The story of India's footprints in South Asia (Feature)

Calcutta News.Net
Sunday 23rd September, 2007 (IANS)

For two young Indian filmmakers, Geeta and Lata, May 24, 2006, will forever be etched in their memories. A 6.3 magnitude earthquake rocked Yogyakarta, Indonesia, when they were in the midst of filming the temple complexes in Prambanan and Yogyakarta for a documentary.

'I will never forget that experience. The spire of the famous temple was there on our lenses until the quake. Then we saw that its sides were damaged. The temple was closed and we were cut off for the next few days,' recollects Gita Krishnaraj.



Gita and her sister Lata have filmed in Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam last year for the 25-episode teleserial 'Indian Imprints' that was previewed here this weekend.



At a time when Ram and the Ramayana are in the eye of a controversy in India, the film traces where all in the orient Hinduism warrior-god Ram is still revered and remembered.



The film is packed with interludes from the Ramayana dances in Buddhist Laos and the world's largest Islamic nation Indonesia, where 200 Muslim artistes enact the Ramayan ballet. It shows that the Thai king's head priest still chants Sanskrit shlokas, and one of the longest and oldest inscriptions in Sanskrit is found in a portion of the Great Wall of China. The inscriptions from the Lotus Sutra are in Wei and date back to 256 B.C.



The narrative, in first person, begins in Dieng, the volcanic plateau in Java where craters still spew plumes of smoke and the starkly beautiful landscape contains some of the earliest Hindu temples. Scriptwriter and filmmaker S. Krishnaswamy calls it the cradle of life and religion.



Krishnaswamy, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award for documentaries from the US International Films and Video Festival, insists that his approach is secular.



'In my travels and in our research we found the predominant influence is Tamil, of the Pallava and Chola kingdoms, the Alwars and Nayanars, the Ramayana and the Mahabharat, of the worship of Nataraja by the students of the Laos National Academy of Dance and Music,' Krishnaswamy told IANS.



The episodes include commentaries on the American carpet-bombing of the World Heritage Site of My Son, Vietnam, which destroyed 50 of the 70 Hindu temples there that had stood for more than a thousand years.



The commentaries talk of the ancient Brahma temple right on the street of Bangkok, in the heart of the city, defaced in a recent terror attack, they talk of the Sanjaya and Sailendra dynasties, of Suryavarma and the Cham architects.



The film paints a canvas from Borobudur in Indonesia - boats, elephants, horses, to the challenge of the huge trees that grow over the Pareah Khan temple. 'Culture is the backbone of all civilization', says Geeta, and their film is a mix of culture and history.



'Except for the pioneering work of a few Indian historians, India has not paid adequate attention to exploring the glorious relationship between India and the rest of Asia - an intimate bond of over two millennia,' says Krishnaswamy.



'There is so much of tradition everywhere we went but such modernity side by side. There is such a beautiful blend of both. Filming this documentary was an experience much beyond our expectation,' Lata told IANS.



The documentary is a good introduction to India's rich historical past. It, however, does not delve into the journeys of India's seafarers whose eastward voyages need more in-depth study and recording. It mentions in passing a few names, missing out on the specifics of the voyages from the subcontinent and the building histories of particular dynasties.



The teleserial has been produced by Krishnaswamy Associates. While Rajesh Vaidya has scored the music, P.K. Venkatasubramanian was the technical consultant.



The 14 episodes of the film, made with a grant from Prasar Bharati, the public broadcaster, has academics like Lokesh Chandra as advisors.

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