“We’ve inherited hope – the gift of forgetting.
You’ll see how we give birth among the ruins.”
-Wisława Szymborska
Of the cattle that come to graze on the slopes leading to the fort of Korlai, I would ask, why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me? Their eyes appear to say, the reason is I always forget what I was going to say—but then they forget this answer, too, and stay silent so that the human being was left wondering before the sea, in the time of yellow grass.
I had first visited Korlai in 2009. A very dear friend of mine had also been there, separately, unbeknownst to me, around the same time. We were both haunted by something mysterious at work over there. We used to write each other about life, about cinema and languages, but we had never mentioned Korlai and its secret indifference, or our desire to return there. It wasn’t until a few years later, when an assignment brought me back to Korlai, that I could begin to speak about it. By then, my friend had disappeared from my life.
It was the walk to the fort I remembered most—following cattle trails, not the dirt road to the lighthouse, finding pockets along the hill which seem to put the whole world into perspective by revealing that the world is blue at its edges and in its depths; from these pockets one can see that this blue is the light that is lost, the colour of where you are not, where you can never go. These nameless places awaken a desire to be lost, to be far away, yet they can also become anechoic chambers where the silence of the Self becomes audible. You take a deep breath, and unto the dust bequeath yourself, to grow from the grass you love.
In the year and a half it took to make this film, to retrace my footsteps and start over again, Korlai, for all its endurance, kept on changing. I have not returned to Korlai ever since, though some of my friends have recently been there and sent me souvenirs. The continuity of memory falls short to measure the abyss between what it once was and what will remain of it in the near future. Though when I think of my long-lost friend, I feel how little some things change—the last stretch of white sand, the three trees, the cattle trails—even if I be not there—it would always be the same. May the grass make it known that wherever you are my friend, if you want to find me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
Film Synopsis
On India's Konkan coast, in the village of Korlai, a sense of quaintness pervades its Portuguese heritage, the Creole, the faces, and the fort. The filmmaker had visited this place once, as did his friend, of whom nothing is ever said. Years later, an assignment brings the filmmaker back to Korlai. Memories revive but what compels his wayward excursion this time is the elemental and the immemorial wherein his solitude finds refuge. In the time of yellow grass, with steps receding and prayers unanswered, a desire for oblivion forks the search for images of exile and belongingness. This experience surfaces through grainy 16mm images and an elegiac voice-over, which retrace a sense of remembrance, loss, perception, and time intersecting with an inner self and with history. A letter for Korlai also becomes a letter to a dear departed; and in reading this letter, in seeking a new way of inhabiting the world, a vision of Korlai emerges that is both attentive and phantasmagoric, a series of possible angles and tributaries that the viewer and traveller might possibly take.
Letter from Korlai
-Wisława Szymborska
Of the cattle that come to graze on the slopes leading to the fort of Korlai, I would ask, why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me? Their eyes appear to say, the reason is I always forget what I was going to say—but then they forget this answer, too, and stay silent so that the human being was left wondering before the sea, in the time of yellow grass.
I had first visited Korlai in 2009. A very dear friend of mine had also been there, separately, unbeknownst to me, around the same time. We were both haunted by something mysterious at work over there. We used to write each other about life, about cinema and languages, but we had never mentioned Korlai and its secret indifference, or our desire to return there. It wasn’t until a few years later, when an assignment brought me back to Korlai, that I could begin to speak about it. By then, my friend had disappeared from my life.
It was the walk to the fort I remembered most—following cattle trails, not the dirt road to the lighthouse, finding pockets along the hill which seem to put the whole world into perspective by revealing that the world is blue at its edges and in its depths; from these pockets one can see that this blue is the light that is lost, the colour of where you are not, where you can never go. These nameless places awaken a desire to be lost, to be far away, yet they can also become anechoic chambers where the silence of the Self becomes audible. You take a deep breath, and unto the dust bequeath yourself, to grow from the grass you love.
In the year and a half it took to make this film, to retrace my footsteps and start over again, Korlai, for all its endurance, kept on changing. I have not returned to Korlai ever since, though some of my friends have recently been there and sent me souvenirs. The continuity of memory falls short to measure the abyss between what it once was and what will remain of it in the near future. Though when I think of my long-lost friend, I feel how little some things change—the last stretch of white sand, the three trees, the cattle trails—even if I be not there—it would always be the same. May the grass make it known that wherever you are my friend, if you want to find me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
Film Synopsis
On India's Konkan coast, in the village of Korlai, a sense of quaintness pervades its Portuguese heritage, the Creole, the faces, and the fort. The filmmaker had visited this place once, as did his friend, of whom nothing is ever said. Years later, an assignment brings the filmmaker back to Korlai. Memories revive but what compels his wayward excursion this time is the elemental and the immemorial wherein his solitude finds refuge. In the time of yellow grass, with steps receding and prayers unanswered, a desire for oblivion forks the search for images of exile and belongingness. This experience surfaces through grainy 16mm images and an elegiac voice-over, which retrace a sense of remembrance, loss, perception, and time intersecting with an inner self and with history. A letter for Korlai also becomes a letter to a dear departed; and in reading this letter, in seeking a new way of inhabiting the world, a vision of Korlai emerges that is both attentive and phantasmagoric, a series of possible angles and tributaries that the viewer and traveller might possibly take.
Letter from Korlai
running time: 22 min. 23 sec.
original format: 16mm
Colour & Black-and-White screening format DCP 2K
BluRay sound format Dolby Digital
original language English
subtitles none
direction, production: Aman Wadhan
direction, production: Aman Wadhan
cinematography: Niraj Samad
editing: Nachiket Waikar
sound: Bhanu Dhande
production company: Film and Television Institute of India
-Aman Wadhan
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