"My Bicycle" (Mor Thengari) is the first feature film made in Chakma language, a language which is used by a large indigenous group in Bangladesh next to Bengali, which comprises 98 percent of the total population. This is also the debut feature of Aung Rakhine, a member of another indigenous group, Rakhine. The film tells the story of a Chakma family, the village the members of the family live in and their culture. It also depicts how modernity and its changing agents are making the simple Chakma lives complex.
According to Bangladesh census 2011, there live nearly 5,00,000 Chakma people in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), the south-eastern part of Bangladesh. This population is nearly 60% of total indigenous people who live in CHT and 0.33% of total population of Bangladesh. There are 14 ethnic communities in CHT, the Chakma are the largest, followed by Marma and Tripura, then the Mro and the Tanchangya. Some other groups are the Bawm (or Bom), the Chak (or Sak), the Khumi, the Khyang, the Kuki, the Lusai (or Mizo), the Murang, the Pamkho, and the Riang.
Kamol, a Chakma man comes back home from town after six months. During his absence, his wife Devi and his little son Debu struggled a lot yet managed to survive. Kamol lost his factory job along with the payments of the last months. However, he came back with a new bicycle which was identified as a new technology in the remote hilly Chakma village. Kamol thought of using the bicycle for generating revenue. He starts carrying people and goods from village to the nearer Bazar in exchange of small fares. This new earning source brings happiness to his family. He sends his son to school. He repairs his dilapidated house. Meanwhile, there is an accident during a trip and a passenger is injured. In a village court, it was decided he could carry only goods and not people anymore. Everything is going fine, however, until some muggers demand money as it was perceived he had become ‘rich’. He refuses to do so. In a bad morning, he finds his bicycle damaged and left under the hill. Shattered Kamol travels to town to repair the bicycle. While he is crossing the Kaptai Lake, he realizes another boat is approaching from the opposite direction towards the village with a new bicycle along with a television set and a motorbike.
The director of the film Aung Rakhine belongs to the small ethnic community Rakhine but the film tells the story of a Chakma community, the largest ethnic group in Bangladesh. In that way, it is a film on indigenous people made by an indigenous director. However, the film doesn’t depict the historiography of the small indigenous groups; rather the culture and lifestyle are being stated along with the portrayal of how the advent of modern technology can bring change in a traditional community. Yet, the film includes some historical references which deserve to be addressed.
Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is the habitat of most of the small indigenous and ethnic groups of Bangladesh. British rulers identified this part of the country as an ‘exclusive area’ in terms of the different characteristics of its land, agricultural pattern and unique religious, cultural and ethnic identity of its inhabitants. They ensured the exclusivity by implementing ‘Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation of 1900’. However, in the Pakistan era, the new country incorporated the region into its modernization projects, most notably the construction of the Kaptai hydroelectric dam which submerged about 40 percent of cultivable lands of the Rangamati district and displaced about 100,000 people. The Chandraghona Paper Mill evicted Marma villages at Bandarban. After the liberation in 1971, the CHT people demanded recognition and protection of their earlier exclusiveness. But this was rejected by the Bengali rulers as they decided Bengali nationalism as the basis of national identity. CHT people formed a political party named Parbaty Chattagram Jansamhati Samiti (PCJSS) and its militant wing Shanti Bahini became infamous for its guerrilla operations. Post-1975 military governments responded to it with force and wanted to change the demography with a state-sponsored resettlement program in 1980s. The prolonged conflict between Shani Bahini and the Bangladesh Army got national and international attention and concerns. In 1997, there was a peace accord initiated by the Bangladesh government which addressed many of the core issues in the conflict. However, the CHT issue was never completely resolved. CHT people are still suffering from earlier issues; however, the most recent issue is the settler Bengalis’ gradual occupation of land, and that the civil and military administration are biased towards the settlers. In 1947, the Bengali constituted only two percent of the CHT and now Bengali settlers constitute a major part of the CHT population.
The film “My Bicycle” doesn’t tell the whole historiography of CHT but at the beginning of the film, it gives some references of the history, especially how the Kaptai dam had flooded the Chakma agro land and, turning it into an artificial lake. At the beginning of the film, the camera focuses on the water of the huge lake through which Kamal approaches towards his home with the new bicycle on a tiny boat. The boatman is also a villager, known to him, and Kamol tells him by pointing his finger to a direction:
Grandpa and grandma’s house used to be on that side.
On that side, there used to be a cemetery.
I remember a King’s palace was on that side, there was a jungle there.
The boatman is affirmative to Kamol’s statements. These statements suggest that the post-dam flood occurred during Kamol’s childhood His ancestor’s house, the cemetery, the jungle and even the Chakma King’s palace drowned down by the flood created by the hydroelectric project on Karanphuli river. Kamol does not belong to those aggrieved Chakma people, some of which became militant later. Kamol is an ordinary man trying to have a regular life but with a desire to prosper. Nor other characters of the film are shown having a strong political view. Rather the film’s main focus is on the simplistic or traditional life of Chakma people under gradual advent of some modern technological agents in the traditional life of the community. But the director rightly puts some references of historical incidents upon which the community presently stands.
The film shows the identity and culture of Chakma people who live a tribal way of life, different from modern and urban civilization. And females are the bearers of the originality of the culture. We see Devi wears Pinon, very distinct Chakma clothing made of ethnic handloom. But Kamol wears modern trousers and jacket, as he goes to town for job. We see Devi also works for Jumma cultivation, a very distinct type of agricultural method in CHT. The film also depicts a sequence of a village court, headed by the Karbari, also a traditional form of administration found in CHT. Just before starting the business with the bicycle, we see Kamol’s family arranging a special prayer session led by a monk. In that prayer, all members of the family – male, female and child – participated. As a minor detail, we also see people are smoking with bamboo-made special kind of hukkah. The film rightly shows wide use of home-made liqueur by Chakma people. The Karbari also shows his concern in the film as Chakma youths are becoming spoilt by excessive drinking of liqueur and gambling. In a remote society, simple minded people with Mongoloid features living in tiny huts on top of the hills surrounded by jungle and a wide lake – that’s the picture of a typical Chakma community, and the film substantially portrays that.
As an indigenous community, Chakma is a tribal society. However, being more advanced than other small indigenous community, it is going through some changes. The advents of modern changing agents like technology, education and transportation are in play in the society. To earn money, Kamol went to the town and found the job in the factory. Due to retrenchment in the factory, he came back home with a bicycle for himself and a football for his son. The bicycle has wheels and it can speed-up the slow lifestyle of a remote community. Kamol starts earning money out of the bicycle and eventually there is economic progress in Kamol’s family. He sends his son to school. He initiates repairs to his dilapidated house. But his progress is envied by others, especially by the drunk youths who try to extort money from him. Upon his refusal, they destroy his bicycle. This incident also proves that modernity makes your life complex and you need extra attention to resolve the complexities. At the end of the film, we see another bicycle and a television entering into the village. Who does not know that television is the best vehicle of modernity as well as consumer culture?
There is no elaborate description of military aggression on Chakma people in the film. Just after Kamol’s bicycle is destroyed, to increase their misery, some members of Bangladesh military suddenly crossed the yard. Devi and Debu became scared and hid inside the home and Kamol exchanged wishes to them humbly. The military members did not respond, instead they broke the toys of Debu with their boots while leaving. The breaking of toys was showed in close shots, by which the intended meaning of the symbolic shot can be easily understood. Probably for this short scene, the film did not get the certificate of Bangladesh Film Censor Board. Because of that, the film was not released in theatres. There were only a few unofficial and alternative screenings in different parts of the country. Also, it was screened in some of the festivals organized in the country where to participate one does not need a censor certificate.
The narrative of the film is simple, similar to the simplicity of Chakma lifestyles. The camera is slow or sometimes static. Sometimes it can not focus properly in transition shots from the foreground to background or vice versa. However, the camera is very sincere in portraying the beauty of the lake and the hills. To create the background scores, western instruments like piano and violin have been used. Traditional hill tunes or fusion of Chakma and western tunes could be better choices. We see the best scene at the end of the film – Kamol going to town to repair his bicycle, a big auto-run boat passes through his tiny boat and creates big waves, Kamol’s boat is dancing helplessly on the top of the waves – this is a symbolic shot suggesting how helpless Kamol is, after his bicycle was destroyed. The arrival of three new technologies including a bicycle, a motorbike and a television is excessive, as a new bicycle entering in the village could be enough to create the sense in the storyline.
1 comment:
Really good post..... Thanks
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