When you have three women who have endured more physical and mental pain than an average human being could imagine, together in a documentary one would expect a lot of pathos, tears and gloom.
But, the three women who light up the screen in the short documentary ‘In Thunder, Lightning and Rain,’ screened at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) on Sunday, do not shed any tear.
They have defeated the challenges that life has thrown at them, with their strength of character and their humour. In the documentary too, they floor the viewers with their disarming candour and cheer. Like, Selina Michael, who burns dead bodies daily at a crematorium in Ernakulam, who narrates the torture at the hands of her husband from whom she is now separated, with a smile on her face.
Rajesh James, the director, who works as an Assistant Professor at Sacred Heart College, Thevara, got the idea for the documentary after meeting her through a friend.
Scared of humans
“Don’t you feel scared burning these dead bodies alone?” he asked her. “I am only scared of the humans who walk on two legs, like my husband, whom I was scared of the most,” she replied.
“I got the idea from a book that inspired me a lot – Terry Eagleton’s ‘On Evil’. The lines from Macbeth, “When shall we meet again...in thunder, lightning or rain?” was playing on my mind. I found these three women who have endured a lot in life and survived spiritedly to tell the tale. For me, they are the women who represent these three elements,” says Mr. James, who had earlier directed the documentary ‘Naked Wheels’.
C.V. Seena, the second woman in the documentary, once represented the Indian national football team and is now the only woman football coach in Ernakulam. She reminisces of her trip to play in Germany, of the new attires that made her realise her own beauty, and of the realisation of her own poverty. She credits her father for her remaining single, for it was the torture that her mother endured at his hands made her take the decision to remain so.
Ammini Amma, fisherwoman and folk singer, the third woman, still rues the fact that she did not get an education. But that did not prevent her in getting ahead in her life, with her sheer grit and effort. Now she gives lectures in universities on fish farming and sings the folk songs that she herself composed at festivals.
In the documentary, the three of them come together at the Cochin carnival and witness the burning of the ‘Pappanji’, to ring in the new year. All three of them have had their own trials by fire, from which they have emerged stronger.
