Documentary Diaries #6: A Fall and a Cemetery

1st February 2015

After a break of a day we set out to Bow Barracks again on 1st.

Nikki was around. I asked him if Florence was there. He said that she had gone out and didn't know when she would be back. I felt he was lying. We went to the neighbours. One of the neighbours who said he was Leon Madeira's cousin came out with newspaper reports on the place which said that Florence was running an unlawful business. He refused to speak on camera and said that his wife would speak after she was back from church. For the first time in my life my second name which is christian was of some use. When i showed my id card to make him believe that i was indeed a film student, he read it out aloud and asked me if i was Catholic. I said i wasn't. Tried to bring some faith on my face, the kind i have often seen on Sethuvamma's face when she thinks of me and raises her eyes up seeking help from god almighty, and said i was protestant christian. He seemed very happy. 'That is good', he said. I was relieved.

Even though he refused to give his face to the camera there was no end to his complaints about Florence. Speaking of how she was having an affair with an inspector at the Bow Barracks thana he used 'She is worse than Elizabeth Taylor' as a refrain. Someone was peeping through the small window opposite the man's house. It was a woman and he promptly turned to her and told us that she would be able to tell us more about Florence's evil ways. Her name was Prescilla.

We started talking to her. She narrated her experience with Florence which made me cringe. She had been hugely violated by Florence and her employees. After talking for a long time in the stairway and her dog barking from inside, we bade goodbye and decided to go in search of the landlord of the building in which Florence was living and working. I went up the building next to it and D Jeet and NN followed. One of the inmates said she knew where he was and led me down the stairs. I heard a loud sound and a crack. I turned back to see NN on the floor, cringing in pain and unable to move. My heart skipped a beat. I knew that she had twisted her ankle just by the look of it.

I ran to get the pain killers i was taking for my own knee. It was a Sunday and most medical stores were shut. By the time i was back her foot was twice its original size. We rushed to Medical College, College Street. Again, being a Sunday the OP was shut. We had to go the Emergency department. Took an X Ray and found that her bone was intact. She had sprained her ankle. Was given pain killers. She couldn't walk.

When i was on the run looking for a medical shop, Prescilla had called me to say that she had some more things to say.

NN decided to record sound in spite of her ankle and we went back to Bow barracks after lunch at Spanish Cafe. She held on. Suffering.

Prescilla, who is an Anglo-Indian and is neighbours with Florence was asked by the latter to vacate her own house. Prescilla was having problems with her family. It was something regarding her marriage. She didn't divulge too much about it. From the complaint she had filed at the Bow Barracks thana and which she showed us later, it was a grave matter. The family was forcing her into prostitution. Prescilla said that her family had paid Florence to evict her from the house she was born and grew up in. When she refused she was harassed by the male employees at the Madeira's. When she walked to work and back they would pass lewd comments on her. Once what she called 'a gang of burqa clad women' stood outside her door along with Florence and showered abuses on her chiefly accusing her of prostitution. They took her male friend to Madeira's and threatened to harm him if she refused to leave. When she approached the police thana they refused to file a complaint. Once she was arrested and had to spend a night in jail. This was based on a complaint that Florence had filed against her accusing her of disrupting peaceful environment of the locality. After that Prescilla approached the women's commission. Things got better after that. Florence and her associates backed off.

Throughout her narration Prescilla kept repeating the line 'I was alone and i fought the battle alone'. I felt a lot of respect for her. It is not easy to do that. If she won it is only because of her will which didn't falter in the face of terrible times. It is not something everyone has and those who have it have not had it easy.

Prescilla's dog Sally was barking throughout our conversation with her.

After that we decided to shoot a graveyard. We were thinking of which graveyard to head to when NN came up with a brilliant idea. We could go to the one in which Leon Madeira was buried. It was in St. John's Church, Sealdah. We went there. NN sat in the car giving some rest to her foot and D Jeet and i set out looking for the church. We found the cemetery and Madeira's grave.

In fact the whole family was buried there.

Both D Jeet and i at the same time sighed that it was a perfect love nest. That people should really make use of the place to make love. Since we had nobody to do that with we decided to get the documentary done and seek permission to shoot there.

We had to shoot there. When we asked the keeper he asked us to get permission from the priest at Our Lady of Dolours Church, Baithakkhana. We went there and were told that he would be available only on the next day and the day after that during 8 a.m and 9 a.m. We returned to our gaadi buying pappad for everyone. 

Pack up and back to the institute. 

On 2nd February we let the institute know that our sound person had injured herself and that we were unable to shoot. It was pathetic to watch most of them consider it as a ploy to delay our shoot. NN was to leave for Mumbai the next day. I decided to meet the priest on that day after seeing her off at Howrah station. D Jeet was also busy that day with another shoot so it would just be me and mr jesus christ after a long long time. 

Documentary Diaries #7: Damn the Clergy

Documentary Diaries #3: Bow Barracks' Secrets

On 29th January 2015 D Jeet, NN and i went to Bow Barracks to shoot Florence Madeira and Madeira Undertaking and Co. They were all busy preparing a body for cremation. It was a famous hockey player and olympian who had died. BSF was swarming the place. We shot everything. The body being taken out from the freezer to it being stripped bare and cleaned to clothed. Flowers were placed on it. People had gathered to find out who it was who had died. They were talking about the dead man. If he was married or not. If one of the women there was indeed his daughter. How he could have a daughter if he wasn't married.

While we were shooting the curious onlookers i thought we could strike a conversation with them about the place. We spoke to one of the neighbours who was looking at the crowd in his verandah. That opened up an aspect of the story we had not anticipated.
He told us that he was Leon Madeira's cousin and that Florence was a fraudulent woman who had taken over the business unlawfully. He said that Florence had been married and divorced twice. That her name wasn't Florence and that her daughter was from one of her earlier marriages. That she was a housemaid at the Madeira's and he didn't know if she had ever been married to Leon Madeira. The neighbour's wife joined in to say things which i couldn't imagine anyone would dare say in front of a camera. She passed a 'casual remark' about how she didn't know if Leon Madeira had died of natural causes or if Florence had murdered him. The family said they were fighting a case against Florence for the property. He promised to show us some newspaper reports regarding the issue.

We were dumbfounded. It was not that we felt fooled. I view people who accuse single women only with suspicion. The way they were speaking of her revealed more things about them than about Florence. For instance if a person told me 'She is a slut, sure dresses like one', i infer things about the person who said it rather than the woman they called 'slut'. It was the same with the neighbouring family. Even then we were excited to know that we had entered a story with many sides.

We went back and shot at Madeira's for some time before heading back home. I let my producer Venky know that D Jeet and i were working together again and that we had to quickly approve the project and get the production meet done. I submitted a project proposal that very evening and P Mahmood approved it. She spoke to me in length of the project. She was concerned about my parting with D and was relieved when i let her know of the change of topic and the new subject. She spoke about women's displacement with marriage when i told her that Florence was someone who had married into the Madeira family. She was so excited that she felt like meeting Florence.

For me the project had become one on death. It was also on a woman running a business alone. Both were not easy. Nothing was, we would learn soon.

One of the employees and Florence's nephew. The child is atop an unfinished coffin.

Documentary Diaries #4: Mother and Child

Documentary Diaries #2 Madeira and Co. Undertakers

On 28th Janurary 2015 NN, D Jeet and i decided to go on a secret recce without letting the rest of the crew or the institute know. People were still secretly gleeful that D Jeet and i had parted ways. I thought of not letting them down. NN and i left the institute in the morning and D was to meet us at Chandni metro station. What i remember the most about that day is the pain. My injured muscle was aching like crazy throughout the earlier week and i was taking pain killers. The medicine course of five days was over and i was hoping that everything would be back to normal. But an hour after waking up that day and trying to walk without pain killers i realized it was impossible. By the time i met D and we were close to Bow Barracks NN offered to get me my pills. She asked for the 'lady who deals with dead bodies' around and we were led to our subject of documentary project, Florence Madeira and her business enterprise called 'Madeira Undertakers and Co.'

Madeira and Co. Undertakers is one of the only two places in Kolkata which offers the service of storing dead bodies. Death is all about who the dead leave behind. It is never about the dead themselves. The burial or cremation will have to be stalled for some days if there is a relative living far away. In death, most people are not near the most loved ones. [I don't know if that is good or bad. From my own experience i thought it was better that we were far from love at the time of death. It's called escapism]. So people wait for them to reach the place of burial or cremation. Last time we were there the family was tamilians settled in Kolkata. They had to store the body for a night because someone from Chennai had to reach Kolkata. Florence Madeira recounted times when there were people who wanted to take the body abroad. They had stored bodies for as long as a month sometimes.

The building was quintessentially north kolkatan. Dull, damp, deep and sad. The ground floor functioned as the body storing, dressing place and the family lived upstairs. It was crowded when we walked in around noon. When i referred to the places as s dookaan (shop) Florence was quick to correct me 'It's a service. You can't call it a dookaan'. She asked us to return in the evening. We spent a little time in the place looking around and imagining visuals, sounds etc. All three of us were forming a basic treatment of the documentary in our own minds. We were hungry anyway and decided to go to Spanish Cafe in Sudder Street to brainstorm over food. Food=coffee.

There i was delighted to find that both D Jeet and NN were thinking along the same path with respect to the approach we would adopt. Some important decisions were made there. That we wouldn't shoot the face of the dead. That we would begin with a funeral. That we would end in something related to a beginning.

We wrote all our ideas on a tissue paper on the table. That was the beginning. We had no idea what was in store for us then. It was, i later learned, deadly material as far as a film maker was concerned.

We went back to Florence and she told us more about the place and the services they offered. She mentioned cases she were fighting in court for the ownership of the enterprise. She said that people didn't like her doing the job and there were many who wanted her out of the place. 'I am fighting these battles alone', she told us. She said that she had married one of the Madeiras and after his death had continued the business. She also said that she was thinking of shutting it down herself because people considered her 'unclean' and that was a problem especially when her children (a daughter and a son) were only growing up.

We sought permission to shoot her. She told us that someone was already shooting her and that she would have to ask him if it was okay for us to do it too. Both D Jeet and i felt that she was making that up. We were judging, but we are trained to judge. It's a pity. Innocence was the first thing we lost after being born. I called her at night and she told us that the 'other' film maker did not object. We were ready. For everything Madeira. 

Documentary Diaries #3: Bow Barracks' Secrets