Born in Mauritius,
educated in Paris and California and settled in the
Netherlands. Atman
Ramchalaon,
fluent in five European languages, is truly a citizen of the
world. But even a self-confessed world citizen at some point
in time feels the need to root himself to one place. And this
yearning to trace his roots took Atman, a hotshot photo
journalist and film-maker - who has followed the action from
the Falklands War, Gulf War I, the Gujarat quake to Gulf War
II - to the windswept, hot and humid plains of Eastern India.
Back in Amsterdam after a month's sojourn in India, Atman
speaks wistfully of his soul-searching journey, "At least
now my mother can die in peace."
However, the task he had assigned to himself was by no means
simple. The last two years that he spent contacting people and
officials were harrowing, to say the least. An email message
floated by Atman on the Net paraphrases his agony:
"My mother is 85 years old. Her last wish before she dies
is to know her roots. The registry of Indian immigrants at the
MGI/Mauritius Archives belongs to all of us. It should be free
and accessible to the public. I am requesting ANYONE, also on
behalf of my mother to help me fulfill her last wish. Let me
have the access code so that I can check for info on my
ancestors online."
With the Government officials of little help, Atman had to
rely totally on the help offered by faceless strangers. It
proved to be an exasperating experience. One such incident
exemplifies this frustration: An
official in the Uttar Pradesh State
Archives when approached,
asked Atman to furnish all the details, something Atman
himself was looking for. Atman's obvious reply was, "If I
knew I wouldn't be asking you!"
During that dark period of information drought, Atman
plastered the various interactive Indian newsletter groups as
varied as the Bhojpuri (dialect) group and the Nagpur City
group with messages.
A stranger responded saying he knew about the villages
mentioned by Atman and that he would do his utmost to help
him.
Within seconds of receiving the email, Atman called his mother
in Mauritius. Tears of joy welled up in her eyes. Says Atman,
thanks to this man, I could see my mother's dream coming true
at long last.
Soon more people reached out to him and Atman started
following the leads on village Anjorpur (in Ballia district of
Uttar Pradesh) where his great grandmother Laxminia Kokil, who
migrated to Mauritius around 1896, was born and brought up.
Once the coordinates were ascertained, Atman began searching
for documented evidence t from the local registrar of births
and deaths in Ballia and for the list of indentured labour in
Mauritius and India. He drew a blank on several occasions, but
undeterred, he persisted. Eventually as things began falling
in place, Atman decided to take a trip to his land of
ancestors.
He was able to trace some of his family members, both near and
distant, and true to his calling, lost no time in capturing
them on camera. He also clicked for eternity, the
"landscape" on which his grandmother was brought up.
While he was shooting, the villagers started complaining about
how their "Masooms," their innocent children, were
whisked away to Mauritius. "The British not only took
away our sons, husbands and brothers but also our children and
exploited them to the hilt for their vested interest."
While the grown ups knew what the British were up to, the
children or the Masooms (often unaccompanied by their parents)
had no idea where they were being taken. They were locked in
sub-depots in Chapra (Bihar) and "transported" to a
larger depot in Kolkata (Calcutta), from where they were
"shipped" to Kala-pani.
This
brought back a flood of memories for Atman. "My mother
remembers my grandfather Ramessar looking into her eyes while
cradling her and saying, 'Tor
ankhwa Bharat ke masoom laika ke tarah ba,'
meaning you have got the same innocent look like those
children who came from India."
While Atman was researching the archives of indentured Indians
in Mauritius, Guyana, Suriname and South Africa, he came
across names of many children from former British colonies
registered as indentured immigrants. He says: "That very
moment I decided that whenever I would travel to the land of
my ancestors, I'd shoot a photo-serial and capture this look
of innocence and freeze it for posterity."
A selection of these photos of "Masooms" were show
cased in Agfa, Germany and an exhibition of indentured
immigrants was held in Maurituius last year.
Though Atman carries no seeds of bitterness within him, he is
acutely aware that his family, like so many other families of
famine and epidemic-struck economically depressed states, was
a victim of some ugly twists and turns of history engineered
by the imperialist British.
Atman's maternal great grandfather was 14 when he was taken
for some "light labour" to "the land of milk
and honey" (Mauritius) on an arbitrary 8-year contract.
In return he was "free to eat as much as possible."
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Indentured by
a sugar estate in Flacq, he was forced to work from dawn to
dusk on the cane fields. When his "par-nana" reached
the age of 18, the sugar estate owner forced him to marry an
indentured girl of his age. Soon, Atman's grandfather Ramessar
Sobrun was born, but because of sheer overwork, his great
grandfather died before he could realise his cherished dream
of returning to his homeland. There were still three more
years to go before the contract ended.
During the quest for his roots, there were many moments of
reckoning where Atman stood face-to-face with a totally
unknown and hitherto uncovered facet of his family history.
One of the villagers showed him an old-fangled film projector
which his paternal grandfather had requisitioned to show
movies to the villagers. On seeing it, Atman broke down and
sobbed like a child. "This is where I must have inherited
my love for film-making. It was there in my genes," he
says in a choked voice.
There was also an element of surprise for the villagers who
took Atman for a "videshi" brown sahib (westerni
foreigner) and tried to converse with him in broken
Hindi-English. They were taken aback when he talked back in
fluent Bhojpuri!
Atman's India trip proved to be a journey of discovery in more
ways than one. He was appalled by the condition of the
archives both in Lucknow and Chapra. "The records were
kept in bundles of gunnybags in Chapra. There was no index. We
managed to open 25 bags to check for info on Tarrowa village
(my ancestral place), unfortunately most of the records were
already moth-eaten and therefore unreadable. It was raining,
the roof of the collectorate building was leaking, and most of
the gunny bags were wet. Some were even floating. The
condition of the State Archives in Lucknow was equally
bad."
Atman's ancestors left their homeland due to the cruel
exploitation by the zamindars (landlords), besides
excruciating poverty and disease. But 150 years down the line,
he says nothing seems to have changed. A note in his India
diary reads: "There is still no infrastructure, no
running water, no electricity, no proper housing, no
sanitation. There is lawlessness, corruption, violation of
human rights and the zamindars are still exploiting the
poor."
There were many other jarring notes too.
Recalls Atman, 'I had written to the District Magistrate of
Chapra a dozen times from Amsterdam. Leave alone a reply,
there was not even an acknowledge-ment. Later when I visited
Chapra, I saw all my e-mails addressed to him still in the PC
at the collect orate. The DM and his secretary told me they
could not reply because they did not know how to use the
computer!' Shaking his head in utter disbelief, Atman adds
cynically, "I guess instead of exporting its IITians
abroad, India should keep them within the country."
Unfortunately, the rigors of the trip took their toll on Atman
and he fell sick while searching for Tarrowa village in Chapra,
forcing him to abort his journey midway, and he returned to
Amsterdam.
However, a rejuvenated, feisty Atman says, "This is not
the end. I will be back in India to make a video-diary
soon."
For, as they say, tomorrow is yet another day, especially for
someone who is looking for his yesterday
Article came from Atman Ramchalaon
