The alleged attempt by some Sangh Parivar activists to cancel the screening of a documentary on the sufferings of a tea seller due to demonetisation, seems to have fetched it more viewers.
After the screening of Sanu Kummil’s documentary Oru Chaayakkadakkarante Mann ki Baat (A tea seller’s Mann Ki Baat ), scheduled to be held on Monday at the Kerala Club in Delhi, was cancelled following threats, it was screened by the Delhi Union of Journalists on Tuesday.
Students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University have also reached out to the filmmaker expressing their wish to screen the film in the campus. With demands from many to make the film available online, the director has decided to upload it on Youtube in a day or two. At the screening organised in Delhi on Tuesday, CPI(M) leader and fomer MP A.Sampath spoke against the attacks on freedom of expression.
On Monday, The Hindu had reported on the cancellation of the proposed screening at the Kerala Club located in Connaught Circus, after local leaders associated with the Sangh Parivar allegedly called up the organisers demanding them to cancel the screening. The film allegedly showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demonetisation in a bad light.
“Ironically, none of those who oppose the film have actually watched it. It is the life story of 75-year-old Yahiya, who had to undergo many hardships throughout his life. Demonetisation came as a huge blow to him,” says Sanu.
The documentary begins from his early years of struggle in a family of 13 children to 18 years of working under abject conditions in Saudi Arabia and his later life as a tea seller in Kadakkal. He used to bury all his savings in small pits, ever since a duo who visited his tea shop robbed him of all his savings. When the PM announced demonetisation, Yahiya had ₹23,000 in savings thus buried in pits. He queued up in front of a bank to exchange this.
On the second day, his sugar level dropped and he collapsed. After he was discharged from the hospital, he burned all the demonetised cash in anger. He also shaved half his head and said that it would remain so until the Modi government fell. On the first anniversary of demonetisation, he shaved off half his moustache too.
The documentary had won much appreciation in Kerala, and also fetched Sanu a Best Short Documentary award at the 11th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), organised by the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy last year.
The screening of the documentary in Delhi was organised by the Clone Cinema Alternative, in association with the Kerala Club. The film was earlier screened widely across Kerala and at the People’s Film festival in Kolkata and at a festival in Godavari in Telengana. The title of the film, with a reference to the PM’s Mann Ki Baat radio programmes, seems to have attracted the attention of the right wing activists, when the screening of the film was announced in the local press.
