‘The kids say they’d go mad without marijuana’

In his 12-year-long career, Rajesh Jala has mainly worked on short documentaries for television. Children Of The Pyre is his second feature-length documentary, after Floating Lamp Of The Shadow Valley (2006), about the life of a 9-year-old Kashmiri boy. Children Of The Pyre, which was screened at the Prithvi theatre recently, is a disturbing account of how children as young as five help thousands ‘achieve moksha’ at the Ghat.

The film follows the lives of seven children who live at Varanasi’s Manikarnika Ghat, the largest cremation ground in India. At the ‘holiest place on earth’, the kids support themselves by stealing shrouds and cremating bodies. In an interview with Kareena N Gianani, Jala speaks about the 18 months spent filming in the furnace, and his experiences with the children.

Your last documentary was about a Kashmiri teenager’s dilemmas, and Children… deals with children, too. Did you go to Varanasi looking for shroud-snatchers?
Like many filmmakers who love mysticism and legends, I was fascinated with Varanasi. I imagined a sadhu or a widow will give me an interesting life-story and I’ll make a documentary on that.
 But one day, at the Ghat, I saw a boy of about 10 skulking around a priest, and the moment people lifted the body to place it on the pyre, he disappeared with the shroud. I followed the boy and befriended his gang, who told me about their business of selling shrouds to recyclers. They are all from the Dom caste, which is the lowest, untouchable caste. After spending a month with them, I decided to film them.

It surely wasn’t as simple as that — getting up one day and deciding to reveal one of the worst abuses of child rights in India?
You forgot to add ‘Varanasi’s dirtiest secret’. Manikarnika is a very aggressive place — obtaining official permissions and getting around its touts was depressing. These touts take foreigners around the Ghat and charge them ridiculously by cooking up legends. The Ghat by itself is a battlefield — all Doms are distantly related and cremations are controlled by a different Dom Raja every few days. Who would want a filmmaker to shoot all this?

Also, the children’s parents were sceptical because it was sure to reveal abusive, addicted fathers and helpless mothers. I spent months visiting their homes, eating with them — they could see that here was a man who doesn’t care if they’re untouchables. They could see I was interested in their lives without being judgemental. That did it.

Tell us about the kids…
Manikarnika isn’t for the weak-hearted but these kids have hardened up over time. Ravi, who has been cremating bodies since he was 5, unabashedly wishes people cold death. “I hope all the oldies drop dead one after another and come to Manikarnika,” is how he put it.

The children had this habit of telling uncomfortable truths, without flinching. Once they came across an unclaimed body at the Ghat. Immediately they covered it with a shroud and started playing around with it, giggling and laughing. One played the dead man’s son-in-law and the other played a priest chanting nonsense verses for the body. I asked them whether it was fair, and one said, “I don’t know what’s fair. Brahmins kick us around, don’t they? They forget how we, the Dom untouchables, are the only ones who agree to touch them after they’re dead.” I had nothing to say to that.

Once I was sitting with a kid who was watching a body wrapped up in the tricolour. He told me that’s how neta log come there. I asked him whether he knew what neta log are like. “Motherf*****s, each of them,” he shrugged.

Considering the surroundings, your film has very few graphic scenes of the process of cremation itself. What did you cut out and why?
I think you’re speaking about the shot of a human head jutting out of the pyre and the fat melting…I had over 120 hours of footage, which included my visits to the kids’ homes, and, yes, some very graphic cremation shots. But cremation is only the background of my film. I wanted the viewer to get an idea of the kids’ surroundings, but concentrate solely on their lives.

I kept the shots where they so casually discuss their marijuana addiction. When I asked why, a kid said they would go mad without it. They throw up when they first come to the Ghat and corpses haunt their dreams. Another candidly spoke about how love helped him cope with his life, until his girlfriend died and her body too landed up at Manikarnika… One retorted, “If you’re so sorry about my addiction, why don’t you just stop preaching and give me Rs5,000 to take home?”

Your film has been screened in over 30 film festivals worldwide. What have the reactions been like?
People were shocked, many were moved. But I am happiest at the change in the life of the kids. After the screening in New York, a couple decided to sponsor the education of four of the seven children at Alice Project, a boarding school at Sarnath. They also compensate their families worried about the loss of earning members. Two learn dance and one studies English and computers at Varanasi.