She Speaks

This trailer holds more than you noticed.

This land belongs to no one, milord

We had it on lease from children not yet born

You came, you saw, you marked this great vastness as your own

And my mothers lacked the gunpowder to disagree

Fear not, milord, I am but a humble warden

Tending to the mountains you so meticulously named after yourself

Scaled, of course, by the calculus of my ancestors

Some of our tools were blunt, surely, and some too sharp

But none as blunt as your candid claim on our lives

And none as sharp as the swan song of your burden

I will pluck you off my brother’s back

I will ease the head that wears the crown

I’ll water the tree of liberty

This land belongs to no one, milord

But it belongs more to me than thee

And you, milord, I must confess,

Are the lord of nothing at all.

And If you think my home is a matter of your provenance

I possess the will to disagree

You think my death will be my silence

But my history will be written by me

And every voice not yet formed will speak of Azadi

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The cinematic trailer for our game SHASN Azadi runs 90 seconds. Shreya Dudheria and I directed it together from an idea Zain had. The camera pulls slowly away from a woman speaking to it in a single shot. The world around her is on fire. By the time the camera has pulled all the way back, we can see that she is bleeding from her belly, and that she might be dying. Kani Kusruti delivers the monologue.

Aayush, Zain and I wrote this script with many intentions. We wanted every phrase to point to something older than the first obvious reading. To a treaty, an idea, a policy, a parable. A number of people have told us they would love to know all the ideas packed in here. So here we go line by line.

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This land belongs to no one, milord. Our speaker uses the exact language of terra nullius, the legal doctrine European colonizers used to justify seizing land they called “nobody’s land”. This was land inhabited by people they deemed to lack recognizable systems of government or property ownership. Our speaker concedes the words and flips the conclusion. In the colonizer’s mouth, “belongs to no one” meant “is available to be claimed by me.” In hers, it means what it says. Land cannot be owned, by him or by anyone, because it is a commons. It is shared by all the beings who live on it. Her “milord” mocks his bureaucratic theatre by fluently performing the ritual he mistook for civility itself.

We had it on lease from children not yet born. This is the idea that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We take care of it for our children. Gandhi’s trusteeship and Schumacher’s “economics of permanence” propose this logic. All natural resources are held in custody for a future that has not arrived.

With “milord” earlier and now “lease”, we wanted our character to translate the complex, sophisticated ideas of her tradition into the limited vocabulary her colonizer is familiar with. The supposed civilizer is the one being educated.

You came, you saw, you marked this great vastness as your own. Caesar’s “veni, vidi, vici”. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Our speaker replaces conquered with marked. Marking is what a surveyor does with a peg. It is what a brute does with scent.

And my mothers lacked the gunpowder to disagree. A reference to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond gives the example of Cajamarca, 1532 to talk about the instruments of violence that allowed European conquest to succeed. Guns, steel blades, and Eurasian diseases against which indigenous peoples had no immunity. The Motorcycle Diaries examines the same conquest with the same conclusion. Standing among the ruins of Machu Picchu, a 24-year-old Che Guevara writes home to his mother, “The Incas knew astronomy, brain surgery and mathematics. But the Spanish had gunpowder.”

Fear not, milord, I am but a humble warden. “Fear not” is the angelic salutation. Our protagonist addresses the colonizer the way an angel addresses a man. Under the British, wardens governed mines and prisons. It was an authoritarian role. She reclaims the word, etymologically. One who watches over, protects and tends. It is a humble job, not aggressive.

Tending to the mountains you so meticulously named after yourself. Mount Everest. The mountain was known locally as Chomolungma in Tibet. The British renamed it after George Everest, the (then previous) Surveyor General of India. (Everest himself objected, only because he thought Indians would find it difficult to pronounce.)

Scaled, of course, by the calculus of my ancestors. Scaled means climbed, and it also means measured. The Bengali mathematician Radhanath Sikdar was the one who actually computed Everest’s height in 1852. His job title at the Great Trigonometrical Survey was Chief Computer. The mountain was eventually named after his boss’s boss. ‘Calculus of my ancestors’ also alludes to the Kerala school of mathematics. Madhava of Sangamagrama and his successors developed the infinite series for many of the functions used in calculus, nearly three centuries before Newton and Leibniz. Sounds complete when Kani says it.

Some of our tools were blunt, surely, and some too sharp. This is a confession, an admission. Some historical tools of the people of the region were indeed primitive, still being worked out. Some institutions in the region were indeed violent. Caste systems were extractive. Our protagonist does not pretend her ancestors were perfect. There is a quiet lament here too.

But none as blunt as your candid claim on our lives. Blunt - casual, matter-of-fact. Locke’s classical liberalism was part of the Enlightenment inheritance of the empire. The idea that life, liberty, and property are inalienable rights that governments exist to protect. The empire’s violence is performed with such candor that it doesn’t bother to make a case for itself, even in its own language.

And none as sharp as the swan song of your burden. Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” folded into the proverbial swan song.

I will pluck you off my brother’s back. This is a direct reference to a Tolstoy quote (that we allude to again in Maya). “I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means, except by getting off his back.” Our protagonist does what Tolstoy’s narrator refuses to do.

I will ease the head that wears the crown. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (Act 3, Scene 1). “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Our speaker offers permanent ease.

I’ll water the tree of liberty. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” —Thomas Jefferson. The slaveholder’s revolutionary canon, in the mouth of someone he wouldn’t have freed, used against the common enemy (and him).

But it belongs more to me than thee. The refrain with a twist. Two echoes underneath that in a way can be said about the whole premise of the speech. Woody Guthrie’s “This land is your land, this land is my land,” and “Puzhu Pulikal” from Kammatipaadam.

And you, milord, I must confess, are the lord of nothing at all. King Lear ends up “lord of nothing,” having given his lordship away. Shelley’s Ozymandias ends up the King of Kings whose works are dust. Our speaker refuses the lord position itself. Nobody is the lord of anyone.

And if you think my home is a matter of your provenance. Provenance is an auction-house word that museums put on the wall next to looted objects. The Koh-i-Noor, the Tipu Sultan automaton (the tiger mauling the britisher), the Amaravati marbles, the Sultanganj Buddha. Most of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s South Asian collection.

I possess the will to disagree. This finally answers the earlier “my mothers lacked the gunpowder to disagree.” Will, volition, agency, reason, debate, dissent as powerful weapons against guns and steel.

You think my death will be my silence. The oppressor’s oldest assumption is that killing the dissenter ends the dissent.

But my history will be written by me. A twist on “history is written by the victors”. Also alludes to Subaltern Studies, the Indian historiography that rewrote the colonial story. In Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” she asked whether the colonized woman’s speech could be heard, given that the structures were built around her erasure. How can a dying woman claim to be the victor who writes her own history? The next line answers.

And every voice not yet formed will speak of Azadi. Voice not yet formed closes the move with the opening’s children not yet born. Our protagonist knows she is winning the long game while losing this one. She knows she will become an idea, larger than her body, an idea that cannot be shot or bled out. It will be inherited and amplified, carried forward until it comes true.

Azadi means freedom. It has been the chant of freedom movements across history.