When Water Takes Away Life: A Story of Kurdi

When your homeland is lost, there are strong emotions that are evoked in those who lived there. ‘Remembering Kurdi’ is the story of a group of people, whose lives and livelihoods were taken away by the very elixir of life – water. It is a film by Saumyananda Sahi which talks about how the Goan village of Kurdi was ripped apart by the Salaulim dam when its reservoir submerged Kurdi along with 19 other villages.

The film was screened as part of the Science Gallery Bangalore’s film festival on water called Soak, organized as a part of their first exhibition-season. Soak has been curated by filmmaker Surabhi Sharma. 

About 40 people from diverse backgrounds came for the screening and the discussion afterwards, with Gurucharan Kurdikar, a former resident of Kurdi and Rashmi Swahney, an assistant professor in cinema and cultural studies at Christ University, Bangalore.

“My house was there”,  an old man says in the film, pointing at the vast expanse of water that is the reservoir. We typically hear this phrase when someone talks about their old apartment, but it hits deep when you realize that their moving out was not voluntary. 

“We didn’t know what a dam was so we didn’t know the extent of what was going to happen” said another person who had to abandon all of their cattle in the village as water started to fill in at a rapid pace.

Post the screening, the audience joined the discussion with Gurucharan and Rashmi where talked about themes of belonging, homeland and what it means in today’s globalized world. The audience got a deeper understanding of the present state of the people of Kurdi and what life has been like after their displacement. 

By Abigail Silversmith, Mediator