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| Ajay Bhardwaj |
Milange Babey Ratan De Mele Te Ajay Bhardwaj at the British Film Institute, London.
After the screening, Ajay Bhardwaj talked about the film and his work as a filmmaker. Listen to a recording of Ajay Bhardwaj in conversation with Virinder Kalra and audience.
(Let's Meet at Baba Ratan's Fair) Dir: Ajay
Bhardwaj, India 2012.
"the self became the other"
Borders spring up; new nations are born of a violent rupture and unprecedented blood - letting, uprooting millions of people; and a centuries-old composite culture is silenced forever. Or so it would seem.
As the British departed from the subcontinent in 1947, Punjab was partitioned along religious lines into a Muslim majority state of Punjab (west) in Pakistan and a Hindu/Sikh majority state of Punjab (east) in India. For the people of Punjab, the self became the other. The universe of a shared way of life, Punjabiyat, was marginalised, replaced by perceptions of contending identities through the two nation states.
However, as Milange Babey Ratan De Mele Te shows, in ways seen and unseen, the idea of Punjabiyat inhabits the average Punjabi’s everyday life. The film moves fluidly across time, mapping organic cultural continuities at local levels – a cultural terrain strewn with haunting memories of the violence of 1947; of separation from one’s land; of childhood friends lost forever; of abandoned, anonymous graves in fields. Accompanying this caravan of seekers and lovers are ascetic non-believers whose yearning for love and harmony turns into poetry against war and aggression. Such is Punjab where miracles never cease to capture the imagination..
As the British departed from the subcontinent in 1947, Punjab was partitioned along religious lines into a Muslim majority state of Punjab (west) in Pakistan and a Hindu/Sikh majority state of Punjab (east) in India. For the people of Punjab, the self became the other. The universe of a shared way of life, Punjabiyat, was marginalised, replaced by perceptions of contending identities through the two nation states.
However, as Milange Babey Ratan De Mele Te shows, in ways seen and unseen, the idea of Punjabiyat inhabits the average Punjabi’s everyday life. The film moves fluidly across time, mapping organic cultural continuities at local levels – a cultural terrain strewn with haunting memories of the violence of 1947; of separation from one’s land; of childhood friends lost forever; of abandoned, anonymous graves in fields. Accompanying this caravan of seekers and lovers are ascetic non-believers whose yearning for love and harmony turns into poetry against war and aggression. Such is Punjab where miracles never cease to capture the imagination..
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