Brief Life of Insects

About the film

What makes folk music? Is it something frozen and event friendly? Is it still made in the fields to the bump and grind of physical labour? We are in Umpohwin, a Bhoi village on the Assam – Meghalaya Border in India. Here, Bah Hos Shadap & his friends are threshing their paddy. Threshing in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills involves free and voluntary exchange of labour and today Hos Shadap’s paddy field is the recipient of that voluntary exchange. As the paddy is pounded, a rhythm emerges inviting a song. Albinus Kharkongor, Umpohwin’s master of rhyme and verse, steps in and takes over. The simple rhythm belies the vast topical territory that Albinus sings. The village’s existing corpus of lyrical anecdotes get taken over by his irreverent wit and improvisation. Longings are cloaked, oppressors are made fun of, dinner is slipped through clumsy fingers and edible roots makes one fart. The language swings from the local dialect to pidgin to one that is plainly imagined. Hos Shadap and Albinus Kharkongor filter a kind of history through their songs that will remain marginal to the canon of Khasi tribal culture.

Director Biography

Tarun Bhartiya is a Shillong based Documentary filmmaker, political activist and a poet. His films include, a documentary series ‘Songs to Live By’ (2015, Govt. of Meghalaya) and ‘The Last Train in Nepal’ (2015, BBC4, Royal Television Society Award, Best Director 2015). As an editor he has worked on notable films with filmmakers like Vasudha Joshi (Girl Song, 2003; Songlines, 2010, and Cancer Katha, Special Jury Award, National Awards 2012), ‘Red Ant Dream’ (Editor & Co-Writer, Sanjay Kak, 2014), ‘Jashn-e-Azadi’ (Sanjay Kak 2007) and ‘In Camera’ (Ranjan Palit 2010, National Award for Best Editing). His poems and their translations have appeared in various anthologies including Dancing Earth: Contemporary poetry from North East India (Penguin), Das Baras – Hindi Kavita Ayodhya ke Baad (SAHMAT). He is a founder member of Raiot Collective, which publishes Raiot, www.raiot.in