 "Chin refugees")
Shivani Dass starts the book with a question, ‘Does it [a photograph] or can it really ever tell us anything beyond what it shows?... Or is it also capable of insinuating meanings that are not apparent to the eye, but can be understood effectively in retrospect?’ Dass’ photographs of members of Myanmar’s Chin ethnic minority living in exile in India attempt to answer these questions, and successfully so. These stories stay with you long after you have closed the book.
Dass takes you to Bodella, a village in west Delhi, where the lanes are crammed with hardware shops and ramshackle dwellings. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, of the 7,000 Chin refugees in India, nearly 400 of them live in Bodella. Dass embarked on this project with the idea of documenting the lives of both Chin and Rohingya refugees — part of Myanmar’s seven ethnic minorities — in Delhi. However, the Rohingyas weren’t very comfortable with the idea, so she turned her focus on the Chins instead.
The opening image is of 44-year-old Ciin Lam Vung, from the Tiddim community, who fled Myanmar in July 2011. She crossed the border with the help of strangers with her four daughters and two sons. Her eldest, Ning Khan Lun, was pregnant at the time and gave birth to her daughter, Victoria, on arriving in India. Both mother and daughter work in a local tailoring unit. In the photograph, Vung forms a tiny figure standing on a muddy track, flanked by jaundiced walls. She is almost part of the background, a nondescript figure with no assertion of her individuality.
The picture speaks volumes about the life of the Chin refugees in Bodella, where they live on the fringes of society, almost hidden in the back alleys of the village, camouflaged by webs of dangling wires and close set houses. Dass documented their everyday lives over a course of eight months. The images also show the subjects’ increasing comfort level with Dass — the camera transforms from an intrusive object to a friend with whom they can share histories, hopes and disappointments. For instance, Vung’s 3-year-old granddaughter, Victoria, initially frowns at the camera but later goes about her daily chores with ease, often coming close to the lens.
The stories in the book have a common thread of political persecution. Most of the Chin refugees come from an agricultural background with limited access to education. However, the rise of the army and the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi after the general elections of 1989 wreaked havoc on their lives. Most made their way to India through north eastern states such as Mizoram and then travelled to Delhi in the hope of a better life. But, it has been a challenge for them to move from rural lives to urban dystopias.
The photographs capture shared spaces, often inhabited by 10 to 11 family members. The objects in the room frequently speak louder than the people inhabiting the pictures. In Vung’s house, a red velvet dress is seen hanging on the wall, maybe a frock that Victoria wears on special occasions. A chart on shapes and colours shares space on the wall with a poster of sayings such as ‘The lord will lighten my darkness’. In the middle of the ‘yellow gloom’, these are all signs of coping and looking ahead.
Yet another photo series shows Biak Rem Sang, 38, who fled after his uncle was beaten to death by soldiers. He is surrounded by his sons Van Lal Cung Nung, 12, John Lal Ro Pui, 8, and daughter, Esther, 6. His wife, Suizi Sung, who works in a factory that makes mobile phone chargers, seems to be ailing and is confined to bed. There is a marked difference between the demeanour of the old and the young. The elders like Sang often stare vacantly into space or have a haunted expression, but the young look full of life and positivity.
Their lives seem to be in constant transit, with half-packed suitcases and cartons shoved under the bed. Most, like 32-year-old Van Hup Mang, have shifted five times since they arrived in Delhi. Mang used to work as a security guard but was injured and now stays at home. Even today, he seems ready to shift at a short notice.
In the midst of the images of despair, there are stray rays of sunshine in the form of Tint Swe’s clinic. His clinic is known among locals as the ‘Burmese Clinic’. A photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi adorns the wall behind his chair and the waiting room is full of ailing refugees. “Back home I was a physician as well as a member of parliament. I belonged to Suu Kyi’s party. One day the authorities came to arrest me, but I escaped,” said Swe, when I met him for an interview last year. Swe has been in India for the past 23 years and his name was on the blacklist till 2012, his house and clinic are still sealed. His clinic in Bodella, equipped with an examination and a labour room, receives 500 to 700 patients a month — mostly Chins, a few Karens and the rare Rohingya — where he treats them free of cost.
The book captures the homes and hearth of the Chins in Delhi beautifully, but it would have been nice to see them at work, maybe at the factories or at the Refugee Assistance Centre in Bodella. An outsider’s gaze, maybe of the locals — the landlords, the grocers, the neighbours — who consider them as aberrations that disturb the daily flow of their lives, would also have made for interesting viewing.
Also missing are pictures of the refugees at the Burmese Church. Housed on the top floor of a commercial complex in Bodella, the church binds the community together and also offers financial assistance to them during need.
BOOK DETAILS:
I OFTEN THINK OF THOSE I LEFT BEHIND: THE CHIN REFUGEES OF DELHI
Author: Shivani Dass
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Pages: 182
Price: Rs 2,499
