Kharashein, scars, is a moving presentation

Some painful memories relived

Kharashein, scars, is a moving presentation of poems and stories written by Gulzar and directed with dignified restraint by Salim Arif. The 1947 communal riots inflicted the first wounds on India. Ahmedabad erupted in 1969, Delhi in 1984, Ahmedabad again in 1987, Mumbai in 1992 and Ahmedabad once more this year. Add to this Kashmirs 14-year-old running wound and the violence in the North-East and we have the gory context of Kharashein.Artistes all over the country are expressing their anguish over Godhra and what followed. But not all their works have reached the public. Recently, a poster exhibition by the Vidyarthi Satyashodhak Sanghatana, as well as the screening of a Delhi filmmakers films in a local college, were banned by the police because they focused on Gujarat. We have been allowed to see Kharashein only because it doesnt touch specifically on Gujarat. It neither points fingers nor does it concern itself with why people whom we know to be otherwise good and peace-loving become monsters when they act as a herd? It focuses rather, on individual responses, sensitive or otherwise, to riots; and on the predicament of the individual caught in a situation not of his making. The question uppermost in the minds of Gulzars protagonists is, will I live this time around, or die.It lurks in the eyes of the Muslim man cowering in the corner of a train compartment, watching every move of its other occupant in nervous fear. The other is unknown and therefore a threat. Atul Kulkarni tells the story, Khauf, with the body language of a trapped animal eyes darting, ears pricked, muscles tensed, watching, assessing, every action of the other. Finally, he turns into such a tight ball of pure fear that his mind stops functioning. Instinct takes over. He pounces on the other with the self-preserving ferocity of a cornered animal. He lives. The other dies, but not before his end reveals an ironic truth. Khuda Hafiz, Gulzars dramatisation of a story by Samaresh Basu, focuses once more on two men, trapped this time in a curfew situation. Brilliantly performed by Kishore Kadam and Ganesh Yadav, the men face a two-way danger from each other because neither knows who the other is, Hindu or Muslim, and from the police, because they are out-of-doors when a curfew is on. Theres a subtle directorial touch at the beginning, when Kadam cringes at Yadavs touch. Touch is used thereafter, to plot the graph of their growing mutual trust, which culminates in the last tight embrace of leave-taking. This time too, the life-and-death question ends with life for one and death for the other.Hilsa, performed by Anoop Soni and Vaishali Thakkar, makes a telling point about the self-absorbed attitude of the middle-class to problems that do not immediately affect them; and their callousness towards all rules, made by man or nature, when their material pleasure is involved. But it gives rise to discomfort in its suggestion that cutting a fish is as violent an act as raping and murdering a woman. Even as it stands, however, the story might have been more effective, acquired a finer edge of irony, had it been told as a straightforward narrative without dramatisation. The finale of Kharashein bears witness to our history of violence. The despairing question in our minds is, if thats how it has been, will it ever be any different? Perhaps. I recall grafitti, scratched into the thick maroon paint of a local train compartment, that had made my spirits rise last week. It said, Adults teach hatred. The young dont believe in divisions.