The floating ground beneath

Can water forge a relationship with a community as solid as land can, asks Haobam Paban Kumar's documentary Phum-Shang

December 18, 2015 03:22 pm | Updated March 24, 2016 10:43 am IST - Bengaluru

At the heart of the debate surrounding displacement is a people’s enduring relationship with the land that they live on. It is that particular land that they have a consanguineous relationship with; one that cannot be substituted or recreated with another piece of land, elsewhere. There is perhaps something about the firm and rooted nature of land itself that gives their relationship an anchor, context and finality. Now, what if we were to substitute land with water? Can the floating, fresh water forge a relationship with its people as solid as land? This is the question at the heart of Haobam Paban Kumar’s 52 minute documentary, Phum-Shang (Floating Life).

Screened as part of Vikalp’s Doc@Everest series, Phum-Shang explores the predicament of the fishermen who live on Loktak, the largest freshwater lake in North East India. What makes this lake uncommon is ‘phumdi’, the floating biomass that sits lightly on the lake. The fishing community live on huts built on this buoyant phumdi. Paban Kumar shows us that the water is everything to them: their source of livelihood, their village and most importantly, their home. Sometime in the year 2011, the Manipur government began to evict these fishermen, even burn some of their homes citing that these fishermen had no ownership to the phumdi that they were living on. The arguments on the government’s part comprised that of the preservation, conservation and cleaning of the lake. Some of the fishermen, therefore, were forced to move out of the phumdi, seeking a livelihood, on shore.

A recipient of the first Bala Kailasam Memorial Award (BKMA) in October this year, Phum-Shang brings to fore a template tale of conflict surrounding displacement, especially in modern India. The film opens with a prolonged shot of a burning hut setting the tone of the conflict right from the start. Loktak, which is rich and abundant in bio-diversity, is also a source for hydropower generation, irrigation and drinking water supply, we are informed. Through long, quiet sequences, Paban Kumar surveys the environs of the lake capturing two facets of the same water: the beauty of the locale as well as the ugly mounts of garbage floating on some sections of the water. “Are we fishermen polluting Loktak or the urban areas?” asks one fisherman as Paban Kumar visits his home.

As we navigate the stretches of water quietly, we hear more stories of eviction, compensation and displacement. But Paban Kumar’s style of interrogation is rather quiet. He lets the camera roll as the villagers speak to him and to each other. There is an uneasy calm of sorts that characterizes most of the film, despite the turbulent tone of the conflict. We are made privy to elongated sequences that acquaint us with the lives of these fishermen. In poetically crafted scenes, Paban Kumar stands and watches as the fishermen hunt for fish, clean the produce, take it to the market and sell it. Their sense of community is also portrayed through an evocative sequence of them building their huts by gathering the phumdi. Slowly and rather noiselessly, we get closer to the community and their relationship with water.

And then, sometime around the 35th minute, the anger and tension culminates on screen. Paban Kumar visits a demolition site on the lake. Belching cries of women greet us as we row our way closer to the home that is being brought down. As the women stand screaming and hurling abuses at the authorities, the crane stands poised to strike. One of the telling scenes from the film is when a fisherwoman climbs on to the trunk of the crane and hangs there hoping it will not strike her house down.

Phum-Shang does not aspire to offer a resolution though. It just lays it all bare in front of us. Most of the film is devoid of dialogue or conversation, asking its audience to soak-in the issue. “Who are the encroachers? Who has a right to live on the phumdi? And doesn’t the government understand that water, despite its sailing quality, can be home to a community?” the films asks us. As much as it is about the community, Phum-Shang is also about the water body itself. The film throws questions of conservation at us too, opening up layers of the debate and making it difficult to pin the blame on anybody squarely. The filmmaker intelligently uses form to accentuate the floating and fleeting nature of ownership that the film's content focuses on. The camera, drifting on water, for most of the film attempts to make its audience voyagers, moving from one aspect of the conflict to another. Perhaps, this was the intention of the filmmaker- to transpose us on to water, making it difficult to find our feet and take a stand.

A telling scene from the film is when a fisherwoman climbs on to the trunk of the crane and hangs there hoping it will not strike her house down

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