Stolen mangoes taste the sweetest: Sharmeen

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Stolen-mangoes-taste-the-sweetest-Sharmeen/articleshow/3541230.cms

TNN | Sep 30, 2008

Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy grew up hearing her grandfather's favourite tale, about his best-friend Ram, who helped him and their other mates steal mangoes from the nearby farm.

"Stolen mangoes always tasted much sweeter," he would say, recalling the days when his family still lived in India.

Chinoy, an award-winning filmmaker who recently completed a film about Iraq's refugees called Iraq: The Lost Generation, was inspired enough to walk down memory lane with other Pakistanis of the pre-Partition generation and record their personal oral histories.

Interestingly, her project has garnered overwhelming support from the country's youth, who have come forward as volunteers. People have donated not only their time, but also laptops, scanners, printers, cameras and audio equipment. "Families have flung open their chest of drawers and are handing us precious heirlooms, cherished photographs and old newsreel footage," she says.

The project is also using online social networks to spread the word. "Since we don't have money to advertise, we have employed guerilla advertising tactics. We have created a group on Facebook, have asked students to put up posters, spoken on campuses, done radio call-ins. Word has got out and now people are contacting us from the four corners of the country and beyond, including people from India," reveals Chinoy.

It's a momentous task. For one, as she puts it, particularly because the 1947 generation that witnessed the key events "are leaving this world, and with them the stories of what actually happened". Also, the experiences and feelings of ordinary citizens across both sides of the border who lived through the tumultuous times have never really been captured.

As the volunteers dig deeper into the past, they share individual families' stories and their rich collections of photographs, videos and artifacts from that era. For instance, a gentleman has spoken about the impact of Gandhi on his student life, which forms the basis for a five-minute video clip. Another person has described a massacre he witnessed on a train from India to Pakistan. Using his account, the story will be pieced together after talking to others who also escaped that fateful day.

Adds Chinoy, "I often wonder how those who lived in Pakistan and moved to India and vice versa, could think of the other as an "enemy," when just a few years ago that very country they moved from, was their home and their whole life!"

Once the pieces start falling together, like a jigsaw puzzle, and funds start rolling in, there are lofty plans ahead. While some of the clips will go on to the project website, The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, they will later be housed in the Living History Museum in Karachi, similar to the Martin Luther King museum in the US. The experiment is something that has been tried successfully by the Jewish community, which created a bank of oral memories related to the Holocaust.

There are also plans to create a similar repository in India. The project will also tap the memories of actors, singers and other artistes who were on stage in India, before they crossed the border.

Meanwhile, Chinoy also hopes to collaborate on a project with a fellow Indian filmmaker and see it release simultaneously in both countries. Well, here's hoping the past helps us mend bridges in the present!