Ive uploaded my 10-minute documentary. Let me know what you think - good, bad or otherwise. Its the year 1632. The Mughal ruler Shah Jahan has ordered an attack on the city of Hoogly, a fortified Portuguese trading post on the Northeastern coast of India. The Portuguese are defeated and a small child is made captive and brought to Delhi along with her mother. This child is Juliana (played by scholar Catherine O Sullivan). Juliana grows up to become a powerful lady in the Court of Emperor Aurangzeb, where she often intercedes on behalf of Europeans. In this 10-minute documentary we trace some of the stories about Juliana. Each person who tells the story - Father Balraj of the Church in Masihgarh and Professor of History Sunita Zaidi knows some part of the story, and tells it according to their interest in the history/legend. There is an area in present-day Southeast Delhi called Sarai Jullena, which was actually Juliana ki Sarai. Aurangzeb gifted this land to Juliana Dias da Costa for healing his sick daughter. Here she built a sarai or resting house. What happened to the sarai? Where is it now? The people living here remember the story they were handed down. Pandit Tippadchand, a 107-year old resident who is turning into a legend himself, remembers a time when this was all farmland. Delhi expanded from Dilli Gate all the way to swallow Sarai Jullena. Today it is one of the many densely populated areas of the capital. The transformation through time into an urban village with its housing colony, shops and parks. He used to have a well too. What happened to it? There is a sequence of the imaginary figure of Juliana roaming through the present day area that was once hers to show the co-existence of history as legends-myths-ghosts with present-day reality which tends to overwrite it. It is all around all those who reside in, work in, visit, or even just pass through what was once Juliana ki Sarai, where there are no monuments to her - only a faint memory. History is like a building with many rooms. Some of us live in some some in others. Some rooms we keep locked. Some rooms we are locked out of. Suroopa Mukherjee
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 06:37:20 +0000
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