When relating a tragedy, story-tellers seem
to employ a time-tested strategy: unravel the events as experienced by one of
the victims. Think, for example, of Titanic, where the fate of the ocean liner hit
the rocks along with the fate of the two young lovers aboard the ship. Or,
consider Pearl Harbor, where once more a tale of love and loss escorted the
attack on the American port into our consciousness. Moving away from cinema,
the viewpoint of one or a few of many victims is also the spine of
documentaries that detail natural and man-made disasters.
Could it be that we
are better at extrapolating the misfortune of one of the victims – chosen by
the auteur and intimately introduced to us over the course of the narrative –
to sympathize with the tragedy of the many, than at gauging the impact on each
individual when presented with the account of the trials of an impersonal mass
of people?
What made me wonder about this style of
narration being a strategy is a Kannada movie I happened to watch recently: Sarkari Hiriya Prathamika Shaale, Kasaragodu.
From the trailers and the pre- and post-release interviews given by the film
team, it was clear that the story had something to do with the closure of
Kannada medium schools in Kasaragodu – a town/district located in Kerala in the
political maps of India without Malayalam being the single dominant language of
the locals, many of whom name Kannada as their mother tongue. In essence, the
town has Keralite Malayalis and Keralite Kannadigas, despite the fact that the
state was carved into being on the basis of linguistic reorganization. History of
the linguistic reorganization is hotly contested – perhaps, it would suffice to
say history is hotly contested? – and I do not mean to wade in with words that
may echo in multifarious ways and impinge upon scabs and scars of which I have
no knowledge. My remit is the movie’s narrative.
The focus of the movie is a State
Government-funded Kannada medium school in Kasaragodu, the school being one of
a countable number of such institutions in the area. Yet, what is a school
without its pupils? So, we acquaint ourselves with a few students and their
families as the academic year begins. Each of these students has an endearing
quirk or two, and the characters so imbued with life by the remarkable child
actors as to quickly endear the students to us. For example, the somewhat more naïve
kid of the group pleads with his father for the bus fare and fails only to
blubber before his mother for the same and succeed. His innocence is sharply
revealed in his ability to look for and spot angels in the people around. One
of his mates, an academic dullard with an ironic name, is all set to study in
Class 7 for the third straight year, any agony creeping into his mind
overshadowed and overawed by his infatuation with a girl in his class. You
should meet the rest of them via a screen near you. Joining these kids on their
journey to school and back, we also meet the prominent human fixtures of the
town square, including the philanthropist who has contributed to the school’s
upkeep.
The first major challenge these kids face in
the new academic year is in the Math class, and it is a challenge from beyond
the syllabus. Their erstwhile teacher having resigned and relocated to
Bangalore, the kids must await his replacement. The replacement duly walks into
class and proceeds to teach them, or at least endeavors to teach them,
Mathematics in Malayalam. While he is also fluent enough in English to chide
the kids, what he is unable to do is speak in the language the kids crave and
understand: Kannada. When one of the parents vehemently opposes the kids’ having
to learn in a language they barely knew, the teacher scoots and the head master
agrees to teach the kids in Kannada.
A few days later, the State Government announces
a scheme per which students of classes 6 and 7 in the State-run schools are to
be given bicycles on Independence Day to make it easier for them to get to
school and back home. Eagerly the kids await the arrival of the bicycles in
town on Independence Day. At the school, the rest of the kids take part in the
flag hoisting ceremony and gleefully accept sweets distributed by the philanthropist
on the occasion. The bicycle-awaiting kids continue to wait only to be told by
a teacher on his way back from the Independence Day celebrations at school that
they had been omitted from the list of beneficiaries for the year. The
disappointment of the kids is doubled when they learn from a former classmate
who has switched to a Malayalam medium school that kids at his school were
given bicycles. Once more, the short-fused parent intervenes, this time making
his case blow-by-blow with the local MLA, and the kids are given cycles as
promised.
The greatest shock, though, is reserved for
around Christmas, when the local BEO serves a closure notice to the head
master; dwindling admissions is the offered pretext. The head master, the
parents, and a few prominent locals meet to discuss their options only to find
that most of the parents are resigned to having the school shut. The kids plan
to act by themselves to save their school and sit in protest outside the BEO’s
house till he drives them away. Having sought advice from one of the town
square’s prominent passers-through, the kids decide to enlist the help of a
well-known social activist so that their protest gathers gravitas and publicity
– cue Anant Nag.
As the social activist from Mysore, Anant Nag
grabs our attention as he routinely does and as only he can, though his part in
the movie is brief enough to be classified as a cameo and to leave one asking
for more. In his few moments on screen he nevertheless dazzles, drawing on
subtle mannerisms, an insouciance, and an arresting eloquence in both Kannada
and English. And he does all this while trying to keep the school from being
closed. Even though some of his lines from the climax might seem cliched if
read in print, he enlivens the words such that they resound into your thoughts.
Promptly enough, the words act as a spell in the movie.
The story excels at helping us sympathize
with the Kannadigas, particularly through the kids. The interactions among the
kids, memorable episodes at school, and their cheers and their frustrations are
well thought out. The child actors have also done a remarkable job in bringing
before our eyes the kids from the script. Apart from the kids and Anant Nag,
some other actors in the ensemble also catch the eye, particularly those
essaying the roles of the short-fused parent and the mostly idle glutton from
the town square.
However,
perhaps owing to his sentiments about the threats to Kannada and Kannadigas and
in his attempt to impress this upon us, the director Rishab Shetty seems to
have used up much screen time taking us into the world of the kids – the specimen
victims of this particular tragedy. I must confess that this feeling is in
hindsight and considering the somewhat condensed and underwhelming climax. The
story, having appeared to point at a systematic attempt, peters out and pins
everything on an individual. Perhaps, the story could have had a leaner look
into the kids’ world and a bulkier climax, possibly with an open ending rather
than a quick resolution and a denouement.
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