While
in England, it was wonderful to hear news of Bardroy Barreto’s film Nachom-ia Kumpasar (2015) winning the Lebara
Play Audience Award at this year’s edition of the London Indian Film Festival.
Just a few weeks prior, I had the pleasure of watching the movie with my parents
at Panjim’s Maquinez Palace. The experience was memorable for many reasons, not
least of which was that the film recalls the yesteryear soundtrack of my
parents’ generation, as evidenced by the fact that I could hear my mother and
others of similar age in the audience singing along to some of the songs. But
as further proof of the cultural legacy of the music popularised by Lorna and
Chris Perry, whose lives are fictionalised in Barreto’s film, I was
additionally struck by how the twenty-somethings seated in the row in front of
me would also lend chorus to the songs, many of which still play on Goan radio
stations, today. It was quite the tribute to Konkani music of the 1960s, as is
indeed the film Nachom-ia itself.
While mainly telling the story of the relationship between its main characters,
the musician Lawrence Vaz and younger singer Donna Pereira, their affair
unfolds against the backdrop of the Indian film industry and its relationship
with Goan musicians half a century ago.
In
Nachom-ia, the highs and lows of
Lawry and Donna’s relationship seem to function as a barometer of the fortunes
of Goans in early Bollywood. Set primarily in Bombay, with a few scenes taking
place in Goa, the film chronicles the lives of Goans in newly independent India,
featuring such locations as the kudds set up by village associations in the big
city. Generally bachelor societies, the kudds served as homes away from home
for Goan men, and continue to function as stops for travellers to this day. And
though the film has a largely male cast, it is clearly Donna’s trajectory as a
singer and a woman that is the impetus of this movie. Over the course of Nachom-ia, we see Donna become more
independent even as her romance with Lawry ebbs and flows. Coming from a
sheltered home, Donna’s mother is epitomised as being an overly protective
Catholic woman who chastises her daughter about cavorting with musicians and
skipping church choir practise. It comes as much as a surprise to the audience
as it does to Donna that her love interest, Lawry, is married and is soon to be
a father. All of Mrs. Pereira’s concerns about her daughter’s future appear to now
be warranted, for how is Donna to be a marriageable prospect if she does not
matriculate, hold a serious job, or keep up with her churchly duties, leave
alone stop seeing Lawry?
Yet,
Barreto’s film is not a tale of failed morality, or solely one of failed love. When
Donna declares to her quietly sympathetic father that the only thing she will
ever be married to in this lifetime is music, Nachom-ia bears witness to a woman’s ambition apart from her
relationship to men. It also foregrounds the possibility of cultural production
as being a field that is viable professionally; in looking at the recent past
of Goan artistry, the movie enquires of Goans how they regard the arts and
artists today, and especially Goan women who are involved in such pursuits. Interestingly,
the film also subverts gender roles when, for instance, it portrays men as
gossips; this is the case with three men who have recurring appearances in the
film as the village tell-tales who gather by a cross to share the latest
information about goings-on in the community. Nonetheless, the film does not
entirely demonstrate the empowerment of its women characters. More could have
been done with the role of Lawry’s wife, who appears to be wilfully ignorant of
her husband’s affair. Another trope in the film is that of the long-suffering
woman, as is borne out in the later disappearance of Donna from the music
world, and life itself.
On
the one hand, Donna’s withdrawal from performing is meant to signal the poor
hand dealt to Goan musicians who were once the lifeblood of Indian cinema. Even
though she parts ways with Lawry, Donna continues to be successful, her pain
fuelling her simultaneous descent into alcoholism but also her spirited
performances. It is further proof that despite Donna’s turbulent relationship,
the entertainment industry provided her with opportunities to support herself.
But the change in the industry and its lack of recognition of Goan talent, in
turn, affected the professional and personal lives of people like Donna and
Lawry. But even within this exploration of filmic history and its impact on
Goan musicians and singers, Donna’s suffering, as manifested in her self-exile
from the thing she loved most in life, is over-emphasised especially because
she is a woman who loses out on the love of a man. The film does ends on a note
of hopefulness, and one hopes it signals a new wave of Goan cinema that has
many fine stories to tell.
From The Goan.
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