LONGING

About the film

Against the backdrop of Partition, independent India’s first hockey team defeats England, their erstwhile coloniser, to win the Gold at the 1948 London Olympics. Six decades later, when Nandy Singh, a member of this iconic team suffers a stroke, his tenacious struggle to recover, inspires his daughter to retrace his journey. Using archival footage and interviews with teammates, she reveals lives shaped by the Gold, and by Partition that made them refugees. Revealed also is a friend in Pakistan never spoken of before. Her journey in search of him morphs into a quest for the lost ‘watan’ (homeland).

Filmmaker's Statement

My project did not begin as a film, but when my father’s memories evoked a homeland, he had loved and lost, I felt drawn to record this story with whatever means were available to me. His generation was the last to have known a United Punjab and I realised that after them there would be no one who could speak of what was ‘before.’ I grew up hearing two interwoven narratives. One recounted rebuilding of lives and finding new roots after 1947 and interweaving this was the story of my father's Olympic gold. Amidst all the darkness of that time, it sounded like a fable, how his team defeated the 'Empire' on home ground to bring back the Gold for their new nation. I had never known United Punjab so when my father’s recollections took him back to the Lahore of 1945, I grasped the chance to understand their ‘watan’ - a place that I had never known, a place that had ceased to exist on the political map even as it continued to live on in their hearts. The film is my way of passing on their story to the next generation in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

About the director

Bani studied space design at NID, Ahmedabad and specialised in Museum studies. She worked at the Virasat-e-Khalsa Museum in Anandpur Sahib, Punjab as a gallery visualiser and content interpreter and was a senior faculty at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. Taangh is her first film.