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UNRESOLVED Sarah Singh: ‘If India is trying to be a super-power, then it needs to stabilise its regional problems’; a scene from her film

In 2004, she attended a talk on Partition by the Asia Society in NY — a topic she had never heard of before. When she listened to writer Bapsi Sidhwa and a man in his late 70s who gave a gut-wrenching description of his vivid experience of refugee camps in New Delhi, she wondered: “How come I don’t know anything?”

It took a year and a half for Sarah to put together a project, and meet a strong desire to visit Pakistan. “It was an aesthetic reason. I was keen on exploring the region and engage people from ‘outside’ on the issue… people who look at the Indian sub-continent as a ‘hotbed of terrorism’ and a ‘rising economic power’ via mass-media and sound-bytes,” says Sarah.

She adds: “In my mind, I wanted to explore the idea of why, we, with a history of 1,000 years of civilization live in the most ‘weaponised’ era in the world.” Her movie raises some important questions and thoughts about post-partition and what is the result vis-À-vis six decades of Independence in India.

Her message and motive of ‘The Sky Below’ wants to graze the area of “not particularly about Partition, but whether it was a reasonable political situation over a long term with its fall-out (from Partition).

It’s about society’s ability to evolve from the cycle of violence.” The title chosen for her film, ‘The Sky Below’ is “a literal interpretation or perspective of a world turned upside down”.

In her movie, there is great pomp and show at the Wagah border and frenzied cheering from both sides as the chauvinistic soldiers march.

And a recent India-Pakistan match witnessed a similar whirl of jingoistic fervour and vehemence that was deliberately manifested and pronounced after India’s narrow victory. Says the independent director: “There were two brothers who had divided their land. Later, when one went to visit Pakistan, he was touched by the hospitality he was given and similarly, when his brother came to India.”

“It is a sad irony — Hindus and Muslims fought together for freedom. But now, in reality, it is the British who can travel easily to both divided countries.” “But it is too easy to blame the British and downplay the role of the Indian and Pakistani leaders. They were said to be puppets but were very much involved.” She feels: “Had the population been involved at large, Partition would have turned out in a different way.” She adds: “However, it was a cut and run situation; it took place in just two months.”

Armed with “two cameras and a backpack”, Sarah filmed her movie “in an unobtrusive way that was casual and not intimidating” and didn’t have four people clouding over the interviewees. She says: “I want my experience and movie to inspire people, especially women, to make independent films as digital technology has made it possible.”

She feels: “If India is trying to be a super-power, then it needs to stabilise its regional problems. If 10 crore is going to be utilised for battleground purposes in Kashmir and elsewhere, the psychological fragility of the place can never be healed, even if the issue is resolved.”

“We have to address the past. Things can’t go in motion without a memory and expect to move forward in a democracy where everything boils down to power plays.”

And testimonies of the horrors of this division in a series of blurred photographs almost seem to show the ambiguities of a history that is best brushed aside, kept under wraps and blocked out of memory.

The graphic, poignant and jarring photographs of first woman war photographer – the American Margaret Bourke-White as incorporated in the new 2006 edition of Khushwant Singh’s “Train to Pakistan” resonate in the movie.

A series of images and voices haunts the viewer – “Do you see the border/Do not go Beyond/A bullet will kill you/The world ends here”, a survivor wonders why he should “walk away from life”, the signpost of a Government Sales Depot which offers ‘refugee products from head gear to foot wear’ and the Thar Express that was restarted in 2006 after 40 years.

And as pictures of remnants and relics of an ancient history and civilization which are designated to a museum, the two countries shared history and past is denied, thwarted and erased.

The piano recital was evocatively done to herald British presence in the country and the blurry and dim shots from a window of a plane of Cyril Radcliffe a man of ‘great legal abilities, right personality and wide administrative experience’ and chairman, Boundary Commissions for Punjab and Bengal was depicted in all its vagueness.

Mira Philbaus notes that “the fallout of the divide still persists – by those in Kashmir”, historian Romila Thapar points that “ancestors have a way of coming back”, a man remarks “it (Partition) is the best thing that could have happened” and Ashis Nandy reminds us that historical genocide has happened not among strangers as in the case of German and Jews and Tutsi and Hutu tribes in Rwanda, in frames fading in and out to merge into each other.

Another ironic revelation was that in 1948, a year after Partition and Independence, Israel was created. As the movie treads on the issue of abduction and its hair-raising numbers of missing people, characters from writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s chilling “Thanda Gosht” (Cold Meat), revealing “Khol Do” (Open it), contentious “Teetwal ka kutta” (The Dog of Teetwal) and the political madness in “Toba Tek Singh” resound in your mind.

The heavy militarisation in Kashmir – arms bazaar, the brutal control of land and water – in all its gravity is brought out in the voices of people from politicians and journalists to the citizens.

The movie closes with shots of a cyclist pedalling against the wind and the stark black frame of a boatman rowing backwards in River Sutlej, which flows between the two nations – raising once again questions of “Why this change happened?”

And that 60 years hence, we are still moving against time, distance and speed.

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