Paulami
Duttagupta is a novelist and screenplay writer. She shuttles between Kolkata
and Shillong. She has worked as a radio artist, copywriter, journalist and a
television analyst. Her first film script, Ri—Homeland of Uncertainty, received
the National Award for the Best Khasi Film. She wrote Onaatah, a National Award
(India) winning film, and adapted the same story into a book. Here’s a
conversation with Paulami.
Could you start
by sharing a bit about your background to the extent comfortable - your
childhood, growing years, education and family?
I grew up in Shillong, in a
nuclear family with parents teaching in colleges. For the most part of my
childhood I had the freedom to let my imagination run wild. I was kind of a
loner and preferred to read , play or just imagine things. Loreto Convent, my
school wasn’t particularly the kind to pile students with loads of homework
etc. So the pressure to spend time with school text books was never really
there. When I was in class ten, I would spend a lot sleeping in the infirmary,
not because I was ill but because I hadn’t slept the night before, was up
watching a cricket match or because I had a book that needed to be read.
My bestie was and is my
brother, and we shared fun times, had some good fights. We still do. Nothing like a good bout of wrestling and
beating him. As I grew up, the choices of my life were left to me. There were
never things I couldn’t tell my parents. Even now the four of us take family
trips, drink wine and have long addas.
I took up humanities and
literature and the three years at college were the best in my life. That was
the time that I begun to question and research on things. Also, a year before
joining college the Kargil War happened and changed my life forever. No , there
was no one from my family at war front. But reading about the steady list of
men coming back wrapped in coffins had altered something. That was also the
time when I started reading a lot of nonfiction, writing articles etc.
What got you
into writing, both fiction for print and for film?
It is not that I didn’t write
while in college or university but that got lost somewhere. I got into
television and said good bye to creativity. Life was boring with eight hours at
work and movies in the weekends. And then one evening there was a TV show, I
was smitten and there were fan fictions written every day. Friends made me
publish the stories on my blog, I got readers and I became a writer. My first
book was published- a fan fiction too. Writing cinema was an accident too. It
just happened. I have no degree, have never been to a film school.
Let's talk about
Onaatah. What inspired it?
It was the director Pradip
Kurbah’s brain child. He had met victims who wondered what lay ahead for them.
When he discussed this with me, we realized we needed to tell their stories and
Onaatah happened.
Could you tell
us a little about the journey of writing it and any memorable incidents from
the writing journey?
Writing Onaatah was a lot
about learning, about cinema and writing. I was just a one film old
screenwriter when I took up Onaatah and had lot of drawbacks in my approach
toward screenwriting. So chunks of the screenplay and sometimes even entire
drafts had to be rejected. I am also a little obsessed with research and read
case studies etc to identify with what a victim of gender violence goes
through. I believe the memorable part of penning the screenplay of Onaatah is
the strong women I learnt about. Their strength might not be honoured with
medals and accolades in TV studios, but they teach us common women to lead our
lives fearlessly.
The film had a
resounding impact that drew plenty of awards. Would you like to talk a bit
about the positive impact of the film on people - were there any turnarounds /
mindset changes?
It was a Film Festival, my
first as a writer and I was there to present my film to the audience. As the film got over and I was called to go
up on stage for the Q&A session, a couple of young girls came and hugged
me. They were strangers, but they were overwhelmed by what they had seen. Later
while answering the questions as I talked about society’s hypocrisy in
associating honour with sexual violence, there were lot of men from the
audience who agreed and supported by views and came up and talked to me about
the screening. As much as I want to believe
Onaatah has changed mindsets, I know for a film to do so is an uphill task.
However, what I feel good as a writer is how people have reached out and talked
about the story and voiced their support.
Now after launching the book version of Onaatah, I feel a lot more needs
to be done. Just narrating a story is not enough. The charm of cinema is that
it gets to reach even the illiterate of those who don’t realize the power of
written words. The journey would get some meaning if I could reach out to
victims and facilitate their rehabilitation while also sensitizing young minds.
I do have the idea of a support group in mind and would be glad if more women
and of course men join me in this initiative.
What challenges
/ resistance did you face while releasing / after releasing Onaatah?
For a small indie film from a
state that is still in its nascent stages of filmmaking and does not make too
many films, it is always a challenge to make a film. There are issues with
funding and you realize you never have enough funds for publicity and release
of the film. But when you know you have a story that needs to be told, you have
to do it. I believe that is what we did with Onaatah.
Let's talk about
the book. It is not an easy task to fill in the interstices that another media
form fills into the silences in the story. How easy or difficult was it to
communicate through another medium?
I would be lying if I say it
was difficult to write the book version. The story had lived with me for so
long, and the performance of my team members had impacted me so much that the
words just came out when I sat at the keyboard.
Onaatah reflects
a very important journey that shows contrasting shades between the men in the
portrayal - as purveyors of violence, and as purveyors of unconditional
support. What, in your opinion, is the reason for this toxic patriarchy that
keeps reinforcing itself on the one hand, and, what do you believe can make men
question the privilege their masculinity affords them?
Men need
to realize something very simple. Patriarchy does not just make lives difficult
for women. It erodes male sensitivity, places undue pressures on them, makes
them believe they have to be providers and protectors. This very idea makes
them think that they have an edge over women and women silently feed these
egos. What makes a mother feed a little
more to her son and teach her daughter to adjust? What makes a mother not
realize the importance of educating the girl child?
Patriarchy
cannot be smashed with rap music and poems on social media. I might sound like
a bitter critic but circulating pictures of knickers with menstrual blood or
memes of Goddesses has little or negative impact on people. We have to realize
we live in a country where basic education is denied to people. I was reading a
report on rapes in one of the states in India and a young boy had believed that
if a friend had raped a girl of the same village, it was because he had loved
her. Young girls are still forced to marry their rapists, because village
elders think it is ‘ the right thing’.
Unless we reach the grass root level and talk in a language they
understand, it is all futile. A man
needs to understand that the privilege he thinks he enjoys is just an idea. He
today has been reduced to a commodity, whose pay-packet determines his price
tag. If men are happy with that shallow
positioning of their selves then I believe we should let them live with their
false lives. But before that what we
need is a mass movement against the portrayal of both men and women on both
Indian television and cinema. That is what reinforces ‘ toxic patriarchy.’
