Reel Life: Children robbed of childhood

Bittu is a film that pivots on, well, who else but Bittu. There’s something very likeable about the scruffy, unwashed, uncombed, impoverished yet street smart protagonist of the Indian short film shortlisted for the Oscars this year.

From the very first scene, when Bittu goes about entertaining visitors to her nook of the boondocks, somewhere in the hills of the North, with bawdy folk and film songs to the defiant side of her that emerges in the school when she refuses to give in to speaking in English—the overarching image is that of an inherent innocence that has taken to insolence, perhaps as a defence mechanism against the many injustices and inequities of life.

The close-ups she is constantly held in by the filmmaker through the film magnify her electric, impish smile, the dimples as well as the snot, just as they also amplify the aggressive, rebellious brat in her.

The film doesn’t spell out things overtly. What it does, is show us small vignettes from a day in the life of the sassy girl in her school in particular and the village at large. Scenes pile on, layer on layer, to give a holistic, encompassing picture. A peep into Bittu’s truth but one which would also be the truth of many such unknown, disadvantaged kids in the Indian hinterland.

There are other realities beyond the many shades of childhood. The easy daily objectification of women, for instance. The lurid songs Bittu sings, without quite understanding their import, help the filmmaker Karishma Dev Dube in ripping into the commodification of women in popular culture, obliquely at that.

A girl child singing about red lipstick and lollipop-like waistline and getting paid for it by an all-male audience is enough to heighten the irony and one’s own sense of aversion and loathing for things as they exist.

A throwaway word in a conversation gives us a still bigger picture. The village grocer can be heard talking to someone on the phone about his YouTube channel. Clearly, the digital world is transforming realities, making the universe shrink, bringing us on the same, common platform.

Are these winds of change feeding into this essential exploitation, of women as well as kids? May be. Are they the equalizing forces making the world one? May be not. We are left to conjecture than given answers.

However, more than these socio-economic issues, Bittu, at the end of the day, is a humane story of friendship, between Bittu and her bestie Chand. One who she frequently fights with, often stops talking to but also can’t do without. What comes to pass when a tragic incident pulls them apart forever? When, in hindsight, a banal object like an ink bottle, and a fight over it, gets to determine and alter their individual destinies.

Bittu is a moving documentation of vulnerable childhood, fraught with both expected as well as unforeseen dangers, violence and losses. It’s about how discrimination and authoritarianism bring out the brazen, cheeky and the impertinent side of the young.

The film has its rough edges. However, the rawness adds to the impact. Any spit and polish and sophistication—scenic, cinematic or technical—would have detracted from the core experience of how kids have to soldier on when daily life becomes like an unpredictable battleground.

Be it for Bittu or the real life Rani Kumari who plays her on screen, it’s about acquiring survival instincts and fighting on to seize life and get to live another day.