'Kamli My Daughter' screened at MAMI

Mumbai, Mar 13 (UNI) ''Kamli My Daughter'', a film that tells of the plight of the girl child, was screened at the ongoing MAMI today.

The film is a collage of memories of Kamli who comes to demolish a hospital and remembers how she protested here against the injustice meted out to her.

Kamli and Redya are wayside laborers in the city of Hyderabad who have migrated from their tribal Tanda in search of a living. Kamli, under the pressure of tribal community that indulges in female foeticide considering girls as ill omen, has sold a girl child earlier much against her wishes. She is once again pregnant and her husband Redya is of the opinion that the child, if it is a female, should be sold in order to get rid of his debts.

Director of the film, K N T Sastry says in northern Andhra Pradesh, the poverty-ridden Lambada community nurtures the belief that the girl child is an ill omen while a male child is the harbinger of good life. This has lead to the emergence of middlemen who spot the pregnant women, and scan them for foetel sex. Upon learning that a female baby is due, they take away the girl child on its birth by paying paltry sums. The girl is then sold to adoption agencies which ultimately sell these children to western countries.

''Extreme penury drives these people to accept this offer as it not only gives them food for a couple of days but also comfort themselves with the feeling that the girl may be safe,'' the director says.

Noticing that these Lambadas are the ones who build the cyber towns of the so called Hi Tech cities that boast of IT industry, I felt their plight needs attention. Based on my earlier documentary ''Harvesting Baby Girls'', this film is a fiction that has more facts than fiction,'' says the director.

UNI