Diljit Dosanjh and Producers of Punjab 1984 interacts with media at Vancouver.Growing up, whenever Diljit Dosanjh was asked his birthdate, the answer always brought about the same reaction.
“I’d say 6 January, 1984, and each time the response would be, ‘Oh! You were born during the massacres.’ I never understood what they meant. What is this (massacre)they are talking about,” says Mr. Dosanjh, a popular Punjabi singer-actor and star of the movie Punjab 1984, which opens across 60 theatres in North America on Friday.
“When I was about 10-11 years old, I started to understand things a little more. This conversation, the incidents around ’84, the atmosphere of ’84, those memories are still fresh in the minds of Punjabis everywhere.”
Dressed in a black shirt, jeans and a crisp white turban, Mr. Dosanjh, who is known for his MTV-style Punjabi music videos, insisted on carrying out the interview with The Globe in Punjabi.
Punjab 1984 was written and shot in India, but was produced by Vancouver-based White Hill Productions.
Anurag Singh, the writer-director of Punjab 1984, maintains the film is not political.
Set against the backdrop of the unrest in Punjab between 1984 and 1986, the movie is about “a mother’s search for her missing son,” he said. “The story I have tried to tell is a story that is not part of headlines anywhere,” he says. “It’s a story that maybe the larger media is not interested in. For them, these people are just figures – so many people are missing, so many people died.”
“Nineteen-eighty-four was a watershed year for Punjabis,” says Mr. Singh, in a telephone interview from his parents’ home in Punjab. “I still remember Operation Bluestar. We used to live in a rented place close to the Golden Temple. I was on the terrace playing, and it was growing dark, when I started to hear noises. Then I saw the sky lighting up, traces of light crisscrossing the night sky. I thought it was firecrackers.”
Many families still have no news of sons and fathers who went missing during the time, says Mr. Singh, who conducted extensive interviews with victims’ families.
“It was emotionally wrenching, listening to those stories,” Mr. Singh says.
“The grief, hurt, and even anger, it’s still there … They have tried to move on with their lives, but they still carry the photographs of those they lost in those times.”
Source by :- Globe and Mail