am doing now to describe my incredible
trip to Jhamtse Gatsal Children's Community School in the remote mountains of Tawang
District in Arunachal Pradesh in India.
All
it took was a simple invitation to visit this community late last year by a family friend who
is part of the community. All I was expected to do was to go there for a month and
introduce the children there to the medium of cinema. A trip to the far corner
of the North East of India on the border of Bhutan, Tibet and China was not an
opportunity to be missed even if one had had the good fortune of travelling
extensively in India and abroad by the sheer fact of being a filmmaker. All I
had to do was to reach Guwahati, the capital of Assam, and the rest was to be
taken care of by the organizers.
North
East! Right across the width of the country from where I live in Mumbai. So why
not take a train and see the country in all its length and breadth, from west
to the far end of the east! I booked myself on the solitary train which
connects Mumbai to Guwahati, but only thrice a week. I boarded the train one
fine morning in early Oct, 2012 knowing full well that it will reach its
destination after more than 48 hours! How romantic! Travel across the county on
a slow train to nowhere land!
North
East turned out to be a far away land. As the train trudged along the states of
Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal and
then Assam my enthusiasm and patriotic
feeling diminished as hours passed in
that much neglected train going to what is referred to as ‘neglected
states of the North East of India’. Even though I was supposed to be in an
elite class of the train, the train seemed to be a free for all for everyone:
hawkers of all cultural hues of the states the train passed through and anybody
and everybody on the train no matter which compartment they were in, kept walking
up and down the aisles of the train all through the day and most of the night
with or without reason. And as the time passed the train accumulated garbage in
the same proportion as the number of passengers who kept discarding anything
and everything from fruit peels to chocolate wrappers and the toilets became filthier and filthier as the journey
progressed with no respite at any station or any form of cleaning.
One
day and one night then another day and another night with some over
enthusiastic co-passengers on a pilgrimage oblivious of the unpleasant
surroundings challenged my patience as a tolerant citizen of the country every
now and then. Yet I held on. With some polite conversations with co-passengers
and some nationalistic talk with a reasonably sensible co-passenger who was
fortunate enough to reach his destination much before me with a pledge that he
would never travel in that train again! I too took that pledge in my mind. I
sustained myself for one more night and day. The enthusiastic pilgrims got down
somewhere in the middle of night and finally the train reached Guwahati two hours
later than it was supposed to—fifty-two hours from Mumbai! Two others
passengers and myself were the only ones who had travelled right from Mumbai to
Guwahati! Bravo!
A
day’s halt in Guwahati was a relief as my host was to pick me up the next day
as she had missed her flight from New Delhi! Then began my next assault in my
journey to the North East! From Guwahati to Tezpur and from Tezpur to Tawang
and from Tawang to Jhamtse Gatsal beyond Lumna with two night stays on the way.
It was another chapter of my travel to the North East! The vehicle I was travelling
in was moving on virtually non-existent roads devastated by landslides and post
monsoon waterfalls overflowing over the road at times and the slush made you
shudder as one looked at the depth of the valleys on the side of the roads with
no protecting walls. On the one hand I was looking at the sheer beauty of the
landscape and on the other hand I was shivering inside hoping the driver won’t
take a wrong turn or take a cat nap while driving!
All
through the long bone-breaking journey of 20 hours I was wondering at the
apathy of governance that had had left the entire stretch of the road in a state
of neglect. It is on the frontier of our country on the border of Bhutan, Tibet
and China, a very sensitive area full of army deployment and constant movement
of the army convoys and what is more, people use this road to go from one place
to another. When I compared the border roads of north India to what I was
seeing I wondered why the disparity? Was it sheer apathy of the government at
the center and the state, or corruption of the highest level or just
incompetence of the Border Road Organization which is managing these roads? The
answers have to come from somewhere. The fact was that I was traversing these treacherous
roads and maybe spending twice the number of hours reaching my destination than
it should have normally taken raised some questions in my mind. What would
happen if there is some kind of trouble on the border, how fast would our
forces move to reach their destination? I was told that on the other side of
the border in China there was a four lane road right up to the border where
tourists drive up in their posh cars! And I also wondered if any central
minister had ever travelled in these conditions from Tezpur to Tawang in the recent
history or if the Prime Minister or Defence Minister for that matter is even
aware of this state of affairs in the North East which the central Govt is often
accused of neglecting.
Finally I reached my destination! After two days of travel. I was hoping although I was broken in my body, I was not broken in my spirit.
Photographs and Text
Vishnu Mathur. ©
August 29, 2013.
