Every nation can proudly count its child population as part of its census programme to ascertain the strength of their future citizens. In their supple hands, lies our tomorrow. Fortunately, the Republic of India with a billion people can still afford to flaunt its status as a youth-majority country, unlike in the West, where the populace has greatly greyed. Yet it’s a shame that the world’s largest democracy abandons its most precious asset on the streets to let them live on the edge of abject penury and panic-stricken uncertainty and no amount of moral policing or pervasive media vigilance has been prompt enough to take stock of this. Neither the state-run policies nor the power of its machinery has been sufficiently keen to flush out the perpetrators of this appalling menace that squarely stares at the face of our civil society. “Kids are being deserted on a spree in every second province of India. It’s become a routine affair now. Ergo, every drop of hour is crucial to eradicate this malpractice from the face of the planet. The ham-handed attitude of the governmental authorities actually allows one a leeway to sit on the fence and dilly-dally over this criminal offence that has deeply penetrated into every inch of a locality and its tremors can be felt in the next-door neighbourhood too!” decries a berated Irfan Kamal, the debutante director of his critically acclaimed film Thanks Maa.
Kamal has pegged the subject of his movie on this pertinent theme. “It’s like a chronic disease in our society and we don’t know how to cure it,” he says. The much-talked about movie had already grabbed headlines this January when its child protagonist Shams Patel bagged the Best Child Artist award for his outstanding performance in a stellar role at the recently announced 56th National Film Awards.
Before this thought-provoking project could hit theatres on March 5, it came under the scanner of the censor board on linguistic grounds. The language has been alleged to be too explicit, with a liberal dose of expletives and slangs thrown in to gel with the characters, their lifestyles and the setting of the story. And the last straw was drawn in context of the child-artistes who had to mouth them in the movie while delivering their dialogues as per the script. Though the film soon pulled through from an impending state of limbo and its fate was decided with the grant of an A certificate, however, the brigade of child actors in the film rued that a kid’s film has been slapped with charges that prohibit it from getting screened to a huge segment of its target viewership. Produced by the banner of Quantum Films Ltd, the film portrays the moot point at the core of its plotline and tries to salvage the crisis via the escapades of its central kirdaar. The film is based on the true story of a horde of 12.66 million Indian kids that incidentally takes place almost everyday. Based on the social theme of the abandoned babies, Thanks Maa takes us through the journey of a 12 year-old boy, who’s on a mission to find the mother of a two-day old abandoned baby boy. It enlightens us with the misery and dilemma the disowned and relinquished street kids go through.
Albeit there’s no typical ensemble starcast value to market the movie, the arsenal of actors includes a bevy of slum children, besides well-known character artistes namely, Ranvir Shorey, Rajpal Yadav and Alok Nath. The film has been garnering accolades and rave reviews in the festival circuit at various international filmfests. For the uninitiated, Thanks Maa was nominated into two categories at the globally acclaimed Edinburgh International Film Festival, 2009. One was the Best New International Feature Award and the other was the Skillset New Directors Award category, in which the helmer Irfan Kamal himself was nominated. Besides, the movie saw three successful market screenings at the Cannes Film Festival last year. The film not only received an incredible feedback from the worldwide cineastes but also observed an overwhelming 100 per cent occupancy for its market showcase at the prestigious festival. This apart, it was also the inaugural film at the Goa Film Festival in November 2008.
Asked how did the story germinate, Kamal says: “I had a brief blueprint at hand, since so many cases on the abandoned kids are being lodged every now and then, but nothing really gets done to redress the harmful hazard. In the spate of this lost- and-found, misplaced-and-missing maze, I just fancied to translate this frenzy on the 70 mm. It’s an irony that wee little infants are being dumped into the garbage or at a lone streetside corner only to be discovered and rescued by another bunch of hapless, helpless lot of destitute — be it the ragpickers — human scavengers of the society — or the roadside urchins, shoeshine boys, sweepers, newspaper delivery boys, beggars posted on the pavements and so on. There are takers of course, for the bejewelled princes but not for those wingless angels, who are reduced to unnoticed paupers on the dirty street-stretches. The saviours of these repudiated and renounced souls leave no stone unturned to combsearch their biological progenitors, seek their addresses and reach out to them with their disclaimed bundle of joy which the former could easily trash as a refuse in the rubbish bin.”
Kamal says that having read a newspaper article by journalist Nilanjana Sengupta further lent him a deep insight and added an impetus to his urge to script a heart-wrenching tale on the plight of ill-fated babies and their uncrowned caregivers, whose own fortune though lies in shambles. Nonetheless, the new-born tiny tots find a warm shelter in their laps. “The column in print was rightly captioned as “Orphans in the Womb” and I found the issue quite topical and integral to our lives and the society at large. I admit that this could have been a potent documentary piece but I always wanted to tell a realistic saga of distraught lives within the dramatic frame and format of the magical celluloid. For it is that dim and most neglected sliver of the society that exists under everybody’s nose but no heed is paid to assuage the sufferings of an innocent lot,” he reasons for zeroing in on the choice of subject for his directorial venture.
Having canned the film majorly in downturn Mumbai, Kamal’s camera skimmed through the arteries of slums at Ghatkopar and other 40 plus locations all over the metrocity. To get his act spot on, he did an extensive six-month research and was rattled by an eye-opening revelation on the frequency status of illegitimate abandoned kids in the first world countries like the UK and the USA. “There, the defection takes place at an alarming rate and has reached a level of pandemic proportion. These advanced nations with seemingly economic superpower, state-of-the art infrastructure, scientific breakthroughs and an armoury of nuclear weapons are no less vulnerable for the child populace. Statistics evince a fierceful track record of abandoned minors within its territory.”
Kamal says that even if the Indian social fabric is conservative and much more close-knitted than the Western counterparts, young girls get sexually abused more often than not in their own locality or within their extended family. They fall prey to gender-politics, exploitation, female-trafficking, child labour, incestual marriage or illicit affairs behind closed doors. “A girl child is easily made a soft target of a clutch of crimes that never gets reported in the first place,” he says.
Sadly enough, the filmmaker reveals that a baby was abandoned in Virar on January 26 (Republic Day) and ironically just two days ago, on the 24th day of the same month, the world had celebrated the International Girl Child Day. Of late, three kids in four days were disowned back to back. “A derelict child is always looked down upon as a social parasite and is treated like a pariah in the mainstream society. It lives on the fringe and leads a stigmatised life of anonymity. He/she needs love, affection, acceptance and social recognition and support. The tragedy is that even if the kids are rescued from the racket of the trafficking net, they either end up at a police station or go to the orphanage,” he says.
Pramita Bose