image source, Aadujeevitham
- Author, Meryl Sebastian
- Role, BBC News – Kochi, India
Adujeevitham is an Indian Malayalam film, which depicts the plight of India’s poor people seeking a livelihood in the Middle East, and has captured the attention of crowds of viewers in cinemas.
The word “Adujeevitham” means (The Life of a Goat), and it is a name adapted from the best-selling Malayalam book of 2008, starring Prithviraj Sukumaran, who plays the role of (Najib), an Indian immigrant to Saudi Arabia, who was kidnapped and enslaved to work as a shepherd in the desert.
The story is inspired by the real ordeal of a man with the same name, who was kidnapped in the country in the 1990s, and managed to escape after two years.
The exciting novel has become a cultural cornerstone in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala, in southern India, where its 250th edition was published this year, to widespread acclaim and sparking debate about the harshness of life for migrants in the Gulf.
The three-hour film was so successful that, in its first week of release, it grossed more than 870 million rupees (equivalent to £8.23 million, or $10.4 million) worldwide.
Critics have called it a “stunning survival drama” and a long-awaited “cinematic portrait of struggle amidst brutal brutality.”
In the film, Najib appears isolated from the world, alone with his master and his animals, suffocating in the intense heat in a harsh desert, miles away from the nearest road, without having access to a phone, paper, or pen to write, and without a friend, drinking water from the same mouth. The basin from which his animals drink.
image source, Aadujeevitham
“Please let me come back.”
Naguib pleads in a touching, heart-rending scene, with tears streaming down his face as he tells how he sold everything and left his family, all in pursuit of a promised job; But his words in Malayalam did not resonate with his boss, who only speaks Arabic.
In a conversation on YouTube, Najib, the real hero of the book and film, said that he could never return to the places described in the novel.
There is much writing explaining the oppressive working conditions in the Gulf countries.
It is worth noting that about two million Indians and 100,000 from the state of Kerala live abroad, nearly 90 percent of whom migrated to the Gulf states, influenced by the long-term relationship that has extended for more than five decades, which links the state with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates on the peninsula. Arabic.
Many of these workers come from poor, hard-working families who live under the sponsorship system in these countries, which guarantees the sponsor complete control over their residence and movements, making them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
There is no doubt that the wages that workers sent to their families in Kerala contributed to supporting the state’s economy. An index by a government research institution showed that the state has the lowest poverty rate in India.
“Your passport is taken from you, you can’t come back, so you are constantly under threat of death,” says Muhammad Shafiq Karinkorail of the Manipal Center for the Humanities, who has researched labor migration.
image source, Aadujeevitham
The real Najeeb says: “I left [كيرالا] In 1991, loaded with many dreams; But the experiences I had there, the terrible master and life among the goats, made me lose my sense of self, and I lost my mind.”
In 2008, film director Plessy obtained the right to adapt the book. Sukumaran, the film’s hero, told the BBC that he thought he knew everything about the book when the director handed him a copy next year.
“I knew all the events of the story. To that extent it was the talk of the town, especially in the film industry. However, it blew my mind.”
He added: “One of the prominent features of this story is the mixing of identities between humans and animals. This man slowly loses his identity as a human and becomes one of those animals. I have never read anything like this before.”
In the film, Najeeb gradually stops speaking Malayalam, and from time to time, he makes throat noises similar to those of the animals he takes care of.
Every now and then, he dips into a jar of pickled mango, which he brought with him from his country, to taste a little relief.
After a wait of 16 years, “Adujeevitham” came to light on screens, overcoming the obstacles of high costs, production setbacks, and the Corona epidemic, as the director invested his savings to produce the film.
Plessy, who described the film as an emotional project, said he chose to adapt only 43 pages of the novel to “get to the heart” of the story.
The weekend after its release, people talked about either seeing the film or booking tickets to see it, and YouTube channels showed people leaving the cinema in tears, with many describing the experience as extraordinarily emotional.
One woman said: “I know the story well, but I felt like I was not supposed to watch the movie. It was painful.”
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