The waste Mumbai doesn’t want to see

Cut.In, the TISS student film festival this weekend, features a series of documentaries that examine the city’s attitudes to its waste and the workers who clean it

December 10, 2016 12:52 am | Updated 12:52 am IST

Mumbai: A mechanised garbage truck was faulty, and a garbage can fell inside it. Workers attempted to manually remove it, and decided to just stand on the truck and empty garbage into it by hand. Suddenly, the mechanism started working again. Its blade cut the feet of the worker standing on the truck.

Anthony, a contract worker from Malad, narrates the story of how he lost his toe and severely injured his feet, in the film Like Dust We Rise. When his wound was being dressed at the hospital, doctors refused to even touch it; nurses simply applied antiseptic to it and asked his fellow workers to wipe it dry.

These are the people who clean Mumbai’s streets of the waste we leave there.

The film is part of TISS Media Studies students’ set of documentary films, WasteLines, to be screened at Cut.In, the TISS student film festival to be held this weekend. Every year, the films look at one issue, one story of erasure in the city.

“It became a collective goal for our team to bring into the public domain the exploitation and discrimination of BMC workers,” reads the directors’ note to Like Dust We Rise. The film was born of “disturbing findings” revealed through research and interaction with the Kachra Vahatuk Shramik Sangh.

The Media Studies students are in their third semester, and it is their first time working with documentary film. Barring two, all the students are also not from Mumbai, say K. P. Jayasankar, Dean, and Anjali Monteiro, Professor, of the Media Studies school. Yet, they explore, with depth and insight, something essential to the city: the rampant waste, ignored by those who created it. Those who clean it are also ignored, and it is this plight that the films draw our attention to. Aside from being a resource for activists working with sanitation workers, waste management and ecological preservation, the films also serve as a beginning point for researchers, journalists and those concerned with the cause. As citizens, though, the films hold merit for making us view our city in a fuller way.

“We hope these narratives shock our viewers as much as they shocked us and make them more aware, while the workers keep resiliently fighting for their rights everyday,” said Garima Kaul, one of the directors of Like Dust We Rise.

Apart from the mounds of garbage, we are also blind to the waste that quite literally flows through the city. The Mithi River is now a naala or sewer, as children in the film Mithi Si say. The film traces the story of the river and looks at the course of the river itself, using a Google Maps visual to explain its geography and place in the city.

Aparna Srivastava, who is one of the directors of Mithi Si, says the team travelled along the length of the river, and collected memories of the river from activists, journalists, slum dwellers, industry workers to provide a parallel narrative alongside the river’s erasure. “We hope this attempt brings back forgotten stories of people to the fore.”

Other films in the WasteLines feature include Woh Dhuan, These Women in the Hills, Kapda, Kamra, Kachra, and Why This Cowlaveri Di. The film festival is open to the public. Other than WasteLines, the festival will also feature a collection of 72 films from colleges and universities across the country, in a documentary film competition the winners of which will be announced on Sunday evening. The films will run on Saturday and Sunday at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

The writer is an intern with The Hindu

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