The life and times of Sindhutai

Sindhutai is on her first ever flight to San Francisco. She exhibits trepidation but is certainly not intimidated, neither by the aircraft nor by its sophisticated ambience. When asked if she wants dessert, she demands a puranpoli. Looking out of the window, she comments on how everything looks tiny from up in the air.

In her mind, she travels back, when Chindi (her original name), all of 10, used to herd buffaloes in her village, running off to school mid-way to attend a class. On one occasion, the unattended buffaloes run loose into a field; the farmer slaps Chindi hard, right across her face. You know immediately this is one hard-hitting film.

As the journey progresses, Ananth Mahadevan, in his 140-minute Marathi living bio-pic, Mee Sindhutai Sapkaal which released last month to limited show time in select theatres, has captured the life story of Sindhutai Sapkal — a social worker in rural Maharashtra. The movie premiered at the London Film Festival in October this year, before its India release.

Currently living in Pimpri, Pune, Sindhutai runs an ashram in Chikaldara sheltering 1,000 orphan and destitute children. Many older kids out of her ashram now hold MBAs, some are doctors, and one is pursuing a PhD on the life of Sindhutai.

“It was difficult to adapt Sindhutai’s story into a feature film and not a documentary format,” says director Ananth Mahadevan,  who was present for an audience interaction after the film was screened as part of the IMC Ladies' Wing initiative.    

Married away at the age of 12 to a 30-year-old, all her enthusiasm in studies was crushed in an instant. After marriage and two sons, Chindi secretly tried to read grocery-wrapped-newspapers and got a beating in return for her gall to even attempt to read. In the film, the final blow comes when she is pregnant and disowned by her in-laws and husband who accuse her of infidelity. Delivering in a cowshed, she cuts her umbilical cord with a stone.

“In the movie, I have shown it only four times. She actually managed to cut it in the sixteenth attempt,” Mahadevan says of the several instances where he reduced the intensity of her trauma but retained “the shock value”.

Sindhutai left her daughter in a Pune home to cater to the 1,000 children in her ashram. Singing and begging in trains, on railway platforms and roads, she fed the children practically on alms for a long time. With a gift of the gab, she then began to give speeches and lectures in schools, colleges and institutes, spreading out her pallu (saree edge) to collect money in the end, for the upkeep of the ashram.

Since, it’s not a fictional movie, filming certain scenes were emotionally draining, remarks Mahadevan, recounting a slice of Sindhutai’s life where she cooks a roti on a funeral pyre to feed herself and her infant daughter.   

The film is currently screening at Metro, Big Cinema, Bharat Mata Cinema and Plaza Cinema.