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A WOMAN CALLED YESTERDAY
EASILY the most contemporary and important moving film at the on-going International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is the South African entry of Yesterday. This unusually named film directed by Darrell James Roodt makes a powerful appeal to women to wake up and take cognizance of the fact that women and children the world over are the biggest group of innocent victims of AIDS or HIV positive. This dreadful disease has been around for over 20 years now for all the attention we have paid it in India or Goa. The rest of the world has woken up to the importance of treating and addressing itself to the vulnerable situation of HIV positive patients but here in India we tend to live with our heads buried in the sands ostrich-like, hoping that if we don’t do anything IT will go away. Yesterday may be South African or rural KwaZulu-Natal in origin but the story has close parallels to how the HIV virus has spread from urban centres to rural India courtesy migrant labour. Honestly, of all the three AIDs films screened at IFFI – namely, the brilliant documentary-based A Closer Walk (American production) and the Revathy’s Phir Milenge (Indian production) – the one which breaks the heart is the story of a young mother in a village in South Africa. With a persistent cough haunting her she walks with her little daughter Beauty to the nearest health centre two hours away several times but is always too behind in the queue to get to meet the doctor! Eventually, she does of course meets the doctor who does a blood test and tells her that she is HIV positive. How did it happen? A husband John who works for a mining company in Johannesburg and who comes home a couple of times a year… “You know what men are like when they’ve been away for a long time!” She keeps her secret from the rest of the villagers for a while even as she grows weaker and weaker herself and the secret is out in the open when her husband comes home to die, the disease at its terminal stage. Yesterday’s natural compassion forgives him and she takes care of him, even going to the extent of facing the village’s wrath. AIDS is not contagious but what do innocent villagers know about that? They want him and Yesterday out of the village, it’s a nightmare. Yesterday breaks up a rusting, abandoned car in their field and removing the tinplates piece by piece constructs a makeshift shed to serve as a “hospital” for her dying husband. In his last few moments on the field her husband confides in his daughter Beauty how as a young boy he had played on this field and run like a leopard…how sweet life had been then. It’s a poignant moment. Yesterday is such a pertinent film for our times that it should be dubbed and shown widely not just in Goa and India but in all the developing countries where large sections of the population are contacting HIV positive either through their sexual relationships or through contaminated blood banks at health centres and hospitals, not to forget through the use of contaminated needles used by impoverished and frustrated people who have fallen victim to drugs. The problem is many-faceted and has to be fought at various levels but the question here is, after seeing a film like Yesterday, what are women in their individual and corporate and social and welfare capacity doing to empower women to fight this war which has come right into their homes? A few sensible and practical words from churches and temples and their spokesperson could accelerate the fight against the curse of AIDS. Alas, no matter what Amitabh Bachchan – who is one of the celebrity brand ambassadors selected by the Nelson Foundation (engaged in raising funds and redressing AIDS problems) – says, it is an irresponsible cinema industry which promotes sexual titillation and easy-come easy-go sexual liasons. Take a close look at the films and television soap operas we see day in and day out today. On the other hand there is a film like Yesterday – which all of us must see, women, men and children.
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