Bilal was sitting in the row right behind me at the Max Mueller Bhavan auditorium last Wednesday evening. Accompanying him were his visually impaired parents, Shamim and Humera Begum, his brother, Hamza, his sister and his neighbours. Seven-year-old Bilal could have been just a kid in a cinema hall with his parents, but he was not. He was there to see a film made on his life. A documentary film about the sighted boy’s life with his blind parents which has won laurels around the world. This was the first time the boy was seeing Bilal (the film is named after him) and he was evidently excited. The 10-minute delay in the screening made him fidgety and by the time the lights were dimmed and the first image flickered on the scree, Humera Begum had had to reprimand her eldest son a number times for “making too much noise”.

Within few seconds, an unrecognizably cherubic boy appeared on the screen. I turned back and stared at the skinny boy behind me to confirm if he is the same kid, and I noticed that Bilal too had the same flummoxed expression on his face. Suddenly, he started giggling. And he giggled through the film, much to the chagrin of his embarrassed mother and the amusement of his indulgent father.

Not that the documentary, directed by Film and Television Institute of India alumnus, Sourav Sarangi, is a comedy. Nor is it a sentimental take on what can be best described as a difficult situation. It is set in a central Kolkata slum and documents Shamim and Humera Begum’s failing efforts to make ends meet, but Sarangi refuses to make it their tragedy. Bilal and his infant brother Hamza, are often rapped, slapped and whipped by their frustrated parents (you can almost hear the sensitized Western audience screaming ‘child-abuse’) but you never doubt the fact that these people are the best possible care-givers to Bilal and his brother. The older Bilal was probably laughing at the magic of seeing his life unfold with such assured confidence on the screen.

... contd.