SIDDHARTH

Canada/India, 2013, 96 minutes, Colour.
Rajesh Talling, Tannishtha Chatterjee.
Directed by Richie Mehta.

No, not a story about the Buddha. Rather, it is a contemporary Indian story about a boy who is lost.

This film, an Indian- Canadian production, takes its audience, vividly, into the streets of Dehli, a poorer area where a family lives, where young boys play cricket on the hard ground outside the house, and the father going into a slightly more affluent quarter where, with his megaphone, he announces to people that he can mend their zippers and mend other household articles.

It can be said that, while the film is vivid, it also presents characters and the sad events of the film in a somewhat low-key style. No Bollywood songs and dances here.

Mother and father farewell their young son, Siddarth, as he goes to work in a factory some distance away, doing a job that will bring some money into the home. And, at home, is a little sister, Pinky.

The boy phones his family when he arrives at the factory and promises to be home for a feast in a month’s time. He doesn’t come home. The father tries to get information, an address, phone number, and even talks to the factory owner. He is told his son has run away.

The film makes a point about the changing world, and how difficult it would have been in the past to get information, but even now is still difficult despite computers and everyone, even the poorest, having mobile phones to take pictures, to communicate – the parent generation still bewildered by much of the technology but the film showing how these young children take this technology for granted and are extremely adept at using it.

The rest of film is the sad and quietly desperate father’s search his son. He travels to the factory, is courteously but am feeling the heard by the owner of the factory, and information from the young man that shared his room that the boy might have been abducted. The police offer some help as to personnel and shelters but it emerges that many young boys and girls are abducted in India.

The father’s journey takes him to some homes for runaway children, to no avail. A centre in Mumbai is mentioned but most people don’t know about it. There is some affirmation of human nature when some young men, who admire the father, and say they have been influenced in their own work by him, make a donation, and other means are found to get some money for the father to travel by train to Mumbai.

The father is a good man, loving his son, loving his wife and daughter, suffering through his search, his eyes open to worlds he had not dreamed of.

There are all kinds of stories of disappearances of children, trafficking, sexual exploitation, from many parts of the world. This story is not graphic, and we don’t know where the boy has gone or been taken to. Rather, sadly, we are invited to share the father’s and the family’s experience, and through them the suffering of so many people who experience the loss of their children.

1. A story of contemporary India, Delhi, the suburbs? Mumbai? The world of the family, work, poverty, lost children?

2. Delhi, the poor neighbourhood, the humble home, the boys playing cricket on the ground outside, possibilities for work, the father working around the suburbs with his megaphone? The world of homes, factories, agencies, the police? The towns and the institutions, travel on trains and buses? The city of Mumbai, night and day, the streets, institutions, the railway station?

3. The parents seeing off their son, their love him, his going to work, so far away, the reasons, his not having opportunities for school in the opinion of the woman in the office?

4. The father, his megaphone, calling out, the zippers, his customers, the details of his work? The mother at home, cooking and cleaning? The daughter, Pinky? The world of poverty, yet the computers around, the mobile phones, the ability to take pictures, otherwise families would not have photos? Pinky and her knowledge of how to charge and recharge the phones, make the calls?

5. The boys outside the house, playing cricket, the domestic atmosphere? The ball into the house? The father rousing on them?

6. The son not returning, the time passing, the anxiety of the family, going to the relatives, the promise to provide phone numbers, yet forgetting, eventually getting a phone number, the address, finding out that their son had run away? The relatives knowing this all the time? The discussions with the factory owner?

7. The father’s decision to go? Going to the police, the father not having any photo, the agencies, the personnel, the forms to fill in?

8. The roommate and is mention of Gondri? Nobody knowing where it was? The decision to get the money, sales, collecting, the relatives and their gift? The young men and their admiration for the father, the donation?

9. The train ride, arriving in Mumbai, the taxi driver and his help, the boys and Gondri, the authorities, the father looking at the boys, the search? Going to the station and seeing the boys there for sex exploitation?

10. The return home, sad, accepting fate, allowing the boys to play cricket? His going back on his job with his megaphone?

11. The low-key treatment for eliciting audience empathy and inside?