Biblio: A Review of Books
Village of Dust, City of Water by Sanjay Barnela is an unusual documentary; it is a poetic experience as the camera journeys from the drought stricken to the flood ravaged lands in India. Presumably, nature wounds, dealing out with its unmeasured hands either extreme thirst or inflicting the woes of watery plenitude upon hapless peoples. And what better angle of vision than that of the 'migrant'; eternally displaced from place and livelihood by nature's seemingly unforgiving intemperate and unpredictable moods. However, Barnela abandons this familiar possible narrative of nature's wrath, the migrant's naturalised poverty and man's fatal and relentless conflict with the environment. Instead, in several ways, Village of Dust, City of Water is a profound attempt at unsettling the simple and false equation between vengeful nature and benign development. The documentary, in effect, must be seen as a sensitive and richly visual attempt at getting poetic clarity to reveal and trump the absurdities of reasoned development.