And This Little Pig

Can a small film carry the weight of so many signifiers? Yes,sometimes it can. Especially when it is not trying to do anything other than telling a story with as much searing honesty as this one does. Fandry,the debut feature of poet and short-filmmaker Nagraj Manjule,is that rare film that carries through its vision unflinchingly and uncompromisingly. It channels the directors own experiences of heartbreaking discrimination on the grounds of caste something People Like Us are unwilling to acknowledge,or talk about,in the India of 2013,with its shiny enclaves of privilege and wealth,and much-publicised poverty-alleviating schemes.

The teenage Jabya wants to ignore the fact of his low caste when he looks at his pretty upper caste schoolmate Shalu. Like other boys of his age,all he wants to do is to wander about with his best friend,make sheeps eyes at the girl he has lost his heart to,and maybe get a pair of new jeans. In an ideal world,he may be able to attain his hearts desires. But Jabyas circumstances are far from: his family ekes (never has the word eke seemed as meaningful) a scanty living from weaving wicker baskets,but is as close to being far below the poverty line as you can humanly be,and survive.

His father,played magnificently by Kishor Kadam,drinks his sorrows away,but is resigned to his situation: when he is called upon to capture the occasional pig that rootles around in the undergrowth,he cannot refuse. The high-caste families will not go near the dirty animals. Only those who live on the outskirts of the village,like pariahs,will have to do the job. The parallels that are drawn between the creature and the human,both at the lowest end of the ladder,are like a slap in the face. When will we wake up?

The film is in Marathi,shot in a village which resembles Manjules,which he found on a recce after winning a national award for his short Pistulya. It took producer Vivek Kajaria no time at all to give full backing for Fandry (which means pig in a dialect of Marathi). It won a top award at the recent edition of the Mumbai Film Festival,and travelled to a few other festivals,gathering warm praise. I saw the film first a year ago at the IFFIs Film Bazaar,and it hadnt lost a thing when I saw it again in October at the MFF screening. If anything,I was struck anew by just how strongly political the film is: there are posters of BR Ambedkar plastered on the walls of the houses that Jabya and his father walk past,and as we see them,surrounded by the hostility and distaste of their neighbours,the irony is biting. All talk of Dalit rights,empowerment,justice,equality,all enshrined in the Constitution,is rendered hollow in the space of an hour-and-a-half.

You see this kind of cinema (a lot of it coming from the recent crop of young,bright Marathi filmmakers),and you feel both savagely angry and glad,and you want the film to go out and multiply amongst audiences. And then you are pulled up short against the familiar problem that this kind of Indian cinema trenchant,at once intensely personal and powerfully political faces. It is quite wonderful that directors like Manjule and producers like Kajaria are coming together to make such a film. But where are the distributors who will take the film and help it open wide?

Fandry is due to release in the end of January. But it will only open in Maharashtra and a few other places which have a significant Marathi speaking audience,says Kajaria. What about subtitled prints for elsewhere? The expense,for a producer working on a limited marketing budget,is a constraint. If we get some interest from exhibitors in big cities like Delhi,Kolkata and Bangalore,wed love to go there,he says. For now,we will have to make do with what we have.

Making do. Just as Jabya does.