With an optimistic lens, Sen looks at the symptoms of environmental and ecological degradation that stare back at us.
Delhi is a remarkable case of environmental contrasts: It has the third-highest green cover among the Indian states and thousands of species of fauna, while also being the most polluted city in the world.
The capital‘s historical architecture and cultural milieu has been the subject of several works of art. But its dystopian spaces and social disturbia have started to splash across canvasses, pages of novels and the silver screen.
Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes on Delhi’s environmental and social maladies is a documentary with the heart of a fiction feature. It introduces the audience to the city’s squalid patches to tell a story of hope and revival, in a harmony of contrasts similar to the very character of the city.
The film, which won the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival 2022, follows the journey of two brothers and their young, wide-eyed apprentice who rescue and treat kites in their basement workshop in Wazirabad, a locality in the city’s northeast. This selfless act of love binds them as they patiently clean wounds and wrap bandages on injured birds for long hours with machine-like precision.
At the crummy home-clinic, which Mohammad Saud and his elder brother Nadeem Shehzad have been running for 20 years, the plight of the birds is always of greater concern than their own struggles: One night, when the 28th rescued kite is brought in by Salik, the assistant, a tired Saud furrowed his eyebrows and makes a self-effacing remark that the number is unusually high for that time of the year.
But this hopeful story of their perseverance to save the creatures they love is always in the background. The animals sharing the city with humans — the dogs, pigs, cats, cows, lizards and frogs that forage in Delhi’s wastelands, drink from its sewers and rest in its muddy potholes are the protagonists.
The subliminal presence of these life forms in the cityscape gradually elevates from being just a searing leitmotif to the centre-stage.
A long transition shot establishes this intention: Some of Saud and Nadeem’s neighbours are seen revelling around a large bonfire on a service road in the locality. A few seconds into the scene, the camera unexpectedly sharpens focus to a snail sliding forward on a metal railing in the foreground, putting the lively dance of people and fire at a hazy distance.
For a film that dwells as long as it does on kites, it informs very little about the animals but leaves the viewers with a lot, especially the tearing consciousness of the anthropogenic impact on a city’s ecology.
All we learn about their habits is through Salik’s rookie questions attended by the two brothers as they drive out of what seemed like the Ghazipur landfill, a garbage dumpsite with an acute problem of legacy waste. Kites are scavengers that feed on roadkill and human waste. There are about 10,000 kites in the city that feed on 500 kilograms of organic waste every day. “So, without them, this mountain of garbage would have been much taller, right?” Salik totters to a conclusion.
Two distinct and sad truths about urban ecology bubble up through the life-affirming tale of the brothers‘ silent crusade. First, as the city kept eating into the animal habitats, human settlements have become the natural environment of these creatures and they have been forced to adapt. The brothers are surprised to discover cigarette butts in the kite cages. They later realise the birds use them as parasite repellents.
Second, the number of kites “falling from Delhi’s skies” has gone up over the years, probably because of man-made factors such as pollution of air and water, they point out. The film doesn't explain the science behind this outcome. The growing population of the birds in the urban space can be a factor too, as wildlife experts have pointed out over the last few years.
With an optimistic lens, Sen looks at the symptoms of environmental and ecological degradation that stare back at us.
Salik and Saud examining a wounded kite at the operation table in their basement. Source: Shaunak Sen
The clinic is some three kilometres from the site of communal riots that erupted in Delhi in February 2020. The muslim community was one of the communities targeted in the violence. The three men, who belong to this community, had to pause their wildlife conservation efforts to ensure the family’s safety and be present at rallies to show solidarity with people whose homes were torched.
They return to their mission with profundity: Violence is always an act of communication, the narrator (probably Saud) conveyed over compelling, tight frames of the head of a black kite in harsh studio lighting.
The tense political atmosphere also serves as a backdrop for their struggle to find foreign funding. A legal amendment introduced around the same time tightened the noose around the social sector, letting the brothers' dream of scaling up their wildlife conservation initiative languish.
In moments when cash crunch creates momentary differences between the brothers and forces them to doubt the viability of their endeavour, they realise the malaise is not financial. “The fight is about what is happening to the birds, to the air. We’re just a symptom,” Saud says.
The film almost breaks away from the documentary format pretty early, when Salik and Saud swim the foamy Yamuna to rescue a bird lying injured on the other side. The scene is intimate and emotionally-charged: Nadeem, who refused to leave the shore initially, jumps into the water when Salik struggles to keep swimming.
The prolonged, arduous operation for an outcome that small is a reminder that change comes about one small step at a time.
For most part of the film, however, the brothers seem oblivious to the change that they may be catalysing. “It feels like Delhi is a gaping wound and we're just putting a band-aid on it,” Nadeem‘s unassuming observation hits hard not only because there may be a hint of truth in it, but because of what the brothers are ready to do despite this realisation.
The film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival that concluded January 30, 2022.
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