Traveling to Serbia

After the January events at New Delhi my communication with Dija and Paul became active. They offered free hospitality and camera support if I venture for a documentary film. Our discussions finally arrived at a story line of making a documentary film on the surviving Indian traditions among the Gypsies in Balkans.

Meanwhile in April, David Dabydeen arrived in Kolkata for vacation to promote his books and university courses . He got interested in the Gypsy story and offered me a fellowship to edit the footage and free accommodation and some stipend to meet the living expenses at Warwick

The IGNCA extended me paid leave to travel and I got my Serbian visa with the invitation of Dija. Travel plan was to go to Warwick directly and then explore possibilities of getting a professional camera crew and also avail part of stipend which David offered to meet the expenses for the shoot in Serbia and Kosovo.

But British High commission refused to give me UK visa.. I was completely disappointed and lost and did not know what to do. In fact The IGNCA has paid me advance salary for the month of June and I had some saving from previous months salary.. Paul had already warned me that he cannot extend the invitation endlessly because they have other plans for travel . I though if I lose this opportunity to travel to Serbia, then it might not happened at all .

But I was confused over how to start a film with such small money of 1200 US $ . I learned that Kosovo and Serbia are the most troubled spots in Europe and if I end up there without any money it would be a terrible situation. Paul and Dija are doing so much work for the poor and they may not be able to extend long support . Eventually on 30^th May I found out that I can travel to Serbia via Moscow by Aeroflot airlines which is offering return ticket to Belgrade for 660 US$.

When travel agent said if I want to travel tonight there is a possibility I did not think twice. Did small shopping for myself and for Dija and Paul and some money as cash for spending

The Aeroflot counter at Delhi airport was crowded with Russian tourists . Next to the counter boarding pass counter a group of young Indian men mostly from Punjab were interrogated by immigration officers . An Indian man who was standing ahead of me was sent back after waiting in the queue for at least one and half an hour.

I could sense that there is something wrong with the whole affair. The girl sitting in the counter was very rude to all the Indians. She is a young Delhi girl who have been asked to perform a task which she did not like. After nearly one and half hours standing in the queue my turn finally came up. She looked at my passport asked me whether I was traveling to Serbia for the first time . I said Yes .

Now you have to move away from the queue and talk to my manager . We cannot issue boarding pass. She asked me whether I have any proof to show .

I calmed myself and explained to her that I am working for a Government of India’s cultural institution and I am going for a specific job . I showed her my invitation letter from Dija . The girl still not convinced repeated the same argument.

Do you have any paper ? I got suspicious about her attitude . I asked her whether she is looking at my passport. There are several visas from countries ranging from Guyana, to UK to Europe to Australia.

Do you think I am going to abscond ? I lost my temper and demanded her to talk to her boss and said there is no way I am going to move away from the queue. In the meantime the officer appeared from somewhere and immediately issued me boarding pass..

While they were giving me this troubles I was checking at the weight of my baggage . It was around 39 Kgs. I decided to manipulate the confusion and started talking about the inability of airport staff to capture the culprits of human trafficking and instead terrorizing normal passengers. The poor girl just collected my baggage without ever mentioning about the excess and requested me to be pardon her.

By the time the whole affair was over I was extremely tired . I desperately wanted to have a beer and a smoke.

Unlike other cities in the world, the New Delhi air port does not have a smoking corner. The only place where one can rest is a high class restaurant operated by government owned company in the fist floor . To reach there one has to clear the immigration and customs counters.

I was curious to find out why the young Indian men were not allowed to board the flights. One person was literally crying to immigration officer to let him have boarding pass. From his body language I could understand that the officer is asking money and he does not have it.. The iron faced immigration officer is swinging his head right to left which means he wont be traveling today if he doesn’t pay..

But I why do they want money . Why these young men have to bribe officers to flee a over populated country? It’s a great joke . I wanted to find out more . But tiredness overcame and I went straight to the restaurant on the first floor and discovered the condemned area for smokers .

It’s a small corner where four tables and some 20 odd chairs were placed filling almost every inch of space, while the rest of the large restaurant is almost empty. When I walked into the corner to join the smokers club the waiter boy had a very contemptuous expression something similar to someone smoking marijuana or hash in Delhi street.

A group of rich Indians sitting and planning their summer holidays with blonds in Europe . A lone Indian women with a graceful face smoked with a serious expression as if the earth revolves around her feet and that’s the reason for the existence of this world.

Migration is illegal in a overpopulated country

The young Punjabi lit his cigarette and in a very pensive mood. He must have lost some money to the officer to cross the immigration . I guessed it. I asked him

How much you paid?

500 dollars. He said in quick response to my question . He then showered all possible abuses and curses on the immigration officials who collected money from him ..

He said he is going to Panama via Moscow and Havana. From Havana it is easy to get connection flight. Moreover Indians will get visas on arrival at Panama airport .. But the immigration officers here and in Havana will stop us and extract maximum money from us . The reasons is that immigration officers know that from Havana or Panama we will try to sneak in to the borders of Mexico and from there to USA.

He said he is a graduate from Punjab University and have several of relatives living in USA . They advised him to cross the US border from Mexico where there are several agents available to help him. All his expenses for traveling and crossing the borders have been met by his relatives

He said this country with more than a billion people cannot provide him or for people a decent l life . Therefore if someone decided to get out from this place by hook or crook why should the government of India prevent us from doing so. Instead they should encourage us . Isnt it ? He asked me

I agreed with him .

This young Indian like millions of others realize that more he stay in India his future is doomed . He is coming from an agriculture family. Generations of his family cultivated grains, pulses and vegetables . They generated wealth and employment for a good number of people not only for his extended family but for the entire nation. Today he cannot even dream of going back to agriculture because it is extremely expensive to cultivate the land . It is much more profitable for the family to buy whatever necessary from the shopping malls which have sprung up in his village. The money which his father borrowed fro cultivation from the bank has created a big mess for his family. Interest accumulated over the years and his brothers who are in USA and Canada helped them get out of the debt trap . Otherwise his father , mother and himself , the only people left in his family would have committed suicide because of shame . Now he is going to USA illegally through Mexican borders . Once gets there he will try to get his parents also there, which will complete the cycle of migration . Entire family will be transplanted across the seas. He said everything will go smooth from here.

The Aeroflot aircraft is like an on old warship. It’s a huge vessel which might have used once to transport Soviet soldiers to Eastern Europe or Afghanistan . .

The air hostess woke me up when the flight was nearing Moscow airport. It is morning in Russia. The Moscow airport looks like a piece of washed and reused red linen. Chinese passengers after they cleared the travel documents have to wait for next round of special check ups . Each Chinese passenger will be scrutinized with extreme care.

The scenes in the airport was the same like when I passed through here for Caribbean . 11 hours waiting to catch the connection flight to Havana then to Venezuela to reach my final destination of Trinidad.

Last time I met a number of people from Iraq and Kurdistan who were trying to get out of Saddam’s Iraq . A Kurdish man who have been deported from USA for some vague charges was stranded in the airport for more than two months while his wife and three girl children facing similar situation in the airport of Berlin was a story I could never forget.. They had no place to go . No country want to accept them as refugees . A group of young Iraqis running away Saddam sneaked through the borders of Turkey and hopefully waiting in the airport for a month with the hope of getting into USA.

This time I did not get time to see more Still walked through the corridors where refugee passengers lying in rows on hard board and paper beds. Almost the same scene of people displaced from their native lands for various reasons trying to reach some safe places to build a new life .

Gypsies or Romany people also migrated from India some 900 years back for similar reasons.

The flight eventually arrived at Belgrade airport at 10 30.. The immigration and customs officers at the airport were friendly and wished me good luck .

Dija was waiting outside the airport. We are meeting again after six months. She is the same No changes . She always evoked in me some kind of sisterly affection . Someone I knew for centuries, may be from previous generations . Who knows. I said to myself here comes another Gypsy from India to live with Balkan gypsies. We boarded a bus to Belgrade main bus station from where we have to catch next bus to the city of Nish which is nearly 160 KMS from Belgrade.

Dija said Paul is not feeling well.

The bus took nearly three hours to reach the southern Serbian city of Nish. Nearly fifteen minutes after Paul landed in his old Ford car which looks like as old as him . We stopped at the market to get some vegetables for cooking some curry for supper .

Paul bought this new house a year ago up in the hill in a place called Knesse Sello or King’s village . It is 15 kilometers away from the city and is located at one of most beautiful spots among the low lying mountains of Nish . The car passed through lush green fields of wheat, corn , vegetables and fruits. Serbian farmers are known for their agricultural expertise . They are really hard working peasants.

Paul said Serbs are still largely medieval in their mental make ups, not only in farming but in nation building also. Till a decade ago they were controlling a huge nation called Yugoslavia . But today they are struggling to retain their southern province of Kosovo.

The word Kosovo had a mixed reaction in Dija. She was very happy to see me . rather she was very proud . We reached home in 20 minutes drive across the farms of corn and wheat. There was a railway crossing without any gate. The vehicles which crosses this railway crossing has to stop and check on both sides.

It reminds of India

During my three weeks of stay in Nish , I have seen only once a train passing through the lines. The train looked like a military caravan . The people looked terribly depressing and tired. May be the military is taking them as prisoners across the field to execute. These were the places where some of the worst genocides in human history took place . Ottoman empire, first and second world war, communist regime and most recently Serbian rule and NATO bombing . Each empire solved their problems through mass graves .That’s the story of this area.

Paul had already made some food of grilled meat, vegetable and salad , He has an impressive collection different wines in his cellar. He buys from local farmers most of whim have their own vineyards in their home . The house is three storeyed overlooking vast expanse of vine yards stretching to sky. It’s a great scene and the wind is so refreshing Dija said this is one of the most expensive and most healthy area in the whole of Nish. There is a chest hospital on the foothills of the mountain and is considered as one of the best in Europe because of the healing qualities of the wind. I agreed if wind cannot cure diseases nothing can cure.

The house was build on a plot of nearly 50 cents land with a number of fruit trees like cherry, plums, apricots and vegetables like cucumber, green chillies, corn and green pilses. Dija’s parents looks after the garden whenever he comes from Kosovo. I felt so refreshing after such a long and tedious journey.

The house has three floors. The ground floor has a big living and dining room , kitchen and toilet. The first floor has two bed rooms and a study room where Paul’s collections are kept. The second floor is the guest apartment with a bed room, drawing room, dining space and small kitchen which are incomplete. I stayed on the second floor and from the small balcony I looked at the sun who refuses to disappear though the time is well past 9 at night . Days are longer and nights are shorter in this part of the world during these months. . Dija warn me that don’t get up at sunrise to spoil my sleep.

It was 31^st May 10.00 pm.

My first encounter with Gypsy

In the year 2001-2, I was traveling in the Caribbean as a self appointed researcher and documentary film maker to study the history of migration of indentured labourers from India to Caribbean. Towards the end of two yearlong travels in the Caribbean, I found myself in a South American country, Guyana, formerly known as British Guiana. The racial violence between people of Indian and African origins were extremely brutal which shattered the country to absolute chaos. A country of just 800,000 people with an abundance of natural wealth was torn apart by politics of ethnicity and racism. Indians and Africans used every single opportunity to eliminate and win over others. Murders, rape, burning down of houses and destruction of everything was the norm of the day.

I was staying with Indian activists in a predominantly Indian village Leonora, in West Coast Demerara along the Atlantic ocean. After nearly nine months of living in that violent country I was completely fed up with the stupidity of the racial violence between progenies of white man’s profit-making entrepreneurship. I was desperately trying to find a way out to escape from that God-forsaken country. By sheer coincidence I happened to attend a screening of a BBC film presented by Guyana’s legendary writer David Dabydeen on the history of indentured migration, which brought hundreds of thousands of poor labourers from India to the Caribbean, Africa and Pacific. When David came to know about my struggles in making a documentary film on the same subject, he offered me a fellowship to do post production work of the film at the University of Warwick where he is heading the Department of Caribbean studies.

Except some money that I had deposited earlier that year with a friend of mine in Trinidad I had no other funds available to travel to UK. Earlier that year I was thrown out by immigration authorities from Trinidad for filming Indian communities without a work permit. It was a blessing in disguise. I was tired of the arrogance and loftiness of Indians in Trinidad. With the help of Ravi Dev, an Indian political activist, whose party office was my residence and office during the larger part of my stay in Guyana, I could collected that money and purchased a ticket to travel to London. Swamy Aksharanada who is a Hindu activist helped me with 500 US dollars to meet living costs. David helped me to obtain a UK visa and in December 2002 I arrived at London Heathrow airport and took a bus to Warwick .

Students at the university go away for vacation during winter months, which is an extremely unbearable and depressing affair in UK. Incessant rain and snow was something beyond endurance for a tropical person like me. In the first week I stayed in a small room on the upper floor of a restaurant, Akbar, owned by a very cunning Bangladeshi. The first few days, I had only a couple of blankets and sheets as bedding. Winter cold pierced me like sharp needles . After a week David helped me to move to one of his friend, Cynthia’s house for three weeks at 50 pounds a week rental. . The video editing studio at the university’s media center was made available free of cost for editing the film. With David and other’s helps after three weeks, I could come out with a 50 minute first cut of the film Jahaji Bhai .

During my stay at the university I met a number students and faculty members who stayed back and worked during winter months. The film screening theater at the university is one of the cultural hub of Warwickshire. Artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals and scholars from all over UK come to visit the University . One day I was having a conversation with another Guyanese scholar and Christian pastor Kampta Karran on Christianity and concepts of usage of blood in church rituals. In the middle of the conversation a young scholar who was doing her PhD at Warwick joined us. Emily Blasse is from Romania . The word Romania evoked in me the Carpathian mountains mentioned in Dracula novel. Soon our discussion moved to concepts of eternal longing for vitality of white man, portrayed in many European fiction.

For me, count Dracula was a representative of a Christian while male’s eternal urge for achieving eternity in physical space. My arguments were based on Francis Ford Cuppola’s filmy version of Dracula where Dracula was portrayed as a crusading Christian who fought against Islamic Turks in the medieval period. I pointed out to them that the Gypsies briefly mentioned in the novel and portrayed in the film is a classic example of how western intelligentsia still follow subtle Christian arguments to portray others as pagans and barbaric.

Emile enthusiastically supported my arguments. She said though Romania have nearly 5 million Gypsy population , they are being kept outside from all developments by social and political systems. She said, for the white people, Gypsies are criminals and bad elements in the society and were allowed to use public space because of various reasons. The Gypsies according to rest of the society are dangerous people who practice witchcraft, spoke barbaric language and worship devils. Their children are still uneducated and most of them are beggars in the European cities engaged in all sort of criminal activities.

She told us that Gypsies are originally Indians who have left India nearly a thousand years ago. I became curious find more about the Indian connection of the story. I was expanding my horizons of knowledge on Indian Diaspora.

After living in Warwick for a month I left for London and stayed with another Guyanese friend who gave me free accommodation. Deo Prasad is a musician who owned a three storied house in an area close to black quarters of London , Brixton. The ground floor was rented out to an Italian women who ran a small bar where people come to smoke marijuana and hash . I screened the first cut of Jahaji Bhai in the bar on a weekend, which gave me more opportunities for screening at Universities of Essex, New Castle and University of London, SOAS.

One of the strangest reply for my invitations for film screening was from a gentleman called Paul Polanski who wrote to me that he is very keen to watch the film and he said he also wanted to discuss something very important with me. By some mistake of communication Paul could not arrive on the day of the screening instead he landed up the next day. We talked over the phone and decided to meet at the café bar right opposite to British library.

Over several cups of coffee and cigarettes, I listened from Paul the fascinating world of Gypsies who according to him are people of Indian origin . Gypsies, whose present population in Europe is nearly 12 million, are the most disadvantaged group in this part of the world. He showed me a number of photographs of Gypsies from Balkan area who looked very much like people from Punjab or Rajasthan or Kashmir . My curiosity grew more.

He gave me few of his research articles where he claimed that there is a caste system still survive among the Gypsies. The Romani language is also very similar to many north Indian languages. He said he is presently stationed at Prishtina, capital of disputed territory of Kosovo, which is presently under UN occupation . He volunteered to live with Gypsies after NATO bombarded Serbia in 1999 and he is currently teaching Gypsies English , a way to empower them to speak for themselves rather than through interpreters who don’t generally understand their language, customs and culture.

It was a revelation for me . I was taken aback by the near total lack of information about this important part of Indian history from the Indian mainstream knowledge . I immediately accepted his invitation to visit Kosovo where hundreds of thousands of Gypsies are living in UN refugee camps and slums. Paul added that the sufferings of Bosnian Muslims received attention because Islam has a block of countries to support their cause. What about gypsies? They have been suffering ever since they left India . Even after nearly one 900 years of existence in Europe Gypsies are still treated as outsiders and many countries in Europe do not accept them as normal people. In Czechoslovakia Gypsy children are being sent to mentally retarded schools for education . There is a systematic and planned programmes in place for several centuries to marginalize and destroy Gypsies.

During the World War II millions of Gypsies were exterminated by Hitler along with Jews for their racial impurity . There are countless books, films, poem, essays and research pares on the suffering of Jews. But what about the Gypsy holocaust ? Paul was very passionate. I had no words to reply. Everything was new for me . For me it first appeared as a fictional extravaganza but soon I realized that most of Paul’s revelations are true.

We said good bye to each other hoping that one day we will meet in Kosovo for a documentary film on Gypsies. A week before I was leaving UK during a sexual encounter with a blonde Czech girl, she said, had I been in Prague she would not have been sleeping with me, no matter how much money I pay because Gypsies are not normal people like us, for she said I look like a Gypsy from her country . She said their government is thinking of constructing a wall to separate the Gypsies from the normal people. The joy of that wonderful sexual experience got dissipated by the racist opinion of the blonde. Then I pledge to myself that I must try to go and see Balkan Gypsies. In the next few months I tried to draw up some proposals for funding for travel to Balkan and film them as part of Indian diaspora in vain..

After I left England in June 2003 my communications with Paul became irregular. I got busy with so many other works and the story of Gypsies were relegated to the backyard of my memoirs but never completely forgotten. In the same year I happened to see Emir Kasturica’s films on Gypsies . Kasturica’s portrayal of Gypsies again aroused interest in me to study the mysteries about Gypsies . On internet I joined International Roma virtual network and started learning about them.

Four years later when I joined Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) to develop a Diaspora cultural center my communication with Paul again resumed. This time I got a chance to invite him to India. I wrote a mail without ever expecting that he would ever reply me. But Paul immediately replied positively and said he recently got married to a Gypsy woman and is presently living in Serbian city of Nish and wants very much to participate in IGNCA Diaspora exhibition and cultural festival along with his wife.

Paul and Dija’s presentations during the festivals were convincing and fresh . Before they left India, Paul asked me to visit them to see Gypsy people whose ancestors left India nearly one thousand years back. He said Gypsies are the forgotten children of India. I recollected the title of another book written by a great Indian traveler Brighu Chamanlal ji who was the first Indian argued that Gypsies are the forgotten children of India.

I said I shall try .

GYPSY JOURNAL

STORY OF ROMA IN

SERBIA AND KOSOVO

This journal is prepared from the author’s travel note books prepared during a month long journey through the regions of Serbia and Kosovo in Balkan in May- June 2007 to study and film the Indian traditions among Roma people. This journal contains details of journey, reflections of people, places, events and issues.

SURESH KUMAR PILLAI