a pestering journey

tropical cinema’s

a pestering journey

documentary / 66 minutes \ india / 2010 / HD

malayalam, english, punjabi, hindi, tulu

realization: k r manoj \ script & research: ranjini krishnan, k r manoj

image: shehnad jalal / montage: mahesh narayanan, ajay kuyiloor 

location sound & sound design: harikumar madhavan nair \ music: a s ajithkumar 

sound mixing: n harikumar / production design: suresh viswanathan 

media design: b priyaranjanlal \ produced by: tropical cinema

National Film Festival

Sirifort Auditorium 2, 

10th July 2.00 p.m.

SYNOPSIS
A voyage through two pesticide tragedies in post Independent India, a Pestering Journey is an attempt to interrogate the legitimate forms and technologies of killing available in a culture. Taking a pestering turn, the journey blurs the boundaries of nature and culture, of self and other, of life and death and many other comfortable binaries we inhabit. It tries to ask how much regard for life a culture should have to ponder over the question, what a pest is.

Pestering Journey unravels the many interwoven layers of culture and agriculture and foregrounds the logic of green revolution. In an atypical move it challenges and changes the idioms of pesticide and genocide and reveals the claims over knowledge and expertise which pushes a pesticide like Endosulfan to a dubious position between poison and medicine.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In the 1970's,  while my state, Kerala,  was being celebrated as a model of social development by various national and international agencies, Kasaragod, the northern district of the state was subjected to a new agricultural experiment.  Pesticides and fertilizers were the unsung heroes there.  It took us almost a quarter century to realize what was happening there in the name of development; but by that time the place had become a killing field. For many of us, it was not merely pesticide tragedy; in fact, we had never witnessed human suffering of this magnitude in our life. This documentary is my attempt to reflect upon the multiple layers of silent and evasive forms of violence that has been circulating in a culture.

I started this journey from my home state and slowly realized that the pattern is alarmingly the same in almost all Indian agricultural fields. The train that has been renamed as 'cancer train' by the locals of Punjab entered this journey as a metaphor of a social body that has been made sick.  My steps were shaky at moments, while I was in close contact with another person's suffering. Thus this film for me becomes contemplation on facing and representing human suffering.

LOCATIONS
The documentary moves through five locations in three different states of India.
The cotton fields and villages  in Malwa region, Punjab
The rail path that connects Punjab to Rajasthan which passes through Bhathinda and Bikaner
Regional Cancer Research and Treatment Centre, Bikaner, Rajasthan
The state owned cashew plantations and neighboring villages in Kasargod, Kerala
Premises of Hindustan Insecticides limited, Udyogamandal area, Kochi, Kerala