Religious divide in Mr and Mrs Iyer

NEW DELHI: "Love in the time of violence," is how Aparna Sen looks at Mr and Mrs Iyer. Her latest film was inspired by a curfew that held up long distance buses in upcountry Bengal. "But the communal spectre has haunted me since the Babri demolition," said the director, who was honoured with a retrospective at the Kolkata Film Festival this month.
What came down at Ayodhya was "a faith in secularism, the cornerstone of Indian democracy".The relationship between the two dominant communities has just not been the same since. "One didn''t realise how deeply it affected us until it came out in a script." When it did, it showed that a communal flare-up, though not a war, is just as ruthless and far more ravaging.
Aparna Sen traces the love that blossoms when a riot brings together a Mrs Meenakshi Iyer and a Mr Jehangir Chowdhury. "A love story interests everyone but it can be trite if it doesn''t have a social twist. Here the relationship acquires piquancy when the identities come into play," Sen says.
Mr and Mrs Iyer questions the trend of reducing a human to his one basic identity: Religion. "I''m a mother, an actress, a director, a Hindu, a Calcuttan..," said Sen. "If only my religious identity is shown, I am incomplete."
In her script, the journey begins with Meenakshi Iyer, a mother travelling with an infant, and Raja, her father''s acquaintance who''s agreed to help. As they start talking, other identities emerge: Her in-laws, his friend Murgi. "Then the riot breaks out and all but the religious self is forgotten. She thinks, ''Oh my God, he''s a Muslim and I''ve drunk his water!'' And he thinks, ''I''m a Muslim and will endanger their lives''."
In India, the complexity is further confounded as geography, social custom, everything changes from region to region. "That''s why a Kashmiri Muslim has more in common with a Kashmiri Pandit than with a Keralite Muslim," Sen adds.
That may also explain why Mrinal Sen chose to show the Indian who lives away from the rise and fall of empires, through Sakina, Noor and Meher. But though people at the receiving end of violence are brought centrestage, there is no overt violence in Amaar Bhuvan.
"In these days of hatred and wanton killing, I have turned by back to devilry and walked into a world where people live, love and desire, and in the process rediscover human dignity," says Aparna Sen.