Anup Singh remembers his grandfather as a man, who was both loving and violent. Like most grandfathers, he was caring and would reminisce about his childhood in his native village in Punjab (now in Pakistan) — the blue skies, the weather and the beauty of red nanakshahi bricks that is so distinctive of the region. At times, however, he would be a terrifying patriarch resorting to domestic violence. His grandfather’s capricious nature that stemmed from the pangs of Partition has been embodied by the character played by Irrfan in Singh’s upcoming film Qissa. The movie releases simultaneously in theatres and on DVD on February 20. “My grandfather was an orphan living with his uncle’s family. During the Partition, he and his youngest sister were asked to hide in the cellar of the house. When they came out after a day, they not only found the entire village destroyed but also that their uncle and family had abandoned them,” says Singh. Instead of going to India, his grandfather went to East Africa, which was an alien country. “The immense rage and bitterness that piled up in him would find an outlet in the violence at home,” says Singh. Born and brought up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Singh is currently based in Geneva. He spent many years in Mumbai in between. He studied at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and worked in India for some time before leaving the country again. Qissa is the result of his attempt to understand his grandfather. It tells the story of Umber Singh, a Sikh, who tries to start a new life for his family after being forced to flee his village during Partition. Singh uses the family to mirror the larger violence in the society. “The ghost of Partition still haunts India. I wanted to go into the more intimate partition that happens within the family. If there isn’t dignity and respect for a daughter, a wife or a son, how can that extend outside the home, to society?” he says. The film is as much an exploration of the north Indian masculine rage at the sense of loss as it is the feminine power of acceptance, forgiveness and compassion — both of which have their roots in Partition. Singh’s hero, in a way, are the two girls who challenge social norms and conventions. A girl child is brought up as a boy under the watchful eyes of her father till she is married to another girl. The female camaraderie and the resistance by this unusual couple in the face of the male rage is something Singh grew up seeing in his aunt and other women of his family. Even though it took him 12 years to find producers, Singh stuck to his decision to make the film in Punjabi. It was important for Singh to retain the rhythm and phonetics of the language. Singh recounts how one day on the sets, he found Irrfan experimenting with his lines. The actor was humming the lines instead of reading them out. “Irrfan wanted to understand the tonality of his character,” says the writer-director. The film references ancient myths and tales as well. It is Singh’s attempt at an indigenous form of storytelling at a time when the medium is getting increasingly tech-savvy. Singh owes this original, Indian approach to storytelling in films to some of the stalwarts of experimental cinema in India — Ritwik Ghatak, Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani. While Singh assisted Kaul and Shahani, he made his first film on Ghatak, a docu-fiction The Name of a River that explores the life and work of the maverick filmmaker. When Qissa — the tagline calls it “a tale of a lonely ghost”— releases on Friday, Singh hopes to put his grandfather’s soul to rest. The ghost being a metaphor for patriarchy, female infanticide and other social evils that have been plaguing the subcontinent even today. “The film is an enemy’s homage to my grandfather. Although I sympathise that he was a victim of the politics of Partition, it can’t justify the violence he inflicted on his family,” he says.
