"What's a BAFTA?"

KOLKATA: A little boy who loiters around the SMM Home at Liluah knows nothing about a film called “Lion” that has bagged two BAFTA awards. He doesn’t know Dev Patel and is clueless about him winning the BAFTA for the Best Supporting Actor. Luke Davies is a name he has never heard before. The fact that Davies has won a BAFTA for the Best Adapted Screenplay of “Lion” make no differences to him.
For this ten-year-old, the closest he has come to anything remotely associated with “Lion” is pictures of the large tawny-coloured cats in books or the name of a film called “Lion King”.But his eyes light up once he hears that “Lion” is a film about a little boy who had once spent some time in a home in Liluah. “What’s a BAFTA?” he asks innocently before being told about the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts. “My father used to work in this home in Liluah. Did the boy stay here?” he asks, pointing at a building guarded by the high boundary wall with barbed wires that won’t let anyone climb and escape.
SMM Home – where this boy points – now houses women and girls only. “The boys have been shifted elsewhere,” says a durwan, very edgy about parting with any information regarding the home.
Brierley’s book “A Long Way Home” refers to how boys were punished with “a long thin cane” that “hurt doubly, because a split end pinched the skin on contact”. During his recent visit to the city, Brierley had described his experiences at this home. “That was a scary place. I’d never want any five-year-old to be there. The place looked like hell. One side of the big rusted gate was about freedom. The other side was about captivity. I was beaten up for speaking in Hindi and not Bengali. It was like a war prison,” he had recounted.
Saroj Sood, founder honorary secretary of The Indian Society For Sponsorship and Adoption who had first met Brierley at this home in Liluah, also has memories of this place. “I will turn 84 soon. My memory is weak. Yet, I remember children would be whipped there. The situation was really bad then,” says Sood, who has flashes of the original Liluah home when she watched the scenes from the movie.
What’s particularly scary is the way both the book and the film alludes to how people would climb over the walls from the outside and enter the building. “I never saw or heard what they did, but kids ran out crying before the strangers escaped. I didn’t know if the staff didn’t care or were powerless to protect us….” Brierley’s book has mentioned. Incidentally, “Lion” doesn’t shy away from including scenes that drop enough hints about this exploitation.
While no one at Liluah wants to talk about this past, the little boy is curious. He claims that his grandparents had narrated stories about girls being trafficked out of that old home. “Amar dadu-dida bolechhe je ekhane ekta purono bhenge jawa bari chhilo. Sekhane nongra kaaj hoto (My grandparents have said there used to be a dilapidated house here where dirty work would get done),” he claims.
The BAFTA-winning adapted screenplay has a scene with a five-year-old girl called Amita and Brierley watching a guard and a well-dressed outsider striding past an open door. In the background are heard whimpering sound of a scuffle, followed by cries of anguish while the two kids stare at a reluctant boy being dragged by these men.
Assistant superintendent Kalpana Saha is neither willing to part with any information regarding how the home was in the 80s nor has any interest in “Lion”. “I have joined recently. I can’t talk about the home. The superintendent is on leave,” Saha says, before quickly disappearing behind the gate.
Some years back, Soumeta Medhora, chief functionary of The Indian Society For Sponsorship and Adoption, had accompanied Brierley when he had gone back to Liluah home. In his book, Brierley had referred to this visit as being that of “a tourist” of his “old terrors”. The building had then appeared less menacing but the bunk-lined halls during his times were still there. Says Medhora, “We are extremely happy with the BAFTA wins. Saroo had told me that there was one building in the home for children below six years. I was the one to take him back on his trip here. While institutions have their problems, I wouldn’t get critical about the conditions in the home that has been depicted in the movie.”
As the evening descends, it’s time for the staff to leave for the day. Few among them have heard the name of “Lion”. But they confess that their world is far-removed from that of BAFTA-winning movies. A gentleman has come to pick up his wife who works there. He is a little uneasy about the film’s depiction of the home in the 80s. Before he zooms out of the premises in his bike, he said, “We are unaware of the history of this place. I don’t want to talk out of turn. But, I must say that BAFTA wins and Oscar nominations are big news. Now, I’m really keen to watch the movie and find more about the place.”