From Meerut to LA

Even as Mumbai hogs the limelight with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire,the small towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar...

Even as Mumbai hogs the limelight with the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire,the small towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have provided the cinematic backdrop for movies in the short documentary category of the coveted awards. And unlike Slumdog,its the real people from the towns of Meerut and Mirzapur whose stories have won over the audience.

First,theres Pinki Sonkar and her transformation from a girl whos jeered at because of her cleft lip to a schoolgirl with a normal life thanks to a free surgery. The story of this five-year-old,brought to the world by Megan Mylans Smile Pinki,moved the jurors enough to vote it as the winner.

For the people of the hinterland,even the sight of a camera can be unnerving. Munzareen Fatima,for instance,never imagined that her face would be splashed on global e-zines after a documentary in which she featured won an Oscar nomination. After she was selected from 233 field workers in Meerut to feature in Irene Taylor Brodskys 38-minute documentary The Final Inch,burqa-clad Munzareen,hid in a local doctors chamber when she had to appear for her first shot. Besides,some local Muslims had threatened to beat up the cameramen if they filmed a Muslim woman. The film crew and the locals made me nervous but I still agreed to do the film as it would showcase our work, she says.

A mother of three children,Munzareen joined UNICEF as a community mobiliser for polio vaccination in Khairnagar,Meerut,five years ago when her husband lost his source of income.

Munzareen,who has studied till Class XII,had the tough task of convincing 470 families at Dufferin block in Khairnagar,to get their children immunised. Quite often,families would slam the door on her face,hurl insults at her and simply refuse to get their children immunised for the fear that it may cause infertility. I felt utterly humiliated but I knew I had to go on. First,it was because of my financial condition but very soon,my motivation was that the children indeed needed immunisation, she says.

Munzareen turned to religious books such as the Hadith,Darul Uloom literature and a booklet of appeals by the Haj Committee in order to convince the reluctant families,most of whom were Muslims. She began organising istema religious gatherings every month to win them over. Her labour has paid off. Now,she is treated with respect and is referred to as Munzareen Baaji. More significantly,over the past five years,the turnout at the polio booth has gone from 35 to 73 per cent.

Dr Ashfaque Bhatt,an immunisation officer with WHO who works in Bihar and has been featured in The Final Inch,says the Oscar nomination and the worldwide coverage of the film is a tribute to the unsung heroes working towards the eradication of polio.

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I am just lucky that I got selected,but the real footsoldiers are the countless vaccinators who work from dawn to dusk for just Rs 50 a day, says the doctor.