Amu bring back memories of Sikh Riots

A special screening of film based on 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi was held in the capital a t the India Habitat Centre on Monday evening.

Directed by filmmaker Shonali Bose, Amu revolves around the anti-Sikh riots that exploded after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.

Bose was a student of history at the Miranda House College when the riots took place. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Konkona Sen Sharma and CPI(M) activist Brinda Karat are the leading protagonists in ‘Amu’. Shonali Bose, who happens to be Karat’s niece , is still seething at the Censor Board’s decision earlier this year to award her film an A certificate and impose five audio cuts.

“It’s beyond ridiculous,'’ says this Mumbai-and-Kolkata-bred, US-based director. “When I questioned the panel about the A certificate, one of them said, “This is history that is not known to our youngsters. It’s better to shield them from it.” Amu, incidentally, is reportedly the last film cleared by the Board during Anupam Kher’s chairmanship.

Bose is in Delhi to promote the film which will be out in theatres on January 7, 2005. In what makes for a unique double whammy, Penguin India has released a novel by Bose based on the story of Amu.

At the centre of the saga is Kajori Roy (Sensharma), a young Indian-American who travels to India to visit the family of her adoptive parents (Karat plays the mother) and ends up unearthing a buried past. Kajori had always been told that her adoptive parents died a natural death. But on a visit to a slum in the city, she is mysteriously overcome by a sense of deja vu that is then followed by the recurrence of childhood nightmares.