In swift actions reminiscent of childhood games, women fill mould after mould with dried up clay, push it out in a line, for hours under the sun in a brick kiln. Only, this is no game that they could leave when they get bored or mess up as children do. It is their livelihood, one they have come seeking from many miles away. In Meelon Dur (Miles Away), a documentary about the conditions of those migrating to the brick kilns in Uttar Pradesh, we see through the lives of three women how many in India live the vicious cycle of debts and migration.
None of the three women – Ramsakhi, Keshkali, and Gaura – would have preferred to migrate from their village Bundelkhand to a brick kiln far away but they had to, they say. There was no work back home, and it was not left to them to make these decisions. The women speak freely, having known the makers behind the documentary for a long time. Geeta Devi, the associate director of the film, is a reporter who speaks the same Bundeli language as them, having worked for Khabar Lahariya (a newspaper published in rural dialects of Hindi) for 10 years. Both Geeta and the director of the film, Megha Acharya, speak to TNM after a screening for the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK).
“In 2019, two professors from Canada and the US – Michelle Buckley and Paula Chakravartty – conducted research along with us, about migration and labour at Bundelkhand. We found out so much from the research that we thought it should be made a documentary,” says Geeta.
Geeta and Megha after the screening at IDSFFK
When it was decided that the experiences of the labourers should be filmed, Megha, who works at Chambal Media (which manages Khabar Lahariya) came into the picture. The professors – who worked at the New York University and the University of Toronto – became producers of the film.
The team followed the labourers at the brick kiln for eight months, observing them and interacting with them. It is in the second or third schedule that they zeroed in on the three women the documentary features. “It was not just their work we saw. They did everything with us, we saw every side of their lives, and experienced the camaraderie they shared with each other,” Megha says.
In the film, the women are seen playing Holi together, something they would never have done back home, they say. It is at once adorable and moving to hear them speak with so much innocence. "I became lazy after not getting work for nearly two months of rain," a smiling Keshkali says. When they talk of elections, Ramsakhi quips very matter-of-factly that it doesn't make a difference to them. "Whoever wins, we will have to keep making bricks," she says, laughing. And you melt when Gaura frets about paying Rs 90 for a pair of anklets.
Working for hours at a stretch every day has left their fingers hurting and their bodies tired, but they still manage to smile through it all and crack jokes together. They are all under debts of tens of thousands of rupees that they thought they would earn from the brick work. But shattering all their hopes, the rains crumbled the freshly made bricks and made it impossible to make new ones for weeks on end. Khabar Lahariya has written about how climate change affected the brick kilns, as part of the project.
In the film, however, the focus is on migration and debts of the families. "When we stayed with the women and observed their lives, our focus and questions changed. We began asking about their debts," Megha says.
When the rains end and work resumes, the families return to their homes, only to come back again when new debt arises. "One of the women's in-laws, belonging to an oppressed community, were bonded labourers under dominant caste farmers in the village. Now, the woman and her husband are free from that but stuck in another bonded system," Megha says.