Inter Facing

Inter-Facing

Original song in Malayalam from the film NARENDRAN MAKAN JAYAKANDAN VAKA (Sathyan Anthikad, 2001), translated into English by Priyamol K.C. and V.C. Harris

B. Schulze’s memories: the ‘magic transformation’ of the tired bodies of women who got infused with new life by a song. How the women shyly started to move, to forget their daily chores. How visibly they gained in Self conscience by ‘claiming’ a space to rock their bodies while dancing.

To the researcher this, too, is inter-facing: of women’s faces glowing with a most human excitement of just feeling alive:

"We shall sing to make this world beautiful": my camera frames the swift movements of the women's bodies, the satisfaction in their faces, and the microphone catches the energy of their voices. Filling the air with "the sound of music" these women 'sow', and at the same time they are 'reaping' something precious to them: being in harmony with each other and their natural surroundings.

My eyes and ears and my other senses, my general aptitude to act as a 'medium' to Marginal women's outlook on life, got trained and sensitised in the course of my close inter-action with Adivasi and Dalit women activists. Without former plan I had to become the 'camera-woman' of the Marginal women who had spontaneously turned themselves into 'film directors'. I was striving for an 'empathic camera' language, learning how to communicate on other than verbal levels, and I am employing their songs, sounds, try to become aware of the mood they create, interweave audio- with visual perceptions, get a feeling for their natural, social and 'inner' emotional landscapes and photographically reproduce them, insinuate the subtle interfacing spheres, and also handle offensively intruding roadside-happenings, etc.; in this way I am receptor and re-creator of a dynamic and fruitfully erratic learning process in which for the first time Dalit and Adivasi women claim space and time for their secluded 'inner worlds' to be 'audio-visualised' and thus be given a Self-determined material shape instead of forcing them, as part of their marginalised self images, into an existence of a dependent variable governed by the priorities of a sociologically, psychologically and ideologically complex patriarchal, regionalist, and casteist society.

Facets of Inter-Facing ...
by letting loose one’s voice, mobilising one’s eyes, shoulders, hands,
stepping out into the circle of dance ...

Ammayum Nanmayum Onnannu [‘Mother and Goodness are One’],
sung by a group of Adivasi women friends

Mother and Goodness are one
We and you are one
In this endless life
We are not alone, not alone.

Though the scent and the colour are different
All flowers are flowers
Though the lands through which rivers flow are different
All rivers are rivers.

We breathe the same air
We drink the same water
We live in one world
We are born and we die alike.

No one, no one is alone/ single
One is the continuation of another
Though born alone/ single
Ultimately all are one.

Love is the fragrance of the flower of life
All of us shall become that scent
We shall sing to make this world beautiful
As fragrance, as the sound of music.

Experiences, thoughts and questions of a Dalit activist woman in Kerala ...

who resists to accept the notion of ‘Kerala woman’ as an appropriate category to reflect dalit women’s life worlds and life realities; a dalit woman who – in the first years of the 1990s – made conscious steps to organise other dalit women.

Lovely Stephen shared her insights with B. Schulze (B.S.) between 2002 and 2003, and it on this basis that B.S. founded her ‘inter-facing’ etc. about what – in combination with other dalit women’s views, their ‘sinima’, their inter-action with other Marginalised women during our workshops etc. condenses into something like:
Dalit women’s life worlds and life realities
as one of the major contributions of our research project projecting an innovative understanding of ‘femininity’, and thus expose what is happening in the everyday lives of millions under today’s conditions of globalisation: its aggressive capitalist and market strategies, its inhuman and systematic aggressions against today’s “wretched of the earth” at the ‘margins’ which are growing larger and larger ...

Inter-Facing ...
editing, and marginalia like# (denoting that this term/ topic is a recurring and important facet of the dalit women’s perspectives), and square brackets of the following paragraphs by B. Schulze:

The generally ruling tensions of the individual-collective relationship I experienced and understood as being strongest in the case of dalits, women in particular. Dalits – contrasting adivasis – are living close to the mainstream class-conscious and casteist society, and at the same time they are ghettoised in secluded “colonies” (like Kerala’s adivasis, who, in contrast, are mostly living also physically at a distance from the mainstream), and they also experience this very harsh emotional and psychological seclusion.

How do dalit women feel ...

In the dalit women I cooperated with, there is a strong desire to give expression to their particular ‘dalit-feeling-of-being-alive-as-a-human-being’: Who am I? who am I to the ‘other I’ inside ‘my’ dalit community?
... is this ‘mine’? who am I to the ‘other I’ outside ‘my’ dalit community, ... who is ‘I’, ‘Other’, ...
where is ‘inside’, ‘outside’ ...?

Dalits have to face the ugly, generally covered up truth of the violence inherent in the Keralite style of caste-cum-class society. It is a hardly veiled attack on the humanness and self-respect of dalits who are called and often (though even involuntarily) treated as "untouchables", "out-castes" or even “harijans/ children of God Krishna” – all names which the mainstream society inflicted on them.

Scholarly interpretations of dalit world views and reflections have to take into account the tension, its oscillating movements which arise of the dalits’ insights, awareness, wisdom about the mainstream's violence and hypocrisies, and the desire of a person who tries to live her life today, who struggles, who is tired and in need of some rest and moral recognition, who just desires to live in peace, to just share some of the society's and nature’s riches - accumulated during centuries and centuries also by the sweat and blood, bone and skin, and souls of dalits.

What can ‘dalit identity’ mean to a scholar?

Therefore, to speak about 'dalit identity' as if there was a clear-cut state of the art of who a dalit is to herself – who she is in her relationship to other dalits, to other low castes, other high-castes, etc. at the margins, or even outside of the mainstream economy and politics – has to take into account the above addressed tension, the oscillations, and also the possibility to totally deny these poles of ‘dalitness’ vs. ‘mainstreamness’, to reject the idea that dalits were striving for recognition per se, and to put on a test bed the normative terms defined by the existing dominant order.

B.S.’s scholarly attention, her applied methodology and theory adjusted to this 'moving dalit identity'.
One has to be very precise and moment-specific to track the traces of this evanescent state of ‘feeling dalit’.

As part of a longer thinking process which she tightly knit to her participatory action research B.S. found a combination of phenomenological and hermeneutical analyses most appropriate while keeping in close touch to, and also being in a constant dialogue with these dalit women (and a few men).
However, in the larger context of rethinking questions of ‘identities’ it is argued here that experiences of ‘dalit identity’, of ‘female identity’, ‘regional identity’ etc., exemplify the general necessity to reject theories which essentialise a 'fixed identity'; there is no ‘I’ whose ‘identity’ would be defined by just being the Other’s ‘hostile opposite’ (and vice versa) without taking into account the interrelationship between the conditions of existence in today’s many-facetted modernities/ modernisms, attitudes and emotions.

Our second project (after the discussions about the popular Onam 2001 films):
ENTE LOKAM/ My world: dalit women’s (film) perspectives from Kerala

With respect to the analyses on our 'Ente lokam/ 'My world'-project which, anyway, marks one of those rare moments of Self-assertion by dalit women in Kerala's high-caste and male dominated history, reflections about the position of dalit women in the world have to keep this oscillation between total opposition to the mainstream, some weary desire for acknowledgement, respect, peace of mind, and social utopias.

Thus, for example the wish of D7 “to have a nice kitchen” co-exists with her understanding that this longing for a ‘nice kitchen’ was actually cementing patriarchal, mainstream-society's projections of the 'good women' [see the inter-facing in our ‘Media Centre’, Content_DV_IX, and Content_DV_XI 0:00 to 4:03] .

Lovely Stephen has her very own experiences from her strong involvement with dalit women activities that bring to the fore the (veiled) attention paid in Kerala to caste on the one hand, but society's hypocritical denial of differences between dalit and non-dalit lives in terms of the material accessibility to life resources as much as in thinking.

Lovely Stephen’s approach is focused on bringing out in the dalit woman her thinking, her creative and Self-assertive capacities to act as a subject of her life.

Experiences in organising dalit women:
as told by Lovely Stephen to Brigitte Schulze, Kottayam District, Kerala.
March 27, 2002

“It is quite natural that we learn everyday, we change attitudes every day, we change beliefs everyday. And it is our experiences that bring in all these changes. And it is such experiences that motivated us to think and believe that dalits and dalitwomen have issues and problems that are different from issues of other people. The mainstream society do not acknowledge this difference. The progressive community (people) do not acknowledge ‘caste’. They see and analyse everything in the frame of ‘class’ only.

Our experience with social action groups and progressive movements gave the conviction that dalits have their own problems which they must deal themselves first. Studies and transmission of findings of such studies are necessities.

Thus we, R. from Thiruvalla and myself, decided to discuss with dalitwomen to have a group of our own.
We took [...] in Kottayam District as the place of initial work. And in January 1992 [... our group] was registered under Charitable Societies Act. We started our work with a survey of 100 dalit families. Landlessness, underemployment, unemployment, low educational standard of children, lack of saving habit in women etc. were some of the findings of the survey.

The first seven years we went through the following phases of activities.
1992 1994 1996 1998
1993 1995 1997 1999

[refers to the brochure "Activities [...] during different development phases"]

Proceeding years, we are in a particular phase where we allow our members to be part of the people’s planning process of the State (Janakeeya Asoothranam), where we observe and study the impact of our activities, where we study ourselves.

Impact of our study
Some of the impacts we understand are as follows:
     1. For the first time in this State, women’s groups, NGOs, political parties and dalit organizations started         discussing issues of dalitwomen.
     2. Taking encouragement from the organizations in different parts of the state, more dalit organizations
         and dalitwomen’s groups were started.
     3. Dalit women in different places of the State developed the feeling that they can create their own history.

My Last 10 Years Experience – What It Taught Me

My working with dalit women for the last ten years gave me varied and mixed experiences. Some of them are encouraging while some are painful and more thought-provoking. Encouraging experiences are examples of how people who are denied rights and privileges yearn for it and are committed to fulfillment of their needs. And the painful experiences I see as the balance sheets of slavery and prevailing caste system. The encouraging factor is that once the women are convinced on what they need and want, what their rights are, they are ready to go any far to achieve their aim. They are
sincere and committed to their cause. Some of the painful experiences are as follows:
         - They seldom keep punctuality
         - They seldom accept each other
         - They are happy to enjoy attitudes and approaches of equality but they seldom share such
              attitudes or approaches with others.
         - Very often, they like more to be beneficiaries# of development programs than to be agitators for               own rights.
         - They are not ready to invest for their children’s education
         - They like ‘charity’ more than ‘self esteem’#
         - They like to be led by someone from ‘Sarvarna’ community#. They do not want to be their own               mistresses#.

What I learnt from these experiences
        - studies on different aspects of dalit women’s life# must come out
        - instead of employment programs the group must take the responsibility# of educating
          the community through relevant studies and production of knowledge#.

Future ...

Hence we feel that [we] must accept [our] historical role as a study and resource center. It must continue to be a guide to one who is committed to societal change#. “

Two pieces by Lovely Stephen on a book by C.S. Chandrika (1998) [see below]

Inter-facing, editing, bold letters, marginalia like # point at a further elaboration on this marked term in other areas of our forum, and square brackets in the text are by B.S.

[the gap between Chandrika's claim and her whole approach to "Kerala women's history"# Stephen convincingly exposes as "savarnacentric"#, i.e. focussing on savarnas, the castes; Stephen's tone is bitter# and a bit weary# - also my experience while working with her felt that deep exhaustion#: I am addressing this weariness in the dimension of 'Justice']

In the following two items on 'women's history in Kerala' are documented which B.S. received from Lovely Stephen. The first review is categorised under 1.) and the second summary by Lovely Stephen of the same book by C.S. Chandrika under 2.).

In both pieces Stephen voices her view on writings by C.S Chandrika, a feminist, who is also a short-story writer who had to struggle for quite some time in Kerala, but then managed to make her views be published. Thus, it is mainly her [not enthusiastically, but] noted book Keralathile Sthreemunnetangalude Chatrithram [translation see below] which is the reference point to Lovely Stephen's very thoughtful critique.

ad 1. Inter-facing about Stephen’s main thoughts, statements, reflections, questions:
Who are the women who 'become' notables in a casteridden patriarchal society? And what type of activities enable them to be notables? those who sacrificed themselves for the honour of their men; or, those, who complemented men in their reformist and progressive activities? ... erasure of the various experiences of women belonging to different times, places, castes and classes. C.S. Chandrika makes an attempt to address some of these problems of historiography; [s]he tries to reread Kerala women's history from a subaltern feminist perspective; literature# and mass media# in the cultural empowerment of women, the regressive role played by most of the socalled women's magazines#, and the experience of women writers# etc., are also discussed. Chandrika emphases the urgency of women's entry# into the visual media and literary criticism; [o]ne remarkable thing about this book is the valuable account it gives of the marxist/ socialist feminist groups of the 1970s which initiated the process of sensitising the state and the public on women's issues; [b]ut, as Chandrika rightly observes, the women's wings of the communist parties# have been making a negative impact on women's struggles by subordinating it to class struggle#. She also brings out the negative role played by most of the women's magazines which tie women to the ideology of the family# and consumerism#; women of lower castes haunted by the legacies of caste oppression and slavery find themselves excluded# from the metanarratives of Kerala women's history#; Chandrika herself falls prey to this savarnacentricity which she apparently seems to fight; [w]hat makes the dalit women invisible in spite of their prolonged struggle against slavery and caste oppression? Is it simply because they have failed to enter the print and electronic space? Oral history could tackle some of these problems. But Chandrika's oral history stumbles on traditional castelines and takes the form of mere accomodative history; [t]his type of history suffers from amnesia on questions of slavery# and caste#. It does not do justice to the effects of slavery on dalit women and to the advantages it brought to the uppercaste women# who parade themselves as Keralasthree#; socalled progressive men#; [t]he self-understanding of women themselves who participated in the radical political movements is in no way different from the dominant gender's view; the relation between knowledge and power# is a fact accepted by all. In our culture and civilisation, some are, by their very birth, endowed with power thereby making resources# more accessible to them. There is nothing to be so self righteous and patriotic# about indigenous funding. Alienation# from indigenous resources [!!] lies at the root of dalit women's oppression#. This is a fact to be reckoned with; the key to understanding the history of women's struggles is in accepting that it is also the history of the innumerable struggles of the majority# of women including adivasi, dalit and fisherwomen. But are we not excluding vast areas of women's experience [!!] when we conceive of history# only as struggles?

ad 2. Inter-facing, bold letters, transcript, partial translations from Malayalam by B.S.:
'When the society says 'woman', it doesn't remember an adivasi woman, or dalit woman. Agitations of dalit and adivasi women are not considered as women struggles. When women's experiences are shared, experiences of the subaltern (Malayalam: keezhaala) are never shared. Nobody sees a dalit woman as a representative of dalit women', Lovely Stephen who leads the dalit feminist movement in the state criticises; [i]n media and women, while discussing various newsletters of women, she mentions Sodari, the newsletter of Dalit Women's Society; [a]nd in women's theatre she mentions dalit women's theatre;

1. Book review: C.S. Chandrika (1998), Keralathile Sthreemunnettangalute Charithram,
['History of the Women's Movements of Kerala'], Thrissur, Kerala Sahitya Akademi

Lovely Stephen "Women's History or Herstories of Women Notables?"
in: Malayalam Literary Survey, Vol. 20, No. 4 October-December 1998 & Vol. 21 No.1 January-March 1999, "Focus on Women Writing in Kerala", pp. 196-199

[196] What is women's history? Is it the history of women notables? Who are the women who 'become' notables in a casteridden patriarchal society? And what type of activities enable them to be notables? Women in history have often been conceived as those excelled in men's roles; those who sacrificed themselves for the honour of their men; or, those, who complemented men in their reformist and progressive activities? This traditional notion of women's history invariably leads to the erasure of the various experiences of women belonging to different times, places, castes and classes. C.S. Chandrika makes an attempt to address some of these problems of historiography in her book Keralathile Sthreemunnettangalute Charithram.

Conventional historiography offers us a women's history which attributes women's empowerment and emancipation to the endevours of uppercaste male social reformers. This history often begins with long accounts of the contributions made by such men towards the uplift and amelioration of savarna women. It is in this context that Chandrika's book becomes significant. She tries to reread Kerala women's history from a subaltern feminist perspective.

Quite interestingly, the book opens, though in a tokenist way, with a mention of the Channur Lehala otherwise knows as the "uppercloth riots". The early chapters of this book deal with themes such as participation of women in social reform movements, women's struggles under their own leadership, and problems faced by women activists during the period between the [197] second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This is followed by accounts of autonomous women's groups and women's organisations affiliated to political parties. The book also deals with the emerging feminist theatres and the issues of identity raised by adivasi/ dalit women within the women's movement. the role of literature and mass media in the cultural empowerment of women, the regressive role played by most of the socalled women's magazines, and the experience of women writers etc., are also discussed. Chandrika emphases the urgency of women's entry into the visual media and literary criticism.

One remarkable thing about this book is the valuable account it gives of the marxist/ socialist feminist groups of the 1970s which initiated the process of sensitising the state and the public on women's issues. These groups emphasised the ideological and political aspects of gender. But, as Chandrika rightly observes, the women's wings of the communist parties have been making a negative impact on women's struggles by subordinating it to class struggle. She also brings out the negative role played by most of the women's magazines which tie women to the ideology of the family and consumerism. These magazines skilfully cover up the role played by family in subjugating women and perpetuating asymmetrical relations of power between the sexes.

It is true that the instituted history in every society reflects the lives and experiences of the dominant classes and communities and occludes the experience of the marginalised groups. This is true of women's history also. But for some token references, women of lower castes haunted by the legacies of caste oppression and slavery find themselves excluded from the metanarratives of Kerala women's history. One need not feel dismay when Chandrika herself falls prey to this savarnacentricity which she apparently seems to fight. Though she mentions the Channar Lehala at the outset, the major share of her book is devoted to the contributions of uppercaste women. Here a number of questions come up. What type of performances are recognised as contributions and by whom? What is so marvellous about the contributions of the uppercaste women reformers, considering the social position they were placed in and the nationalist reformist context? Why is it that, compared to uppercaste women, women of lower castes are not [198] capable of performing actions which are recognized as great contributions to society? What makes the dalit women invisible in spite of their prolonged struggle against slavery and caste oppression? Is it simply because they have failed to enter the print and electronic space?

Oral history could tackle some of these problems. But Chandrika's oral history stumbles on traditional castelines and takes the form of mere accomodative history. Thus there is a compensatory chapter on the adivasi struggle led by C.K. Janu; and there are references to some dalit women leaders. One is reminded of Hazel Carby's critique of white feminist theory and history in Britain. When white feminists, she argued, "write their herstory and call it the story of women but ignore our lives and deny their relation to us, that is the moment in which they are acting within the relations of racism and writing hisstory". This type of history suffers from amnesia on questions of slavery and caste. It does not do justice to the effects of slavery on dalit women and to the advantages it brought to the uppercaste women who parade themselves as Keralasthree.
The role of women in the progressive movements and political parties is yet another area of debate. The majority of socalled progressive men still believe that the kingdom of kitchen belongs to women only and that women have no place in serious deliberations, decision making, or administration. The self-understanding of women themselves who participated in the radical political movements is in no way different from the dominant gender's view. But there is something wrong in conceiving women's role in radical political movements simply as cooking, washing and caring for men, or, going on errands and providing entertainment.

The question of foreign funding is a very sensitive issue. Chandrika strongly warns against receiving funds from imperialist centres. She is of the view that accepting funds from agencies like the UNESCO, The Ford Foundation, etc., for purposes of research and documentation is tantamount to betraying the movement and the struggles within the country. The interesting thing is that she discusses the issue in relation to the non-class movements: women, ecology, dalit, adivasi, etc., and that this discussion occurs in the same chapter where she condescends to introduce two well known dalit feminists Ruth Manorama and [199] Resly Abraham who are very vehement in their insistence on the specificity of dalit women's oppression. The insinuation against foreign funded research organisations, documentation centres and non-class movements smacks of vulgar marxism and spurious nationalism.

The relation between knowledge and power is a fact accepted by all. In our culture and civilisation, some are, by their very birth, endowed with power thereby making resources more accessible to them. There is nothing to be so self righteous and patriotic about indigenous funding. Alienation from indigenous resources lies at the root of dalit women's oppression. This is a fact to be reckoned with.
As Rosalind Miles says, women's history has only just begun to invent itself. Women gained entry only recently to the business of recording, defining and interpreting events. Early women's history was devoted to creating heroines in the mirror image of heroes. This kind of history fails to address the reality of the majority of women's lives who had neither the opportunity nor the appetite for heroic activities. Chandrika's book belongs to this genre of women's history; for as Gerda Lerner observes, "The key to understanding women's history is in accepting ... that it is the history of the majority of the human race." The key to understanding the history of women's struggles is in accepting that it is also the history of the innumerable struggles of the majority of women including adivasi, dalit and fisherwomen. But are we not excluding vast areas of women's experience when we conceive of history only as struggles?

2. Commented translation which Lovely Stephen prepared on request of B. Schulze on an article by C.S. Chandrika titled "Keralathindu Sthreecharithram" ['The History of Women in Kerala'] in: Samakalika Malayalam Weekly, January 7, 2000, "Kerala in the 20th century", excerpt from pp. 196-226

This article is basically a summary of her book Keralathile Sthreemunnetangalude Chrithram [see 1.] with some modifications.

She starts with caste system and the resultant difference in the status of various women. She mentions the upper cloth riots of Channar women, and Kallumala riot of dalit women. She hoes through property rights and gender, reform movements in the state, freedom struggle, women's movements, women in the labour sector, political movements, liberation movements, Parishad and women, Self employment organisation (SEWA) during the last decade of the 20th century. then she briefly notes dalit thoughts where she mentions Dalit Women's Society (p. 214, para 4 and 5):

" 'When the society says 'woman', it doesn't remember an adivasi woman, or dalit woman. Agitations of dalit and adivasi women are not considered as women struggles. When women's experiences are shared, experiences of the subaltern (Malayalam: Keezhaala) are never shared. Nobody sees a dalit woman as a representative of dalit women', Lovely Stephen who leads the dalit feminist movement in the state criticises. It is in the 1990s that dalit feminist thoughts got stronger* in the state criticising the women's movement, socio-political revolutionary movements and male dominated dalit organisations. Dalit women in their own leadership initiated organisations that clarified how issues of dalit women differ from others, and how issues of these are closely related to issues of dalit women. Lovely Stephen, Elsamma, Mary, Thankamma, Aleyamma, Annamma Joseph, Rajamma K.P., Radhamony, Omana P.K., Jalaja and Priyamol organised the work of Kurichy Dalit Women's Society started in the year 1992."

Then she goes to describe adivasi issues, minority movements, anti-liquor agitations, Kerala Sthreevedi, and media and women.
In media and women, while discussing various newsletters of women, she mentions Sodari#, the newsletter of Dalit Women's Society (p. 220, para 2). She writes Sodari discusses experiences of dalit women, reporting of struggles of dalit women, book reviews and cinema reviews.

Then she describes feminist thoughts in literature and also about women's theatre. And in women's theatre she mentions dalit women's theatre (p. 224, para 4) also. She writes, in 1997 under the auspices of Dalit Women's Society, the first dalit women play was staged at Kottayam. T.M. Yesudasan did the script based* on the story by C. Ayyappan. Samkutty did the direction. And women played an active role in the discussions at each stage of the making of the play.

And Chandrika concludes by noting painting and sculpture in a feminist view.

Inter-Facing LIFE & SINIMA ...

In Kerala the Malayalam word sinima is used with reference to ‘cinema’ and also to ‘film’.

In the course of her participatory action research B. Schulze made sinima into her term to denote:

1. the awareness of the Marginalised women about the essentials of the popular cinema’s ideological and entertaining aspects [see our discussion sessions on the Onam cinema 2001]

2. the intellectual, ethical and emotional skills and the utopian power of Marginalised women’s Self-controlled filmmaking [see our 13 ENTE LOKAM/ ‘My world’ short films, and the essayist film]:

... KUDIYIRAKKAPPEDUNAVAR/ DISPLACED PEOPLE

This isn’t a film communicating according to modes and standards set within the dominant media’s world. It is a filmic Self-reflection about and from within dalit women’s life-worlds, who expressed themselves through this film, who want to share their views with other women living under similar conditions.

They created a spoken prologue, six episodes, and an open end ...
35 Minutes, digital video film scripted and directed in February-March 2002 by Dalit women,
videographed by Brigitte Schulze, and edited by C. Saratchandran and B. Schulze following the ideas of the Dalit women.

Inter-Facing between D6 and B. Schulze on KUDIYIRAKKAPPEDUNAVAR/ DISPLACED PEOPLE and beyond:

D6 was most actively involved in our KUDIYIRAKKAPPEDUNAVAR/ DISPLACED PEOPLE.
During the period of our co-operation (2000-2003) she is in her late twenties. In a courageous manner she runs her home – fatherless because he didn’t survive an asthmatic attack – a small hut with a few cents of land which she cares for together with her feeble mother.

D6, D5, and D3 selected the main song for our film:

Song of KUDIYIRAKKAPPEDUNAVAR/ DISPLACED PEOPLE
[sung in its original Malayalam by D6 and Ponnamma Kochamma,
B. Schulze’s much loved mother-like neighbour]:

Awake sister!
Awake sister!
Demolish the prison
of past centuries

Indoors
We shed our burning tears
And we washed dirty linen in public
Born only to be perished our lives are ruined