Fading stories of struggles on celluloid

Cinema once held a mirror to the woes of India’s working class. But even the scenes of thousands marching home during the pandemic failed to stir curiosity among filmmakers

Swapna Gopinath

Pic Credit: Wikimedia Commons

India’s migration histories have been the theme for various cinematic narratives, the films on Partition being the prominent ones. Later, we started witnessing the long, arduous journeys of the working class as they were forced to be part of the migrant communities that traveled from rural to urban India. Films picked this history of migration and narrated those tales poignantly, often lamenting the loss of innocence as they moved from the rural utopias envisioned by the filmmakers. Post-globalization, the number of migrant laborers increased, but their representation in cinema declined significantly. 

When I reminisce about the Pandemic what strikes hard at my soul is the vast repertoire of images that I saw everyday, of the laborers walking home, with their families, the eyes listless, fear and uncertainty about the future writ large on their sweaty pale faces. The pictures spoke eloquently of the hardships, the misery, and the sense of loss the millions of laborers faced as they negotiated through hostile terrains on foot. It was a heart-wrenching sight for me - people walking on deserted roads - families with small children straddled on the shoulders of their parents - the journey reminded one of the long, excruciatingly painful memories of exoduses in human history. The pictures were eloquent and triggered discussions, and questions were asked about the government institutions that failed to support laborers, and issued directives that rendered them jobless, and eroded their savings, forcing them to leave cities for their homes back in their villages. The lockdown shut down the economy. With no jobs, no wages, and no basic amenities available in the cities, migrant left. Houses were abandoned. Governments preferred to turn away as they began their journey home - ruled by a sense of despair, and fear writ large on their faces, the apathy of the ruling class had already forced them to seek the roads that led to their dear ones, that they thought returning to their villages will at least give them a sense of security, even if it was no better in terms of financial security. I am still haunted by those nightmarish images, and I keep asking myself, how did we become so insensitive to the suffering of countless number of people who lived in our cities, in our neighborhoods, in our kitchens and gardens, helping us, easing our lives by offering their labor to us?

This leads me to the question of cultural representations of the experience, especially cinematic representations of this human-invoked exodus. The reality of migrant population during the pandemic was harsh, it was a sombre sight that was compelling enough to trigger creative expressions that prod the viewers to explore, to denounce the injustice that created such a situation. Cinema, in particular, had the potential to capture these moments and demand answers, but sadly, it failed to do so. 

Screen grab of Bheed movie poster 

During the pandemic, film production had come to a halt, but post-pandemic, the industry largely stayed away from stories about the subaltern. Filmmakers chose to refrain from telling those stories of the common citizens’ arduous journey through the lockdown. Two films stood out in this context: Bheed (2023) and India Lockdown (2022), since they sought to explore the angst, the misery, the uncertainty and the dire desperation of the working class that embarked on journeys that marked them as outlaws, for traveling to their villages when travel was deemed as illegal by the state.

Bheed (Crowd), directed and produced by Anubhav Sinha, captures the agony of being the Other as the state and its machinery turn against its own working class. The film, Bheed, archives this despair and struggles in monochrome - although it captures the distress of the privileged class as well, we see the working class up close, and their journey through a country that has turned hostile to them is more poignant, more visceral, and more violent. The resilience of the people is to be noted, but their misery, unfortunately, is accentuated by the regulations of the state and its inhuman measures to contain the pandemic, rather than the threat of the disease itself. When individuals become a faceless crowd, they become dehumanised and their pain no longer matters. They are delegitimized through the process of a national lockdown that turns any violator into an outlaw, no longer protected by the laws of the land. They become lawbreakers who are vulnerable, an easy target for state-sponsored violence and where their bodies are subject to acts of violence intended to subjugate them. 

Bheed reminded me of Saleena who worked as a cleaning woman in the apartment complex I stayed in Mumbai. She lived in a chawl nearby, and we often saw each other on the stairs, I would be rushing to work, and she would be on her way to collect the garbage from the bins kept outside the apartments. We acknowledged each other with a smile, till one day she rang the bell to my apartment. She introduced herself and asked me about any cleaning jobs available in my home. This was the beginning of several conversations I had with her over the period of one year, till I left the city. She hailed from West Bengal and had a family in Mumbai, which included two children and a husband who worked as a daily laborer. She had not seen her native village in the past five years, she missed her parents who lived in her village, but financial constraints stopped her from visiting them. I saw a sense of hopelessness in her eyes, as she spoke about her future. She told me about her dreams for her children, and even as she described them ,I saw her doubting herself. She brought over her children sometimes and they loved telling me about their school. They were beautiful girls who longed to go back home and visit their grandparents who they hardly remembered. Saleena’s smile had fears lurking in the corners of her lips, and she was scared of losing her roots, yet was hopeful of returning one day, with loads of gifts for her loved ones back in the village. Bheed reminded me of her journey, when the pandemic hit. My friends in Mumbai told me about the women who lost their jobs, about how the lockdown must have impacted them. I called the security guards, and I was told that she was forced to leave Mumbai, because she had to vacate her house, her husband had lost his job too, and they had no means to survive. She had left, and no one knew what happened to them. I tried calling a number that she had given me, but I couldn’t connect. She never reached out to me. She never communicated with the people she knew in Mumbai. She never returned as well. Has she reached home safe? I know she didn’t have any gifts for her family, apart from her smile, and her lovely daughters. Bheed demanded my attention, as it traced the migrant laborer’s journey towards spaces that remind him of safety, although it meant abject poverty. 

Bheed is about the working class, the precariat who was forced to leave their homes because their host cities would not offer them a space to live through the lockdown, and without jobs, without wages, they have no routes open to return to their homes, their villages, their imagined lands of comfort and sustenance where families will welcome them into their lives of deprivation. Their narratives of exodus are also stories of violence unleashed on the citizens by the state, of processes that expose the indifference and callousness that define the governmental organizations in the neoliberal age. 

A still from India Lockdown trailer. Courtesy: YouTube

India Lockdown (2022) by Madhur Bhandarkar is another film that prevents me from forgetting the migrant working class who were forced to embark on a dangerous route home. It tells the stories of four individuals just before the beginning of the lockdown. Of the four protagonists, Phoolmathi, Madhav and their two children felt close to my heart. Phoolmathi is a house help who works at Rao’s house, but she loses her job and is shocked to realize that she won’t have any job because of  the pandemic. Her husband, Madhav has a peddler’s cart but can find no customers and is being chased by loan sharks. They decide to leave the city by foot, hoping to reach their village in a month’s time. They are hungry and thirsty and as days pass, they beg and plead with strangers. Their abject misery compels Madhav to an act of crime which results in Rao getting seriously injured. We see the blurring lines between the civilian and the criminal in Madhav, as he provides food to his family, after stealing food from the vehicle which had a bleeding Rao seeking help. How do I define this act of crime, which is the result of systemic violence, of callous indifference from the authority? For me, the family is a reminder, of the depravity that can destroy human beings as they become helpless and hopeless. 

Both films have similarities in the manner in which they imagine the impact of economic inequality on the people faced with the lockdown and the impending threat of the virus attack.

In India Lockdown, the surveillance in the slums is more violent and oppressive, and it forces Madhav and his family to take the decision to escape.  The visual of the rat fleeing through the street is symbolic, as we witness the large migrant labor class leave their shacks and flee. In both films, the migrant class become outlaws, and the responsibility of taking care of themselves fall on them, as the state turns away in apathy. 

The visuals in both films, reminded me of an apocalyptic world, with empty roads and barren lands that offer no solace to its people. But have they captured the agony of the class of migrant laborers who left and returned? Did they all manage to reach their homes? Where they provided with the basic amenities in their villages? Did they all survive the crisis? Do we have their stories archived for the posterity? I am not so sure. The apathy that runs through our social sensibilities seems to have desensitized us to the stories of the exodus, and memories of the journey seem to be fading fast!

Swapna Gopinath teaches cinema, enjoys working on her podcast, and writes about cinema, culture and gender.