In the year 2001-2, I was traveling in the Caribbean as a self appointed researcher and documentary film maker to study the history of migration of indentured labourers from India to Caribbean. Towards the end of two yearlong travels in the Caribbean, I found myself in a South American country, Guyana, formerly known as British Guiana. The racial violence between people of Indian and African origins were extremely brutal which shattered the country to absolute chaos. A country of just 800,000 people with an abundance of natural wealth was torn apart by politics of ethnicity and racism. Indians and Africans used every single opportunity to eliminate and win over others. Murders, rape, burning down of houses and destruction of everything was the norm of the day.
I was staying with Indian activists in a predominantly Indian village Leonora, in West Coast Demerara along the Atlantic ocean. After nearly nine months of living in that violent country I was completely fed up with the stupidity of the racial violence between progenies of white man’s profit-making entrepreneurship. I was desperately trying to find a way out to escape from that God-forsaken country. By sheer coincidence I happened to attend a screening of a BBC film presented by Guyana’s legendary writer David Dabydeen on the history of indentured migration, which brought hundreds of thousands of poor labourers from India to the Caribbean, Africa and Pacific. When David came to know about my struggles in making a documentary film on the same subject, he offered me a fellowship to do post production work of the film at the University of Warwick where he is heading the Department of Caribbean studies.
Except some money that I had deposited earlier that year with a friend of mine in Trinidad I had no other funds available to travel to UK. Earlier that year I was thrown out by immigration authorities from Trinidad for filming Indian communities without a work permit. It was a blessing in disguise. I was tired of the arrogance and loftiness of Indians in Trinidad. With the help of Ravi Dev, an Indian political activist, whose party office was my residence and office during the larger part of my stay in Guyana, I could collected that money and purchased a ticket to travel to London. Swamy Aksharanada who is a Hindu activist helped me with 500 US dollars to meet living costs. David helped me to obtain a UK visa and in December 2002 I arrived at London Heathrow airport and took a bus to Warwick .
Students at the university go away for vacation during winter months, which is an extremely unbearable and depressing affair in UK. Incessant rain and snow was something beyond endurance for a tropical person like me. In the first week I stayed in a small room on the upper floor of a restaurant, Akbar, owned by a very cunning Bangladeshi. The first few days, I had only a couple of blankets and sheets as bedding. Winter cold pierced me like sharp needles . After a week David helped me to move to one of his friend, Cynthia’s house for three weeks at 50 pounds a week rental. . The video editing studio at the university’s media center was made available free of cost for editing the film. With David and other’s helps after three weeks, I could come out with a 50 minute first cut of the film Jahaji Bhai .
During my stay at the university I met a number students and faculty members who stayed back and worked during winter months. The film screening theater at the university is one of the cultural hub of Warwickshire. Artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals and scholars from all over UK come to visit the University . One day I was having a conversation with another Guyanese scholar and Christian pastor Kampta Karran on Christianity and concepts of usage of blood in church rituals. In the middle of the conversation a young scholar who was doing her PhD at Warwick joined us. Emily Blasse is from Romania . The word Romania evoked in me the Carpathian mountains mentioned in Dracula novel. Soon our discussion moved to concepts of eternal longing for vitality of white man, portrayed in many European fiction.
For me, count Dracula was a representative of a Christian while male’s eternal urge for achieving eternity in physical space. My arguments were based on Francis Ford Cuppola’s filmy version of Dracula where Dracula was portrayed as a crusading Christian who fought against Islamic Turks in the medieval period. I pointed out to them that the Gypsies briefly mentioned in the novel and portrayed in the film is a classic example of how western intelligentsia still follow subtle Christian arguments to portray others as pagans and barbaric.
Emile enthusiastically supported my arguments. She said though Romania have nearly 5 million Gypsy population , they are being kept outside from all developments by social and political systems. She said, for the white people, Gypsies are criminals and bad elements in the society and were allowed to use public space because of various reasons. The Gypsies according to rest of the society are dangerous people who practice witchcraft, spoke barbaric language and worship devils. Their children are still uneducated and most of them are beggars in the European cities engaged in all sort of criminal activities.
She told us that Gypsies are originally Indians who have left India nearly a thousand years ago. I became curious find more about the Indian connection of the story. I was expanding my horizons of knowledge on Indian Diaspora.
After living in Warwick for a month I left for London and stayed with another Guyanese friend who gave me free accommodation. Deo Prasad is a musician who owned a three storied house in an area close to black quarters of London , Brixton. The ground floor was rented out to an Italian women who ran a small bar where people come to smoke marijuana and hash . I screened the first cut of Jahaji Bhai in the bar on a weekend, which gave me more opportunities for screening at Universities of Essex, New Castle and University of London, SOAS.
One of the strangest reply for my invitations for film screening was from a gentleman called Paul Polanski who wrote to me that he is very keen to watch the film and he said he also wanted to discuss something very important with me. By some mistake of communication Paul could not arrive on the day of the screening instead he landed up the next day. We talked over the phone and decided to meet at the café bar right opposite to British library.
Over several cups of coffee and cigarettes, I listened from Paul the fascinating world of Gypsies who according to him are people of Indian origin . Gypsies, whose present population in Europe is nearly 12 million, are the most disadvantaged group in this part of the world. He showed me a number of photographs of Gypsies from Balkan area who looked very much like people from Punjab or Rajasthan or Kashmir . My curiosity grew more.
He gave me few of his research articles where he claimed that there is a caste system still survive among the Gypsies. The Romani language is also very similar to many north Indian languages. He said he is presently stationed at Prishtina, capital of disputed territory of Kosovo, which is presently under UN occupation . He volunteered to live with Gypsies after NATO bombarded Serbia in 1999 and he is currently teaching Gypsies English , a way to empower them to speak for themselves rather than through interpreters who don’t generally understand their language, customs and culture.
It was a revelation for me . I was taken aback by the near total lack of information about this important part of Indian history from the Indian mainstream knowledge . I immediately accepted his invitation to visit Kosovo where hundreds of thousands of Gypsies are living in UN refugee camps and slums. Paul added that the sufferings of Bosnian Muslims received attention because Islam has a block of countries to support their cause. What about gypsies? They have been suffering ever since they left India . Even after nearly one 900 years of existence in Europe Gypsies are still treated as outsiders and many countries in Europe do not accept them as normal people. In Czechoslovakia Gypsy children are being sent to mentally retarded schools for education . There is a systematic and planned programmes in place for several centuries to marginalize and destroy Gypsies.
During the World War II millions of Gypsies were exterminated by Hitler along with Jews for their racial impurity . There are countless books, films, poem, essays and research pares on the suffering of Jews. But what about the Gypsy holocaust ? Paul was very passionate. I had no words to reply. Everything was new for me . For me it first appeared as a fictional extravaganza but soon I realized that most of Paul’s revelations are true.
We said good bye to each other hoping that one day we will meet in Kosovo for a documentary film on Gypsies. A week before I was leaving UK during a sexual encounter with a blonde Czech girl, she said, had I been in Prague she would not have been sleeping with me, no matter how much money I pay because Gypsies are not normal people like us, for she said I look like a Gypsy from her country . She said their government is thinking of constructing a wall to separate the Gypsies from the normal people. The joy of that wonderful sexual experience got dissipated by the racist opinion of the blonde. Then I pledge to myself that I must try to go and see Balkan Gypsies. In the next few months I tried to draw up some proposals for funding for travel to Balkan and film them as part of Indian diaspora in vain..
After I left England in June 2003 my communications with Paul became irregular. I got busy with so many other works and the story of Gypsies were relegated to the backyard of my memoirs but never completely forgotten. In the same year I happened to see Emir Kasturica’s films on Gypsies . Kasturica’s portrayal of Gypsies again aroused interest in me to study the mysteries about Gypsies . On internet I joined International Roma virtual network and started learning about them.
Four years later when I joined Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) to develop a Diaspora cultural center my communication with Paul again resumed. This time I got a chance to invite him to India. I wrote a mail without ever expecting that he would ever reply me. But Paul immediately replied positively and said he recently got married to a Gypsy woman and is presently living in Serbian city of Nish and wants very much to participate in IGNCA Diaspora exhibition and cultural festival along with his wife.
Paul and Dija’s presentations during the festivals were convincing and fresh . Before they left India, Paul asked me to visit them to see Gypsy people whose ancestors left India nearly one thousand years back. He said Gypsies are the forgotten children of India. I recollected the title of another book written by a great Indian traveler Brighu Chamanlal ji who was the first Indian argued that Gypsies are the forgotten children of India.
I said I shall try .
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