Sonum's Song

Upcoming!

2009-09-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

This Much I Know is showing at the Society for Visual Anthropology's film festival at the 2009 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For information visit http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/?page_id=566

Shaadi!

2009-05-05T21:02:00.001-07:00

Sonum just got married! More photos and updates soon.

Director's Statement

2008-07-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

I consider 'This Much I Know' to be an environmental film - despite the fact that it engages very little with the scientific, medical or physical details of environmental contamination in Jaibheem Nagar, the neighborhood where it is set. In fact this project was created in opposition to the perspective of most environmental films, which tend to reduce humans to victims, and places to problems. Sonum's character in 'This Much I Know' is both a verité representation of her experience and her home, and also a performance she gives us of her own struggles and hopes. The environmental contamination that may be causing her illness is just one of many factors structuring her life and impeding her desires.

Environmental documentary as a genre has tended to assume the role of the expert - using the medium to explicate scientific or medical proof of harm, or political proof of wrong. Although that is important and necessary, it misses the most common and frustrating element of environmental illness -- the not knowing what's wrong, not being taken seriously, and not having access to medical expertise that can articulate your problems. It often also sacrifices the person and their space as unique and multifaceted, instead treating them as symbolic of a known set of wrongs and power relations.

The lack of answers, the lack of proof, that plagues most environmental illness is not cinematic -- it is mundane, tragic, and horrible. And it is not a neutral fact -- it is inflected by discrimination, poverty, and the exigencies of capital. In Jaibheem Nagar, as in many other places, you find a neighborhood and a young woman desperately taking irrationally prescribed pharmaceuticals from the only affordable source – the medical college that is the cause of their polluted water.

'This Much I Know' does not exclude political action (nor do I find that conventional environmental documentary regularly succeeds in generating it). Quite the opposite, this project brackets proof and justification outside the film, demanding that the connection to the individual in it extend beyond the viewing to discussions of the issue, of the person, and of the position each of us takes in the world. This documentary is an experiment. But it is an experiment that is grounded in my belief that we cannot truly begin to address chemical harm until we stop seeing 'the environment' as something separate from us; as a 'nature' that we oppose and destroy. Addressing environmental illness adequately will require a paradigm shift in how we see the world, our bodies, and each other -- I hope that this film is a step in that direction.

Update from Meerut

2008-06-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Meerut! I've learned that there has been some progress on Jaibheem Nagar (JBN), and laying the main pipes to bring in clean water should be completed in two months. However, since the eventual plan is to provide piped water to each house, it may take many years to complete. JBN as a case study has also attracted some attention -- the Janhit foundation finally published their report on JBN and presented it as a case study to the UN. Hopefully, some of this work will finally result in clean water for Sonum and her family ... but as of yet, not much.

There is a new submersible jet pump near their home, installed as part of a bridge building project, that makes fetching water easier for them, but most of JBN is still without water. The government is providing two small tankers of water per day, but the supply is not enough and the wait is often endless.

Sonum is scheduled to be married in December, and I'm happy to report that she's very much in love with her fiance, Abey. He's a driver, and together they are looking forward to starting a new life. However, her health is still unstable, although there have been some steps towards the diagnosis of a hormonal problem. More on that as it emerges.

Yellow Water

2008-06-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

The water in Jaibheem Nagar is dangerously contaminated with heavy metals and biological contaminants -- in the picture above you can see Sonum's mother Madhu comparing the yellow water that comes out of the pump in their house with the water they walk miles every day to fetch from public pumps. A study by Heather Lewis, a volunteer at the Janhit Foundation has shown that the contaminants of the water fit the profile of medical waste coming from the nearby Meerut Medical College, which has been dumping their toxic and laboratory waste in an unlined pit upstream from Jaibheem Nagar since their inception in 1972.

Click here learn more about Jaibheem Nagar.

Upcoming Screening

2008-05-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

This Much I Know (Itna Mujhe Pata Hai)

at the Boston International Film Festival
Boston Common Loews/AMC Theater
Saturday June 14th, 1:30 pm (SESSION 38).

Tickets are 10$ for the session and can be purchased online at www.bifilmfestival.com through Ticket Web or by calling BIFF directly at 1-617-482-3900.

Poster

2008-05-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

About Sonum

2008-01-31T09:20:00.001-08:00

Sonum was 16 when this video was made. She turned 17 on the 18th of October, 2007. She wishes she could go back to school, where her favorite subject was English. Her parents hope to get her married within a year and a half. She says she's not ready. Although she has been to a number of doctors in Meerut and at the Medical College, and been prescribed many pills, the cause of her chronic pain remains unclear. The entire time I knew Sonum (several weeks) and throughout the filming of 'This Much I Know,' she was running a fever.

Sonum lives with her family on the very edge of the municipality of Meerut City, Uttar Pradesh, India, in a neighborhood called Jaibheem Nagar. Her family previously had lived to the South in Singroli, Madhya Pradesh, where they had a pretty good life as fruitsellers. They'd like to leave Meerut, but have put all their money into their home, and can no longer afford to move. In Sonum's words, "a healthy person comes here and goes towards death."

Sonum is engaged to be married soon. I hope to visit her soon when I return to India.

Finding Sonum

2008-01-31T09:18:00.000-08:00

I met Sonum in August of 2007. I was doing research in India, and I wanted to do a project about the experiences of women living in areas with chemically contaminated water. Through some contacts I had in India (through my previous work on the Bhopal Campaign), I ended up in Meerut City, UP. There is an NGO there called the Janhi t Foundation that does work on groundwater contamination. They had completed a report on a place at the edge of the city called Jaibheem Nagar. It is a marginal place, entitled to city services because it is part of the municipality, but dismissed by the city bureaucrats as a 'malin bastee' (low class neighboorhood) full of 'squatters who don't pay taxes.' In fact, Jaibheem Nagar is a registered colony where most people do pay taxes.

I met Sonum in Jaibheem Nagar, the same way that I met everyone else there -- by knocking on the door and asking what their water quality was like. They were all used to it -- NGO's, camera crews, foreigners and politicians had been knocking on their doors for years, and doing nothing. I wish I could say that I was different, but I'm not sure.

Jaibheem Nagar

2008-01-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

Jaibheem Nagar is sandwiched unluckily between a river called the Kali Nadi (lit. the Black River,)and the pond where the Meerut Medical College and Hospital has disposed of their most toxic wastes since 1963. The Kali Nadi had once been a river, but now even the head of the municipal corporation in Meerut refers to it as 'just a sewer.' Sonum and her family complained that they couldn't even have guests in their home in the evening - the stench of the river was too horrible. The river was polluted in innumerable ways; heavy industry upstream was responsible for the worst of it, and the sewer from the Medical College and the rest of the neighborhood was dispensed untreated into the Kali Nadi via a ditch.

Most of the residents of Jaibheem Nagar complained that the water from their pumps was 'pili paani,' or yellow water. The water had been tested by the Janhit Foundation and was found to contain high levels of heavy metals, among other things, and had a profile consistent with medical waste. All indications show that the water in Jaibheem Nagar has been poisoned by the waste from the Medical College. To further complicate the matter, the Medical College is now also nearly the only public source of safe drinking water near Jaibheem Nagar (which has caused violent conflict between the residents and the medical faculty), and the source of healthcare (government hospitals being patently free, though of debatable quality, for poor residents).

Although the J anhit Foundation did excellent research on the problems of Jaibheem Nagar, their pressure hasn't yet yielded much more than promises for another water source from the Meerut municipality (though there is much talk about pipes being laid). Janhit has also not yet published the results, nor, so far as I know, shared them with community members. Thus most people who live in Jaibheem Nagar, including those with severely developmentally disabled children, live in ignorance of the results of the study, noting only that the water is 'bad' and 'yellow' and creates health problems. Compared to many children I met who had severe disabilities, Sonum was in good health. Her family, like everyone else in the neighborhood, walks miles every day to carry water from the medical college, or a local factory. Some days, however, there is no clean water available.

Although I met with the mayor and a number of other city officials, there seems to be no political will to clean up or provide clean water, although resources have been set aside to provide it.