Award-winning documentary freezes frames on Mumbai's rat-catchers

BANGALORE: Miriam Chandy Menacherry has a story to tell. It’s a carefully crafted tale of an invisible workforce that comes alive when Mumbai drifts into sleep each night. Miriam’s soft, musical voice takes you through her award-winning documentary, ‘The Rat Race’, in little bursts of energy, punctuated by laughter. “It’s funny in part, it’s also dark and disturbing,” she said of her film which won the co-production challenge at Cannes.
The movie, which will hit theatres in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai on April 20, looks at rat catchers, the Pied Pipers of Mumbai, through a colourful lens. “They’re given a stick and a torch and they start work at midnight and work till 7am. These employees of the municipal corporation have to bring back at least 30 dead rats every day,” Miriam explained, “The film takes you through different cycles, seasons and festivities. Many of these people are educated, but do this because their parents wanted them to be in government jobs. So, while they kill rats at night, they also dream of being officers and film stars.”
Mumbai-based Miriam, who did her schooling in Sophia’s and Pre-University course in Mount Carmel College here, chanced upon the idea in a newspaper advertisement. She said: “Following an announcement for 30 vacancies for rat killers, there were 2,000 applicants.” The 37-year-old filmmaker’s maiden venture took two years from conception to completion. She dug into her own pockets and got a little help from family and friends.
To begin with, the Bruhan Mumbai Corporation refused to give her permission to shoot alongside the rat killers. Miriam explained, “They’d never got a request like this, they didn’t know what to do with it or how to process it.”
While shooting her crew got roughed up a couple of times which resulted in some crucial footage being deleted. Those were practical problems. Then there were people problems. It was important for her to gain the confidence of the rat killers. “When you are thrown together for such long periods of time, you get to really know people. Slowly, they start opening up to you. Only after one year of shooting did I know that one of the rat killers was a post-graduate in history. Finally, by the time we were done, we were all family.”