By Subhro Niyogi
Ghoramara (Sunderbans): Rajabala Maity stared in awe as a blank white screen turned into life with images and sound. The septuagenarian, a resident of Ghoramara island in the Sunderbans, had never seen a movie before.
Then, one-time fellow islander Sheikh Lalmohan, appeared on screen. He was on a boat, trying to locate the spot where he once lived. But all that could be seen was endless water. “We had a house and a farmland here. Today, we are penniless,” said Lalmohan, one of the 6,000-odd inhabitants of Ghoramara who have lost everything to erosion since 1996 and become refugees at Sagar island.
Maity dabbed the tears and slipped out of the makeshift tent 15 minutes into the show. She had battled with the existential crisis too long to be enamored by it anymore.
That’s the hard reality of life on Ghoramara islands, half of which has been washed away over the past 25 years. The 9 sq km island of the 1970s has been whittled down to less than 3.7 sq km. Two other islands in the vicinity — Lohachara and Bedford — have disappeared. Others islands like Shikarpur, Gobindapur, Bankimpur and Boatkhali have also been affected. That Ghoramara was chosen for the global premiere of Mean Sea Level, a film on the plight of the islanders, didn’t mean much to either Maity or the 5,000-odd islanders who remain. They live in anxiety, always aware that the river is continually gnawing away.
The movie by Delhi-based research and advocacy organization Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) may, however, trigger a change that global agreements have failed to achieve if it reaches the world stage. The 59-minute documentary is slated to be screened at the Bonn conference where negotiations on emission reduction are to take place ahead of the Copenhagen summit.
Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who released the film on Wednesday to an audience that was its protagonist, drove home the point. “This movie is on Ghoramara that is not just any island. It is symbolic of a problem that transcends local, region and national boundaries. It is the face of global warming and climate change, the biggest problem facing earth. I have come to learn about how it is affecting your lives. You have the capability to tell the world about it,” Gandhi said.
“That is precisely what Mean Sea Level does,” said CSE director Sunita Narain. “It the complex web of disaster created by unwise interventions upstream and rising sea level in the simple narrative of the islanders. The voices of climate change victims and refugees must be heard,” she a
Then, one-time fellow islander Sheikh Lalmohan, appeared on screen. He was on a boat, trying to locate the spot where he once lived. But all that could be seen was endless water. “We had a house and a farmland here. Today, we are penniless,” said Lalmohan, one of the 6,000-odd inhabitants of Ghoramara who have lost everything to erosion since 1996 and become refugees at Sagar island.
Maity dabbed the tears and slipped out of the makeshift tent 15 minutes into the show. She had battled with the existential crisis too long to be enamored by it anymore.
That’s the hard reality of life on Ghoramara islands, half of which has been washed away over the past 25 years. The 9 sq km island of the 1970s has been whittled down to less than 3.7 sq km. Two other islands in the vicinity — Lohachara and Bedford — have disappeared. Others islands like Shikarpur, Gobindapur, Bankimpur and Boatkhali have also been affected. That Ghoramara was chosen for the global premiere of Mean Sea Level, a film on the plight of the islanders, didn’t mean much to either Maity or the 5,000-odd islanders who remain. They live in anxiety, always aware that the river is continually gnawing away.
The movie by Delhi-based research and advocacy organization Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) may, however, trigger a change that global agreements have failed to achieve if it reaches the world stage. The 59-minute documentary is slated to be screened at the Bonn conference where negotiations on emission reduction are to take place ahead of the Copenhagen summit.
Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who released the film on Wednesday to an audience that was its protagonist, drove home the point. “This movie is on Ghoramara that is not just any island. It is symbolic of a problem that transcends local, region and national boundaries. It is the face of global warming and climate change, the biggest problem facing earth. I have come to learn about how it is affecting your lives. You have the capability to tell the world about it,” Gandhi said.
“That is precisely what Mean Sea Level does,” said CSE director Sunita Narain. “It the complex web of disaster created by unwise interventions upstream and rising sea level in the simple narrative of the islanders. The voices of climate change victims and refugees must be heard,” she a
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