The Bond

Naata (The Bond). Directors, producers, editors, writers:K. P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro Production Company;Unit for Media and Communication, Tata Institute of SocialSciences, Mumbai; 2003. Color film, 45 minutes; Hindi andEnglish, with English subtitles. Distributed by DocumentaryEducation Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02472;see www.der.org for details.

Naata (The Bond) is a documentary with four intertwined tales. Bhau Korde, amigrant to Mumbai with his parents from the Ahmednagar district in Gujarat,who worked in a school in Dharavi from 1948 to 1995, tells the story of his life.Waqar Khan, who arrived in Mumbai with his parents and siblings from Bareillyin Uttar Pradesh, narrates how he held a variety of jobs in the city—as a hawkerselling bananas, then ready-made garments, and finally, at the time of the makingof the film, an owner of a ready-made garment unit with 40 machines.

The producers and directors, Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar, who arefaculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai and first-generationmigrants to the city themselves, also narrate their own story. Unlike Khan andKorde, however, we never see them. Their narrative of their families’ lives toldthrough material culture—toothbrushes, toys, vegetables, and other objects. Theydescribe this documentary as a sort of ‘‘self-reflexive ethnography, low budget.’’It negotiates the middle-class origins of their film and its relationship to the sub-altern classes that make another film through gentle self-humor, so that while thesubaltern speaks, the viewers=directors are not voyeurs nor patronizing ‘‘others’’but allied media.

The final tale is a tale of two cities inextricably bound to each other: Mumbai,with its impressive skyline, the city of film stars, India’s great metropolis of about18 million people, and Dharavi, Asia’s largest shantytown, with about 800,000people. The ‘‘slum’’ that today lies within the heart of Mumbai, built by the laborof migrants who arrive daily to follow their dreams and those displaced by forceswithin the urban area, find that they live in the shadows of ‘‘the Mumbai of theoutside’’ (bahar ki Mumbai), where the directors live.

Dharavi’s history is described as one of communal coexistence: its mosque wasbuilt on land donated by Kolis (fishermen), and the Adi Dravidas’ Hindu templewas built through the assistance of the Muslims. There are pictures of Shirdi SaiBaba, a saint revered by both Muslims and Hindus, in a teashop, and we are toldthat the Ganapati procession in Dharavi every year visits the mosque on its route.We see scenes of Holi and Muharram being celebrated, thriving markets with

Visual Anthropology, 20: 313–314, 2007

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online

DOI: 10.1080/08949460701424312

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meat on skewers and pineapple, and the ceaseless industry of residents makingeverything from food to clothes for a local and an export market (they feel theycould even meet the challenge of cheap Chinese goods if the government pro-vided some assistance). This is a ‘‘mini-Hindustan.’’

The documentary focuses on the growing political consciousness of Korde andKhan following the 1992–93 communal clashes in Dharavi. They try to respond tothe question: How could people who had lived so close together and supportedeach other with shelter, food, and employment butcher each other or set fire todwellings and stores? The directors’ camera follows the efforts of Khan andKorde, who become friends due to their involvement in neighborhood commit-tees, as they produce a film on communal harmony. Their film, which involvesthose living in Dharavi, depicts the real stories behind the riots, the perpetratorsand victims, and the many acts of courage and compassion by people who inter-vened to save the lives of others, irrespective of religious affiliation. They decidethat they have been merely spectators of films for a long time; it is time to maketheir own, not a secular film by people having a secular discussion, but some-thing else. This film was shown at their own expense in their communities andeven on national television.

This is a great documentary for graduate and undergraduate courses on SouthAsia, religion, urban studies, political science, sociology, or anthropology. Itraises many questions about subalterns, power, visual media, local nongovern-mental organizations, and cities. The film shows the initiative and enterprise ofresidents in the place they call home, where they have built everything, althoughfor those on the outside this is a slum, filthy and crime-ridden. The editing is deft,the film has flashes of humor and some excellent footage of the city within thecity. Its message is that if everyone pursued the modest goal of doing somethingabout local problems (even with small budgets and resources), then real socialchange could occur. This is a simple message, probably unrealistic to some;but at the end of the film we find ourselves unable to disagree with Korde andKhan: this is not a secular film by people having a secular discussion, butsomething else. It takes us beyond the tired dualism of fundamentalism andsecularism to the bonds that work in everyday life in the South Asian city.

Smriti SrinivasDepartment of Anthropology

University of California at DavisDavis, CA

USAssrinivas@ucdavis.edu

314 Film Reviews