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Mumbai Film Festival | Oonga
James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ and tribal activist Soni Sori inspire Devashish Makhija’s debut feature on development issues in an Oriya village
Exploitation of tribals, the threat of unchecked industrialization, Naxalism, heavy-going stuff for a first-time film-maker to handle, one would think, but Devashish Makhija’s Oonga manages just fine. The 98-minute movie is the absorbing story of a little boy’s encounters with the big issues facing his Dongria Kondh village. Politically aware and articulate tribal teacher Hemla (played by Nandita Das) believes that the villagers face no threat from a forthcoming industrial project if they present a united front. The project has already swallowed up the neighbouring village, but Hemla remains optimistic, even though the local Naxal commander (played by Seema Biswas) warns her of trouble ahead. Hemla’s faith in the robustness of Indian democracy is severely tested when she is arrested on a trumped-up charge by a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) unit. A confused CRPF solider (Anand Tiwari) and a cynical policeman (Vipin Sharma) provide additional commentary on the situation. The only one innocent is Oonga, a little boy whose dream is to watch a staging of the Ramayan at the nearby town. Veteran cinematographer Jehangir Choudhary provides ample texture to the simple story, while Raju Singh, who plays Oonga, matches the grown-up actors in the histrionics department. Edited excerpts from an interview with Makhija, who grew up in Kolkata, migrated to Mumbai in 2003, worked as an assistant on films, including Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday and Shaad Ali’s Bunty aur Babli, and has written the screenplays for Kashyap’s upcoming superhero-based film Doga and Abhik Mukherjee’s unreleased Bhoomi.
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Was ‘Oonga’ based on real-life incidents or characters?NextMAds
There are so many people—encountered and heard about—that inspired each of these characters that it would be nearly impossible and unfair to pin their attributes to any one. That said, perhaps I could point out some real-life people that served as starting points for these characters.
The idea of making Hemla, a tribal schoolteacher who finds herself stuck in the crossfire between the CRPF and the Naxalites, was inspired in part by the case of Soni Sori (tribal activist). It helped us explore the heart-breaking helplessness of someone who decides to not resort to violence even though the only language being spoken on either side is one of gunfire and animalistic brutality.
Pradip and Sushil find their origins in a little incident I was party to. In February 2010 I footed it through the tribal belt of south Orissa and north Andhra with the photo-journalist Javed Iqbal and documentary film-maker Faiza Ahmad Khan. Most CRPF camps there had been set up in school premises, just like in Oonga. Sceptical of the queries we might encounter at a camp, we steered clear of most of them. Passing by one in Malkangiri, we were approached by a jawan. Surprisingly the first thing he said to Javed was that there was no water in the camp, and the jawans had to go fetch some from the tube-well in the village. He was scared. He requested Javed to write about their plight too. That is when it struck me how every single person, on each side of this conflict, was a victim, of circumstance. Pradip and Sushil, one cynical of his so-called duty, and the other bewildered by it, represent exactly this.
Little Oonga though is simply an embodiment of the Adivasi’s innocence. Nearly every Adivasi I have ever encountered is so simple in his/her outlook to life, death, nature, the world, that it makes me wonder if the rest of us feel fear because perhaps we know more than is necessary? Oonga is fearless precisely because of his innocence, an ideal I tend to romanticise.
sixthMAds
Raju Singh is fabulous. Where did you find him, and how did you get him to inhabit the character?
Raju lives in Versova (in north-west Mumbai). He has Nepali antecedents and was born in Mumbai. He has no previous connection with Orissa whatsoever. He speaks mostly Hindi, and has never acted before this.
Tess Joseph, the casting director, and her team–Prabodh Bhajni, Vaibhav Gupta–searched everywhere, auditioning hundreds of children, from Kerala, Andhra to Orissa to find the right cast, especially Oonga. It was a very difficult brief to fulfil.
Not only did the child who was to play Oonga have to be able to or learn to speak Oriya, it was also imperative we be able to communicate freely with him. So if he were an authentic Adivasi kid, it would make it very difficult to communicate what we needed of him on set.
Two weeks before the shoot, our backs against the wall, in walks Raju. His mother cooks for Prabodh, who was the first person to push us to take a look at this little powerhouse. Raju fulfilled all the briefs. Not only is he fearless and unbelievably tribal, he has an innate intelligence.
In the film he has a considerable amount of dialogue in Oriya, and he arrived at his own method to remember them. One day we were shooting atop a mountain and almost losing our race against the setting sun. In the midst of all the mayhem he asked Amaresh (Satapathy, the film’s Oriya consultant) to read his dialogues out to him slowly, so he could write them down in Hindi on a piece of paper. While all the rest of us were in a state of crazy panic, this cool-as-cucumber little fellow wrote his lines down slowly read them once, folded the paper, put it in his pocket, walked up to his spot in the frame, and said his lines, with required emotion intact, and nailed it in one take.
Karishma Mathur workshopped relentlessly with Raju to prepare him for his first ever shoot. If the children of Oonga look like maestros at what they do it is purely because of all the people mentioned above.
Where did you shoot the film?
We shifted the major portion of the shoot to similar looking regions in south Maharashtra. Although there were certain key sequences that could only be shot in Orissa, such as Oonga passing through the red mud pond, the waste reservoir of most industries that pumps toxic residue into rivers, fields and lives. This was a challenge, but gave Oonga the terrifying canvas of industrial destruction needed to counterpoint the beauty of the Adivasi paradise that came before it.
Jehangir Choudhary’s cinematography is evocative and enlivens the story.
We consciously did not shoot wide shots that would establish the geography of Oonga’s familiar rustic world. Instead here we kept the lensing tighter. Whereas when Oonga starts to approach the urban world he is not familiar with, the lensing starts to widen. Choudhary made the village and its neighbouring world look gorgeous in an old world, yet matter-of-fact, way, to give a sense of documenting a 1,000-year-old paradise that we’re on the brink of losing forever. He also wonderfully contrasted the magic light of this natural world as seen by day, with the harsh artifice of the city lights as seen by night.
The film is partly in Oriya because you wanted to explore that part of India. Was there any personal connection to Orissa?
We chose Orissa because the conflict scenario there is more recent than, say, Chhattisgarh, Bengal or Andhra Pradesh. And the story of Oonga required to start in a village that had not yet fallen prey to unfair mining practices, so we could explore what would happen if it did.
Also, it was a region I had visited extensively. And had made contact with a lot of people whose forces we marshalled for this film. Foremost among them—Amaresh Satapathy—who served as our Oriya consultant, and brought in the Dongria Kondh Adivasis. He runs a movement called Community Based Theatre (CBT), based out of Koraput, which empowers Adivasis to present their travails before the representatives of the government through skits. They raise questions about their plight by entertaining. Exactly what Oonga set out to do too.
How important was it for you to make your debut with a political film set far away from Mumbai?
The scenario in our country today breaks my heart. Most of us are confined to our little bubbles of urban security not pausing to wonder how we got here and where our resources are coming from. Where is everything we consume coming from? And at what cost? What I found out over the last few years is that there is a cost. And it seemed to me the most important thing to do with my life right now, to use my position as a storyteller to hold up a mirror to this society, and ask ourselves if we like what we see.
Having experienced, researched and witnessed much of what is happening in Bengal, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, the only one thing that seemed to emerge clearly from among the chaos of various opinions was that if humanity is being compromised, this development may not be worth it.
Oonga will be screened at the Mumbai Film Festival on 20 October at 5.30pm and 21 October at 12.45pm. Click here for registration and venue details.
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First Published:14 Oct 2013, 06:05 PM IST
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