Prologue:
This year, Smile Pinki (by Megan Mylan) got an Oscar for best short documentary. It was about a poor girl, Pinki, who got her cleft lip surgically corrected, thereby saving her from a lifetime of ridicule and ostracism.
Though I had felt incredibly happy for Pinki, I couldn’t help feel for similar people who are less lucky, being born with such a defect and having to live their entire lives with that tag attached to them.
The stronger ones survive and even become success stories but the not-so-strong ones, sometimes fall by the wayside. I have tried to capture one such story here, in the format of a short film. A ten minute one may be.
[scrippet]
Scene-1
It’s dark inside the room. Early dawn. A siren goes off, somewhere in the distance. Roopa sits up, her hair all ruffled, eyes groggy.
The mini-calendar on the wall says 24th June. Her eyes fall on it and a forlorn look creases her face.
She reaches over and takes the mirror, and looks into it. While looking, she runs her finger over the mirror, over her reflection.
The finger moves, slowly, over the mirror. Over the eyebrows, the nose, the cheeks, finally coming to rest over her lip.
It’s a cleft lip. And it looks hideous. She tosses the mirror away with a violent sleight of the hand and then falls back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling fan.
The camera zooms in onto her face. Then the frame fades out.
Cut
Scene-2 A
Intended to be a flash-back. To be shot accordingly. In a sepia tone, maybe. Scenes 2A,28 and 2C need to have a smooth transition between them. I’d need to work on that .
A school assembly. Around five hundred children sit on the steps of the assembly court, looking at a cleft-lipped girl standing in front of the mike, making a speech. She is extremely self conscious; her hands occasionally come up to shield her lips. She forgets the speech, and fidgets around clumsily, evoking stray laughter from the crowd.
The laughter ripples louder as she says “Thank you” and walks off, inadvertently tripping over an electrical wire.
Once out of sight of the assembly ground, she runs off to the bathroom, covers her face in her palms and sobs uncontrollably.
Scene-2 B
Again in flash-back. A wedding function. A noisy song blares out in the background. People scurry around busily.
The frame focuses on a photographer, moving his hands animatedly, and instructing people to stand in place. Roopa is one among the group of brightly-attired, bubbly, adolescent girls who pose for the photograph. Rustle of silk. Jingle of bangles.
A middle aged lady, her mother, watches from the side, along with some other women of her age. Just when the kids are all set for the shot, she gesticulates to Roopa vigorously : Not to smile too much, so that the lip remains inconspicous.
The other girls glance at Roopa and suppress a giggle. The smile vanishes from Roopa’s face. She self-consciously bites her upper lip, so as to hide it from view. Now she looks normal. Painfully normal.
There is a camera click as the scene freezes in a photographic frame.
Scene-2 C
This is the last flash-back scene.
“I don’t want to marry him” Roopa shouts tearfully. “I will stay here. I don’t want to get married.”
Then she storms into her room, slams the door behind her and throws herself onto the bed.
From inside her room, she dejectedly listens to a conversation. Her Mom and Dad are talking.
“She is right. Isn’t the man too old?”
“So what? There is one more girl younger to her. Shouldn’t we be thinking of her too? Listen Indira,” her Dad says, lowering his tone to a hush, “we won’t get many better proposals. Let us go ahead with this.”
“My daughter’s plight, my God…” Mom was wailing now, trying to keep her voice down.
Roopa buries her face into the pillow.
Cut
Scene 3
Back to Roopa’s room. Camera once again focuses on the calendar on the wall. Daylight has now started peeping in. Roopa is still asleep and now holds a framed photograph which she hugs close to her chest.
She hugs it tighter and starts crying. “I am happy for you…” she says, sobbing, eyes still closed.
The sobs become louder by the minute. And soon becomes hysterical.
A woman comes up to her and shakes her.
“Roopa, get up” she says, looking around cautiously, shaking her shoulder in the process. The hysterical wailing continues unabated.
Then there is a creak, the sound of the door opening. The reverberating tap-tap of high-heeled shoes is the only sound now. The woman standing near Roopa now tiptoes back to her bed, with furtive glances to and fro.
Two sets of hands hold Roopa by the shoulder and press her down.
A syringe needle slowly presses into her veins as she slowly becomes still, as the tap-tap of the shoes slowly fades away. The camera stays on Roopa who now lies still, with her back to the camera.
Cut
Scene 4
The tapping of the shoes is still in the background, connecting this scene to the previous one.
Two uniform-clad nurses walk together in a corridor. It is clear now that they are in a ward of a hospital. One nurse is middle aged while the other is young and evidently new to the service. She is obviously curious about Roopa.
“That lady, what’s her problem?”
“Chronic case of depression. She was admitted two years back.”
“Oh…”
Cut
Scene 5
The interaction between the nurses, their conversation continues in the background.
The camera is trained on Roopa. It focuses first on her, sleeping, unconscious.
“Today is her kid’s birthday”, says the middle aged nurse.
“Where is the kid now, is it a boy or girl?”
“It was a girl. She tried to kill herself, along with the kid…but she alone survived. ”
“Oh, God…”
“It was then that her family had admitted her here. Poor thing.”
“ Ok, it’s time for me to go home. See you tomorrow evening then.”
“Bye.” They bid good-bye, their footsteps go distant…
Scene 6 A
Then the camera focuses on the photograph that she is holding. It is the photo of her baby girl, taken when it was around two months old.
The camera zooms on to the photograph. The film ends with the baby’s face in the frame.
The baby too, has a cleft lip.
Cut
Dedicated to all the unlucky souls forced into a lifetime of insult, self-pity and depression by the thoughtless comments of the society on disabilities that they are born with and can do nothing about.
(Originally posted in www.passionforcinema.com)
