Peripheral Lives: Borderlands by Samarth Mahajan
Exploring the personal as political, Borderlands (2021) is a slice-of-life documentary about those who are affected by the India-Pakistan, India-Nepal, India-Myanmar and India-Bangladesh borders. Directed by Samarth Mahajan, the film bears witness to the experiences of six characters and how they navigate personal, societal and political borders in the everyday. These are defined by the choices they have made—whether to stay within a country’s borders or to leave everything behind and move to a new terrain, only to miss their family and past constantly.
The film is Mahajan’s second outing after his national-award winning documentary, The Unreserved (2017), about the passengers who travel in the cheapest compartment of Indian railways. With his first feature documentary, Mahajan solidified his method of filmmaking, i.e., travelling the length and breadth of the country to capture stories of its people, especially those who live on the margins—unnoticed and uncared for. In Borderlands, the filmmaker follows his subjects over months—travelling from a Pakistani migrant camp in Jodhpur, to Dinanagar in Punjab, to Birgunj at India-Nepal border, to Imphal in Manipur, to a shelter home in Kolkata, to Nargaon near the India-Bangladesh border—tracing the delicate nature of the business of living near Indian borders. Though fluid and porous, these borders were created long before the characters in this documentary were born. The documentary thus poses the following questions: One, what happens when you physically cross the border to live in the neighbouring country? And two, what are the other borders (psychological, gendered, sexual, notional, domestic and patriarchal) that you are presented with, and challenged by, that you may or may not choose to cross.
Mahajan’s hometown, Dinanagar in Punjab, is situated seventeen kilometres from the Pakistan border, which perhaps lends us some insight into why he was inspired to make this film. His lived experience seems to have prompted this journey to seek out others who have led similar existences. He acts as witness to each of the characters and is present through the film (sometimes within the frame). One of the characters is his mother, Rekha, a patriotic housewife living in Dinanagar, who wanted to be a teacher. Mahajan interviews her “as a filmmaker, not as a son,” his mother states. The other characters include Deepa, a migrant Pakistani schoolgirl in Jodhpur who wants to be a nurse; Kavita, a disabled but self-sufficient woman who works at the India-Nepal check post to monitor human trafficking; Dhauli, living at a BSF camp village in Nargaon, who was separated from her family in Bangladesh for fifteen years; Noor—trafficked from Bangladesh into India—who finds love in a shelter home in Kolkata after being rescued. There are many borders that women never cross in their lifetimes: borders of domesticity, of sexuality, of social norms. The film laments upon these in particular, given that five of its subjects are women. Surjakanta, the only male character, is a Manipuri filmmaker with an understanding of the complicated India-Manipuri history and how it shapes the identity of the modern-day Manipuris and their cinema.
Each border is ordained to carry out certain performances. At the Wagah-Attari border, almost-ritualistic ceremonies are held with huge pomp, by both India and Pakistan on their respective territories. At the Milan Mela on the India-Bangladesh border, families meet each other once a year, through the concertina fence. These borders find their origin in the Partition of British India though there is a stark contrast in the conduct at both borders. While the Wagah border is a tourist location, frequently visited by people from both India and Pakistan; the India-Bangladesh border is quiet and has a similarly bloodied history of Partition and the 1971 Bangladesh war. The two characters at the periphery of these borders, Rekha (in Punjab) and Dhauli (in West Bengal), have led very different lives. Rekha, despite living near the border for decades, has never seen it before, while Dhauli crossed the border to India with her husband years ago, separated from the rest of her family for fifteen years. Dhauli is now able to meet them at the yearly Milan Mela—where the family members greet each other through the wired fence, catch up on the family news, exchange gifts and are happy to see each other even in this manner.
Patriotism appears as the strangest emotion when Rekha visits the Wagah border for the first time. The housewife opens up, dances and enjoys the day at the border. She says she felt like a child—that it was not patriotism at display, it was freedom. She had gone to witness the border ceremony, but she had also crossed her domesticated border and for a day, she was just a woman, dancing at the border parade, not a housewife, not a mother.
The lack of agency that these characters have had comes forth through their testimonies. Noor, living in a shelter home after being trafficked to India and later rescued, practised self-harm for a long time. She says she is angry and rightfully so. However, her resilience is remarkable. She finds love in a girl at the shelter and intends to challenge anyone who will try to stop her from living her life on her own terms.
Borderlands consists of stories of domesticated women, of women pushed out of their homes and stories of resilience. The men in the film (both Surjakanta and Mahajan) seek out ways to understand their immediate worlds through the process of filmmaking. “If we do not share our own stories, who will?” asks Surjakanta, who has spent his life sharing stories of Manipuris on celluloid. Surjakanta shows these films to the next generation and guides other filmmakers. Living on the periphery makes you seek out others who are the same—not defined by the metanarratives of mainstream filmmaking or current news. It makes you want to challenge the previously existing norms and methods, to make up for the lack of agency. And that is what this documentary is about—Mahajan’s quest to find agency in the country’s borderlands, in the hope of making others care, as much as he does, about these peripheral lives.
Borderlands is screening online till the 14th of November as part of the Dharamshala International Film Festival 2021.
All images from the film Borderlands by Samarth Mahajan. 2021. Images courtesy of the director.
To read about some of the other films at the festival, please click here, here and here.
