ONCE upon a time there was an evil stepmother who bludgeoned her step-daughter Tejimola to death with a dheki (rice grinder). Consumed with greed, Dhoneshwari marries her daughter to a python. Not far away, Malati questions the sacrifice of her three babies while Keteki gives birth to an outenga (a vegetable known as elephant apple). A 100 years ago, one of Assam’s literary giants, Lakshminath Bezbaroa opened up a world of magic realism, mystery and human drama through his famed book of fables, Burhi Aair Sadhu (Grandma’s Tales). A century later, Assam-born, Delhi-based writer and filmmaker Bhaskar Hazarika has reimagined four of these folk tales resonating with grisly truths of life for his debut feature film, Kothanodi (The River of Fables). “Till today, people of Assam don’t name their daughters Tejimola,” says Hazarika. Winner of the Asian Cinema Funds Post Production Fund Award for 2015, screened at the 20th Busan International Film Festival this October and premiered at the 59th British Film Institute London Film Festival, the dark multi-narrative of Kothanodi with its conflicted morality, disturbing plots and complex women left the audience stunned at the recently held fourth Dharamshala International Film Festival. Through the four stories of Tejimola, Champawati, Ou Kuwori (The Outenga Maiden) and Tawoir Xadhu (The Story of Tawoi) in Kothanodi, Hazarika explores the multiple shades of women, focusing only on a chapter in their lives, never revealing the entire story. Set in pre-Colonial era and shot in the hypnotic landscape of Assam’s Dergaon and massive river island of Majuli, Kothanodi also brings out Hazarika’s love for horror, the macabre and the supernatural. An Edgar Allen Poe fan, his thought process aligns with that of the avant garde, dark cinema from Europe, with pulp fiction and the raw and innovative spirit of indie cinema. He also feels that this is the age of multi narratives, “films packed with content and engaging enough for the time impoverished, short attention span YouTube generation”. All four stories in Kothanodi have their base in reality. They have happy endings too in the book, but according to him, fairy tales are dark and are tweaked to the lighter side for children. “The fables find their place in Assam only through song and dance, never through a real lens,” says Hazarika. Although anchored in the past, the film refers to present day crimes against women in Assam, including infanticide and witch hunting. In the past, Hazarika has co-written the screenplay for Abbas-Mustan’s Players (2012), co-directed the documentary Live From Peepli (2010) and made documentaries for the Film & Television Institute of India, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Government of India. His documentary Nobody’s Perfect won at National Film Festival on Disability Issues, in 2008. “Somehow, the Bollywood meter, where the script is secondary and the star is primary never agreed with me,” says Hazarika. That Kothanadi was set in Assam, in Assamese, was certain for he could not “betray the source of material, the language and culture it stemmed from”. And while his choice to make the film was organic, raising funds was a challenge. “Cinema in Assam is barely surviving due to bureaucracy, micro funding and lack of screens,” says Hazarika, who primarily crowd sourced funds through Wishberry for Kothanodi that stars actors Adil Hussain, Kapil Bora, Zeriffa Wahid and Seema Biswas. The film will see an early 2016 release. jaskiran.kaur@expressindia.com
