Earth
by Doug Hodgkinson
Written and Directed by Deepa Mehta, starring: Maia Sethna (Lenny-baby Sethna), Kitu Gidwani (Bunty Sethna), Nandita Das (Shanta), Rahul Khanna (Hassan—the masseur), Eric Peterson (Mr Rogers—Brit policeman), Amir Khan (Dil Navaz—The Ice Candy Man), subtitles and English, 110 minutes, 1998.
Earth is the second of the trilogy Fire (1996), Earth (1998) and Water (2005 by Toronto based, Indo/Canadian film maker Deepa Mehta Salzman. Indians usually criticize her for her "unfair," "inaccurate," and "biased" depictions of Indian life and this film was no exception. She kept a security guard for a year after the film was released. It was released in India as 1947, which was the fateful year depicted in the film about the partition of India into two states. The British colonized at leisure but abandoned India in haste. Most Nationalists expected a couple of years but Lord Mountbatton wrapped it up in a few months leaving both states with little in the way of infrastructure, laws or civil society to make the transition.
The action takes place in Lahore, an apparently cosmopolitan city, formerly in India, now in Pakistan. It revolves around a Parsee family (the Sethnas), their maid Shanta, a Hindu woman and their group of friends that is composed of Hindus and Muslims who live in an easy web of friendly insult and ribald commentary. Shanta is a great beauty and an attraction to all the young men. She likes Dil the ice candy man, but is in love with Hassan, the masseur and poet. The Sethnas, as Parsees, a very small minority, see themselves as relatively safe and able to adapt to whomever becomes the ascendant political group, but they are afraid for their servant and try make plans for her to leave for a Hindu area. All this is complicated by Shanta’s announcement that she is going to marry Hassan who has promised to convert!
The ice candy man, Dil, is so upset about his rejection by Shanta that he leads a mob to the house and she is carried off, likely to be raped and forcibly converted. He has been driven to a rage by the arrival of a train full of Muslim refugees, all murdered and mutilated including his two sisters.
The trend is set early at a proper dinner party in the Sethna’s home where Mr. Rogers and a Sikh guest get into a fight after Rogers calls the Sikhs “fanatics.” On the issue of independence for the Punjab region they were fanatics and paid the price. While only 2 percent of the population, and ironically founded originally to be a bridge between Hindus and Muslims, they were Briton’s strongest opponents. Of 127 Indians who went to the gallows, 92 percent were Sikhs. Sikhs were an easily identified group, because of their distinctive dress and a high percentage were murdered because of it.
The film is dark and holds little hope for a resolution of deep religious and political hatred. Hassan the poet sounds this note when he comments, "We are all bastards. We are like the lion caged in the zoo waiting for the cage to open." However, he is also the most developed character in the movie and urges the diverse group of friends to stick together. He is a Christ figure in his willingness to "give up all" (convert), as well as to care for friends in the midst of the riots when Sikhs were hunted in the street. His view is ironic in that the ending is not happy and there may be no “salvation,” but that in the journey, we have each other. The perspective of the film is that betrayal is most egregious when it happens between friends and within one's family. Hasan pays for such reasoned response and loyalty to "others" with his life.
The story is told from the perspective of Lenny—baby who is about 10 years old and cared for by Shanta because she has had polio and is in a leg brace. She is an innocent, dropping a plate and wondering whether a country could crack like that, ripping apart one of her dolls and wondering how she will get to her favourite park if the city is split up. In a nice touch, her character as an old woman 50 years after Partition is played by Bapsi Sidwa, the author of the book "Cracking India," but first called "The Ice Candy Man." She asks whether it was worth it that a country was torn apart on religious lines. That question plays out in our daily news.
