Voices Unheard Part I - The documentary (Duration 9 min 26 sec)

Voices Unheard Part I - Final Cut

Insights

Date: 12 th August, 2013.
Venue: A girl's school in Kottayam.
Event: Day 1, Screening of Voices Unheard Part I

As the credits rolled, i looked at the screen and closed my eyes. There was silence. A silence that is much more louder than a round of applause. I turned towards the students who looked at me perplexed. I didn't know what to say. 

"Any questions ?" I asked them. No one replied. 

I looked at the teacher who was in charge of the class. She looked at me and smiled and then looked at her wrist watch. I didn't know what to do. Clearly, the teacher felt i was wasting their time and I on the other hand was hoping someone would ask me a question.

"Sir.. I have a question." A girl who had been trying to get my attention from the back of the classroom finally managed to do so by raising her voice. 

"Can you share your experiences with us ?" 

An avalanche of thoughts went through my head. Suddenly my heart stopped beating and i was in Vadavathoor, right in the middle of the waste dumping yard, looking at the people who lived nearby. 

I still remember their faces, their furious gaze, their hatred towards people who showed them pity, their laughter which lacked happiness but echoed with despair, their survival instinct which kept them going, their deteriorating homes that craved for guests, their eyes that had lost it's shine and their faith that had gone missing. 

I remember feeling guilty for asking them some stupid questions."You asked us why we are not moving from here right ? "  Asked the lady who was standing next to my car. 

"Look at this ! "

She was holding an inhaler in one hand and an empty bottle of medicine in the other and she was coughing in between. 

" The cost of this inhaler ... is Rs.98... and for this..Rs.36... Today, my daughter asked me for her bus fare, I didn't have money to give her.. Now you tell me...Should i send my daughter to school or save some money and buy the medicine instead ?"

She started coughing again and pointed at the fumes rising up from the dump site. An up and down bus journey till her daughter's school and back would cost about Rs.7, I thought.

"And you are asking us to leave this place !" I looked at her. I didn't know what to say.

I remember those two kids in Shantigram ( a colony near Vadavathoor dump) who followed us everywhere, whenever we went to shoot in the following days. They were fascinated by our cameras. While Ashik was capturing some visuals and photographs of those kids, i looked at them and i felt that they were similar to my own nephews. Naughty, playful, almost of the same age but very silent.

I could still see the muncipal water supply tap and a large queue of people awaiting their turns to collect water. I will never forget the 2 kudam(containers used to fill water) rule which made perfect sense to everyone over there. Each household could collect 2 containers of water which came once in 8 days. The containers were of different shapes and sizes and some of them were very colourful. Some families used old paint containers instead of kudams to collect water because it was bigger. Ladies gave them a malicious look but they didn't have the energy to even start an argument. Everyone awaited their turns in a queue silently, hoping that by the time they reach the tap, there would be enough water to fill their own kudams. 

Their laughter echoed through the different chambers in my heart. I remember their enthusiasm in showing us different types of snails that were there in every household. When they were describing what they look like and how they move, they were laughing, perhaps laughing at their own fate. 

I remember looking inside a well which was almost empty and rich in bacterial content. Despite of knowing that, people still used the water in it for drinking purpose. I remember the dump. The white sea of plastic that it is. The ergets who had taken abode. The fumes of death that came up from the dump. The kids. The kudam. The lady with the inhaler. The well, the bottomless pit that it is. I remembered everything. 

I had so much to say. I didn't know where to begin.

" Excuse me... We don't have much time left."  The class teacher told me.

" Uh ..ok..." I looked at the girl who asked me the question and said: 

"The kid you saw in the documentary...cannot speak...was born like that."

The bell rang. My time was done. I thanked the students and walked out of the classroom. I wondered whether or not the documentary might have left any impression in those young hearts. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my handkerchief and walked towards the principal's room. The class teacher was walking alongside me. She was smiling at me.

"Why do you wanna make documentaries like this ? Why can't you make films ?"  She asked.

I looked at her and smiled. 

"Thank you mam for giving me this opportunity." I said, then I walked away.

Destiny of the Polythene Bag

Like a dismal performer you lay,
Engrossed in your evil thoughts,
A facade to the wearing junk,

Abandoned from homes to 
mother our wrongs.
You lie there embracing the child
that we made,
The abandoned, the forgotten.


                                                   - Arjun Raj

Voices Unheard Part I - Official Teaser 2

Voices Unheard Part I - Official Teaser

                        What according to you is progress and how would you measure it ?

PART I

Eleven years ago, my classmates and I were taken in the school bus to a place we least expected. The "Vadavathoor dump" in Kottayam district, Kerala. It stretched upto 3 to 3.5 acres back then and it was filled with garbage from all corners of Kottayam district. I was nauseated.

The only thing I wanted to ask my principal Mary Ammachi at that moment, was why she wanted us to see this mess. I was a very reserved kid back then and I didn't have the courage to ask anyone that question. So I did not ask.What I witnessed out there was a sea of plastic. Even the biodegradable kitchen wastes were carefully packed in plastic bags. I looked up in the sky and I could see some egrets ('kokku' in malayalam) flying. For a second I thought what the dumping yard would look like to them from that height.

We came back to school and in the course of time we learned a lot of things ranging from solid waste management, aerobic composting, 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), waste segregation and so many other things. We even made paper bags and distributed it to super markets so they could stop giving away plastic bags to their customers. I slowly began to understand the phenomenon called Mary Roy a.k.a. Mary Ammachi. She was fighting a lone battle (not that she required anyone's support.) and we were her soldiers.

In 2008 I passed out from school. One thing I still couldn't understand back then was why Kottayam, a place known for its 100 percent literacy rate, could not manage its own waste efficiently.

Years went by and it was 2013. I decided to take a break from mumbai where I had been going through a creative phase in my life and went back to Kottayam. I didn't want to waste my time so I decided to conduct a workshop on the basics of filmmaking and creative writing. I didn't want it to be another one of those talked about classes that people would forget about in some time. I wanted this initiative to create an impact. I needed to seek some advice and I thought I would go and visit Mary ammachi. Surprisingly she remembered me, she spoke to me with so much energy and eagerness to know what I had been doing over the last few years. We didn't speak much about the workshop, but we ended up speaking a lot about the Vadavathoor dump. I could see that even then the dump had been hurting her and giving her sleepless nights. I stepped out of her house and walked down the familiar slope towards the office where I had parked my car. The intolerable smell from the Vadavathoor dump had reached my school. It was in the air that i was breathing.

Few days after that meeting with Mary Ammachi, my friend Ashik and I went to see the dump. What had been 3-3.5 acres of garbage land 11 years ago had become 7.5-8 acres of hell. Ergets that we normally see in paddy fields had become permanent occupants of the dump. It was difficult to distinguish them from the sea of white plastic, but when they flew away together in a hurry, we were surprised to see so many of them. Eleven years ago when I looked up in the sky and wondered what the dump would look like to ergets flying in the sky, little did i know that they were planning to inhabit Vadavathoor dump for good. For them it was paradise as they feasted on what we consider as waste. As we walked around we could see smoke rising up from different parts of the dumping yard. Breathing became difficult.
Ashik captured some visuals of the dump and some of the ergets flying in the air in his camera. We left soon only to return later.

In the summer of 2013, I met few people who live near vadavathoor dump. They were victims of inequality and untouchability of another kind. They did not want to "live", they were just determined to "survive".

Ashik and I decided to document what they had to say about their own lives. As we walked around with cameras capturing what everyone had to say, we felt the need to show the world what the people of Vadavathoor were going through. Every human being should know where the garbage we throw away reaches and how it affects others. "Voices Unheard: Part I" talks about this.

It’s easy to be mute observers like how we have been over the years. Now, it’s time to rise to the occasion. This documentary is a reminder to every viewer that the responsibility of making a better tomorrow starts from your homes. Picking up a chocolate wrapper from the ground and putting it into a waste bin is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning. We have a long way to go.