Roma (Not the Fellini Movie!)

I was watching this movie, which my colleague lent to me, the other day. She said that it was a very good movie, and probably it contained subtitles in English as well (which, in the final analysis, it didn't!). Now, though I don't know a thing about movie or art (or anything else for that matter), I like to pretend to be an intellectual, and hence I took the movie from her, and started watching it.

The name of the movie is Dom Za Vesanje (Time of the Gypsies); it's about the Gypsies in Yugoslavia (Now, my colleague dislikes the Gypsies, and she often mentions to me that an Indian Professor told her that there are Gypsies in India too; I guessed the professor meant the Banjaras. However, I never bothered much about any possible connection of the European Gypsies to India.), and it didn't have any subtitles in English. I was half and half watching it until I saw this drunkard talking to himself. He said, ek dui trin, and started hopping. Now, ek dui tini is how I count one two three in my mother tounge and that's what he was doing too (In Hindi, it's ek do tin)! That intrigued me, and I paid attention to what they say in the movie after that.

Interestingly, I kept hearing words such as dekh (look), paani (water), paach (five), chay (six), oth (eight), gav (village) etc., which are (more or less) the same words found in Hindi/Sanskrit too. More than that, the sense in which these words were used was also identical to that in Indian languages.

That intrigued me even further, and I went to do what I do best; I did Google. And there came many hits, telling me the link of the Gypsies with India. I never knew, for example, that the Gypsies migrated from India a thousand years or so ago, or that their language (Romany) is derived from Indian languages (a 2003 Nature paper, however, says that it's derived from the Sinhala language). I learnt more about the Gypsies in half an hour than I knew in 25 years (not that it makes any difference!)

As far as the movie goes, I just quote the review of a person, posted in imdb.com:

"This movie shines as an example of pure art in cinema. So powerful with symbolism and story telling, "Time of Gypsies" delivers amazing performances on acting, settings, musical scores, and overall directing.

In year 1988, this movie was one of the most awaited films in the Istanbul International Film Festival. I was one of the lucky ones who had a ticket for the film. When the show time arrived, it was obvious that there was a problem since the film did not started. A lady from the festival committee came to the stage announcing their appology and explaining what the problem was; they were expecting the copy of the film from the its distributor in USA. Unfortunately there was a logistics problem, so they had to get it directly from Yugoslavia. When the festival organisation put their Yugoslavian translators at work they did not understand which language it was! And a cleaning lady, who was an actual gypsy figured out that the movie was in Gypsy language. So it was not possible to translate it for the festival.

So they offered an apology and refund in case anybody did not want to watch it without subtitles.

Nobody left the theatre. We watched the movie without understanding a word. But, at the end there was a standing ovation at the theatre went on for a couple of minutes."

I'm happy that my colleague lent this movie to me, which gave me the chance to know a few things about the Gypsies.

By now, it has become almost my habit to provide links for the topic in my blog-posting. Here we go:

http://www.answers.com/topic/roma-people

http://www.herts.ac.uk/UHPress/Gypsies.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_and_Sinti

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Romany-english/

http://imdb.com/title/tt0097223/