Chauranga isn’t a Hindi film, it’s in Khortha, a language you haven’t probably heard of!
Just a day before booking started on Bookmyshow for Chauranga, a lot of confusion was created, the censor certificate had a weird name in the column of language -“Khortha”. It, of course, didn’t feature in the list of languages and nobody knew that such a language even existed!
I smiled to see the title of the film feature like this on the ticketing website “Chauranga” (Khortha). It was a private moment of glory. This is the language that I grew up speaking at home with my own folks. And for a very very long time, I didn’t know that this language has even a name! I referred to it as “dehati” (anything that belongs to villages) and refrained from using this language in front of my friends from the town!
I learnt Hindi when I started going to school and I remember how difficult I found to converse in Hindi in my initial days of school.
Khortha is one of the hundreds of dialects of Hindi which will probably die with a generation or two. I still talk to my brother and cousins in this dialect but have to resort to Hindi to talk to their children. Nobody learns Khortha anymore and probably, there is no need to learn it either.
I needed a letter from the state government to prove that Khortha is a language that’s spoken in Jharkhand and the generous official who issued the letter had to ask his subordinate to verify that such a language exists!
The world didn’t notice but I made a history of sorts in a deeply personal sense — I made a regional film in Hindi, in a language that I grew up speaking, sitting right at the centre of the behemoth of anglophile Bollywood.
Hindi Cinema (some call it Bollywood) is a paradoxical cinema because it has hardly got anything to do with Hindi. It’s supposed to be pan Indian in the sense that people from all over India (and sometimes, South Asia and a bit of the world) work for it. Most often it relies on screenplays written in English and mostly even the dialogues are written in Roman script. Many actors can’t read or write Hindi, some have difficulty speaking it too. This cinema is not allowed to be specific in detailing as it has to create the impression that it belongs to everyone. And, it has to cater to the audiences whose primary language isn’t Hindi.
Things are changing slowly but the direction of the change is dictated by anglophile urban audiences. Of course, the case of independent filmmaking is different which drives much of its power from telling stories rooted in a cultural specific milieu.
Our country is a linguistic nightmare (or may a linguists dream) which has 22 official languages and hundreds of spoken languages and thousands of dialects.
When people ask me why Marathi cinema is doing so great! My answer is simple, because it doesn’t have to cater to this notion called pan-India. It’s made by people who speak Marathi and understand the cultural peculiarities of Maharashtra and it’s made for the people who share the language and culture.
But unlike Marathi cinema, Hindi cinema is the cinema of displaced, cinema of uprooted people. People like me, who migrate to Mumbai with a dream to make films because there aren’t regional film industries in Hindi region.
But unlike Marathi cinema, Hindi cinema is the cinema of displaced, cinema of uprooted people. People like me, who migrate to Mumbai with a dream to make films because there aren’t regional film industries in Hindi region. Hindi audience has no choice but to consume Bollywood. And since Bollywood has to cater to pan-India (also NRIs) it meticulously makes an effort to not depict the cultural specificities of Hindi culture or speak Hindi with cultural nuances. So, it’s ironical but true that Hindi cinema isn’t about Hindi speaking people or their culture!
I smile every time I see “Khortha” on the Chauranga poster. It’s a moment of celebration for a Khortha-speaking boy from Jharkhand to have made a regional film in a language that the world doesn’t even know exists as a language!
I had to cajole the distributor into releasing the film in Jharkhand where the the language is spoken. My brother travelled a hundred Kilometre to watch the film in a theatre and was happy to see it on the big screen. My family and relatives are flocking the theatre in Ranchi to experience for the first time how Khortha sounds in a theatre and how far my actors have been able to get the nuances of the language right!
I feel incredibly lucky to have made a film in a language that I grew up speaking and that I still speak with the people who are my own.
Sadly, for the world it’s just another Hindi film about rural India. For me, it’s a film about a place which is my home and in a language that’s my own!
