Insightful tribute to Mother India

Doesn’t a Malayali have a sore memory of how he was mocked for his loaded accent? Does a Gujarati’s deep-rooted cultural identity ever survive in a South-Indian state? If there exists such apparent discrimination among Indians, can it be easy for a foreigner to settle down in India with ease?

To address these issues and many others, this Independence Day, NDTV will air a documentary film titled My Mother India, directed and written by Safina Uberoi, an Indian based in Australia.

Based on her life, the film outlines the lives of three central characters, Patricia — her mother, Jit Uberoi — her father and grandmother Beeji.

Patricia, an Australian, marries the Parsi PhD holder Jit in the year 1966 and moves to India to live in Delhi with Jit’s mother, Beeji.

Beeji is portrayed as a fierce, yet loving mother-in-law who willingly welcomes her Australian daughter-in-law into her home in Sangrur.

The three characters are given wings through simple anecdotes. Safina’s father who collects kitsch calendars is a disillusioned Sikh. Patricia, who hangs her knickers outside on a rope, much to the horror of conventional neighbours, copes with a society that is drastically different from the one she grew up in Canberra.

The film combines interviews of her family, particularly her mother, with images of India shot on film. The images of India are poetic expressions of nostalgic longing, fear, loathing and love for Mother India. It is about a search for her true identity and about tracing and connecting the dots.

The ups and downs of a mixed marriage set against a tumultuous backdrop of violence and religious clashes is established right from the start of the documentary. What begins as a humorous narration of events and introduction of characters develops into a dismal account of life before and after Operation Blue Star; and into the events that tore this family apart.

As the family deals with the death of a member, the nation begins to witness an uproar. While the last rites are being performed, The Golden Temple, the holiest of Sikh shrines, is attacked by the government to ‘flush out’ suspected terrorists. The impact of such an action convinces even the disenchanted and broken Jit to react strongly and reconvert to Sikhism. The film draws the viewer into connecting with the family’s sense of helplessness, fear and loss of identity.

As a renewed Sikh, Jit and his family soon turn into a soft target for the mobs. The family flees their home and returns a few days later, saddened and bitter at what Jit felt was a betrayal of his long-held patriotism. For Patricia, it is an awful moment of truth as she begins to reevaluate why the country she had adopted is now a mute witness as her family is threatened again and again. Patricia then convinces Safina and her siblings to leave India and move to Australia.

The film attempts to define the complexities of Patricia’s journey from the wide horizons of ‘the lucky country’ into the dark heart of Indian domesticity and political turmoil. “My memories of being the child of a white mother were full of funny moments where she was the one who did inappropriate things and I was the one scolding her in the vain hope that she might ‘behave herself’ and conform to the society around us.

In contrast, my Indian grandmother Beeji personified my claim to Indian-ness with her delicious pickles, her stories about growing up in Punjab and her matriarchal rule of the household.” says Safina.

Through this film, Safina attempts to capture the profound effect, the events of 1984 had on her family. Despite having to cope with the clashes and violence in her neighbourhood, she always felt at home in this country, she reveals.  She adds, “1984 was a watershed in India’s political and social history. It was a year in which many Indians were forced to redefine what it meant to be Indian.”

Patricia continued to live in India with her husband after 1984. It is this choice, and the reconciliation that makes the film remarkable. Says Safina, “She looked at the country like her marriage — it was forever, for better or for worse.  When I visit my parents now, my mother Patricia seems very Indian to me.  With her freckles and her red hair, she is still ‘My Mother India’.”