Siva

I’m amazed that this film got awards. I really racked my brain to make some sense out of it. Actually the movie is an amalgamation of four Assamese folk tales about women which playout simultaneously. A mother marrying her daughter to a python (& killing her) in the hope of getting rich and a woman giving birth to an apple which follows the mother everywhere are a bit too much to digest even as a folk tale. In another story a wicked woman kills her stepdaughter and buries her in the night. In the last story a father keeps burying alive his newborn infants (against his wife’s wish), just because his uncle told him to do so. Ironically in the end, even the hapless mother believes that it was all done for their good. In all these stories women have been portrayed either as negative or as helpless gullible victims. I feel sorry for the children who are told such folk tales. Sometimes international awards are given if India is portrayed as regressive and ‘yet to be civilised people’. But it beats me as to how the movie got a national award. You can’t even decide on the movies genre. It a combination of dark, horror and depressing. After watching the movie it makes you think a lot…to identify something that all can see…but…somehow you have missed.