Karvaan -Review
By- Sumit Basu

Karvaan
Script: Pankaj Butalia and Nilofer Kaul
Director: Pankaj Butalia*
Photography: Ranjan Palit
Music: Susmit Sen
Costumes : Amba Sanyal
Cast:
Kitu Gidwani (Lajma),
Ikhlaque Khan (Divan Chand),
Srivardhan Trivedi (Jamal),
Subrata Dutta (Gautam),
Mandeep (Young Bhagwati),
Veena Mehta (Old Bhagwati),
Loveleen Tandan (Farida),
Mandakini Goswami (Lajjo)
Naseeruddin Shah (Zamer).

I happened to see Karvaan in a theatre in Rotterdam, among an audience struggling hard to find its way through The numerous innuendoes and subtle cultural references. Far removed from the alleyways of Old Delhi. Yet, as the film shuttled back and forth in time, went back to 1947 and sprung back to the present, and we watched how the fate of two families were defined by a line drawn across faraway lands, it was soundly brought home that Karvaan, like all honest films, derives its poignance from the chilling proximity of the stories it tells.

When Diwan Chand and his wife Bhagwati arrive at Delhi from across the border, carrying stifled memories of violence committed and endured, they must share the premises with a proud Muslim man (Naseeruddin Shah), who has opted to stay on in India and has lost a son to the carnage. The uneasy co-habitation is punctuated by occasional camaraderie and more often by overt confrontations. One night, Diwan Chand's sister, so long lost to the family, arrives with her daughter. One surmises from various references and subtle nuances that she had been abducted and the daughter, Lajma is an outcome of rape. She is obviously suffering from trauma, and is eagerly packed off by her otherwise loving brother to a mad-house; when her daughter Lajma grows up she is in turn easily branded a whore by the neighbours. Lajma and Gautam (Diwan Chand's son) both grow up to be attracted to Jamal, who grows up with them in the same house. He too is simultaneously attracted to them both in turns, and is unable to come to terms with himself. The relations crumble in the end without ever finding resolution, and Lajma decides to move to Pakistan. .

Lajma, now a school teacher in Pakistan, ultimately makes the journey she has made so oftenin her mind from Lahore to Delhi, and finds only Gautam and his mother, both now ravaged by the passage of time. The saga that began with a procession of bullock carts fleeing the riotous 'enemy' ends with a sharing of memories, telling of stories of thwarted love and attempts at resolving misunderstandings. The cousins, Lajma and Gautam, once separated by love for the same man, the daughter of a rape and the son of a refugee, converging from across the border, console each other in understanding of each other's circumstances. The political parallel is probably too hard to miss; a definite statement comes across on the necessity for a dispassionate look at partition together from across borders to register the commonality of experience before we can go our ways. Like the two women in the last shot, who must cross the borders as a matter of fact, to bury an ancestor or a past. Throughout the film, much is left unexplained, but then the unexplained is what characterised most of what happened in 1947.

Karvaan is deftly made. Competent performances from Naseruddin Shah as the proud Muslim man who refuses to leave India, Kitu Gidwani as Lajma as well as others add to the poignance of the story. Throughout the film however, there are numerous cultural references, which added to the constant shuttling over time, can be a bit difficult to grasp.

*PANKAJ BUTALIA: Born in 1950, he taught economics at Delhi University during 1971-1991. He has been associated very actively with the film society movement for over two decades and was Secretary of the Federation of Film Societies of India for eight years. He organised the documentary section of the International Film Festival of India in 1986, 1987 and 1988.

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