When Kranti first begins his formal education at the age of six outside the confines of the Chanchalguda Central Jail in Hyderabad, he is transfixed by the sight of vehicles on the road. At the special women's prison where he grew up, he was deprived of such scenes unfolding outside the high prison walls.
In the documentary Born Behind Bars (2017) which tracks the lives of children born and raised in Chanchalguda prison, Kranti is heard saying in one scene that once outside the prison he could not stop staring at those cars and buses on the road from the windows of his classroom. But at the same time, in those first few days of schooling facilitated by a private NGO attached to the prison, Kranti was also obsessed with constantly talking about his carefree life in the prison complex where he lived with his incarcerated mother. His friends in the school are heard complaining how Kranti couldn't stop talking about those days in the prison complex, like it was a home he left behind.
Documentary filmmaker Malati Rao was doing her initial groundwork in a prison in Baroda for Born Behind Bars, when she first came across reading material which said that children growing up in prisons are so comprehensively shut out from the outside world that they do not see the sunrise or the sunset for the first six years of their life. This little nugget of information was startling and touching at the same time. Rao's one-and-a-half-year-old daughter would also often accompany her on these field-trips. It was this parallel journey, with her own child and observing the children in prisons, which led to a realisation of sorts.
"Frankly, seeing my own daughter grow and also seeing how the children were in prison, I realised that it doesn't really matter if they didn't see the sunset or the sunrise. The bond that they develop with the mother at the time, the sense of security or protection that they derive, those were far more critical at that age then any other sensory perception," Rao said at the screening of her documentary in Delhi, when an audience member sought to know her opinion on the ethics of letting children grow in prisons at all. Born Behind Bars was shown as part of the second edition of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's (CHRI's) ‘Matter of Right (s)’ film festival, ending March 14. Shot over 2015, Born Behind Bars was first shown in Kathmandu at Festival Southasia 2017 and later at the Mumbai International Film Festival in January this year.
Armed with an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia, Rao's first documentary was on the Right to Education Act called Free and Compulsory (2012). A chance discovery of a press release, which stated that children in Gujarat prisons are being given access to education, led Rao to investigate further. Those preliminary explorations in women prisons in Baroda and Ahmedabad brought to the fore stories which remained untold because of permission issues, but she continued with her mission to document the lives of children born to convicted mothers and she eventually gained access to shoot in the special women's prison of Chanchalguda Central Jail in Hyderabad.
But Rao is not interested in depicting the squalor one might associate in a prison complex sheltering children. "My interest wasn't necessarily to show how dirty the prisons are or how badly kept they are, but really be able to show the life of the children who are in prison and stick to a more humanistic point of view. Because then you can actually get past it and tell stories beyond just the fact that the basic amenities are not in place."
The result is a moving portrait of how children born with an inherent disadvantage grow up with hope and promise, nonetheless. Born Behind Bars, which is produced by Films Division, educates viewers on some of the more forward-looking elements of prison reforms. Children born in Chanchalguda prison spend the first six years of their lives inside the prison complex where they have access to some semblance of an education through a teacher from the social welfare department. But the reluctant teacher does not approve of rearing children inside a prison complex and thinks the unsavoury atmosphere makes them steal things from an early age. But the children are shown to display mannerisms which are not unlike kids growing up in a normal situation. Once they complete six years, they are transferred to a hostel with the help of an NGO. Their birth certificates do not mention that they were born inside a prison.
A young girl saw her father getting murdered right in front of her eyes, while Kranti saw a woman getting beaten up in a cell reserved for solitary confinement. Yet another six-year-old has assumed her grandmother to be her mother who was allegedly killed by the child's father and grandmother. But how these children retain their sense of wonder and hope is the real story in this documentary which is at once heart-rending and reassuring.