By Anju
Feature: Documentary
Directors: Pavitra Chalam, Akshay Shankar
Languages: Bengali, English, Hindi
Platform: Netflix
Most of the times documentaries are short but not sweet. Documentaries show reality from close quarters by cutting fiction out from facts. Platforms such as Netflix should be credited for bringing such varied stories to our attention. At just 41 minutes, one such heartbreaking story, Rooting for Roona, is about a girl born with birth defects and her parents’ single-mindedly fighting against all odds to give a normal life to her.
Roona Begum was born in 2011 in Jirania Khola, Tripura to Fatima and Abdul – a daily wage laborer at a brick factory surviving by meager means. Roona, affectionately called Jannat at home, had an enormous head. She was born with Hydrocephalus – a condition in which fluid accumulates in the brain causing the head to swell, sometimes can cause brain damage. In these cases, surgical intervention is urgently needed during birth itself.
Roona’s eyes always rolling up, she couldn’t sit, talk or walk. Unable to find support for her head on bed she’s made to sleep on the floor with her mom fanning her. Roona’s parents especially her mom is headstrong, not worried about the stigma surrounding her daughter, even when people in the village say Roona is a curse to them. She feels her daughter is a blessing and had always wanted to have a daughter as “daughters understand their mother’s sorrows”.
Arindam Dey, a photographer – while taking pics of fields near Roona’s village has people telling him about this case of a girl with a big head – brings her story to light. Documentary directors Pavitra Chalam and Akshay Shankar commence filming the documentary from April 2013, when Roona was about a year and a half. Since Roona’s parents had shown her to many doctors in Tripura without any proper diagnosis, they approach Dr. Sandeep Vaishya at Fortis Hospitals, Gurugram. With the help of crowdfunding, Roona undergoes four surgeries there drastically reducing her head size, with one more left where she can become a normal girl.
Fatima’s parents and sister in Rani Bazaar speak about how they had to go through difficulties during Roona’s birth. Abdul and Fatima have one more son, Akhtar. Starting with first a fall, then chicken pox and later breathing issues, the one last surgery eludes Roona. After fighting her battle with tremendous courage, she passes away in 2017. “Nobody should go through the agony of passing of a child” – Roona’s parents grieve.
This poignant documentary goes straight into the heart of Roona and her home. The makers have done an incredible job in keeping track of Roona’s progress and developments from time to time. They have filmed Roona’s and her parents lives in a sensitive manner. Roona’s severe condition was a result of an underdeveloped healthcare system, general lack of awareness about preventative healthcare and inadequate basic knowledge about nutritional/hygiene needs. I must admit, I felt a bit squeamish in some places though I was rooting for Roona all along. Thanks to the collective intervention of the Indian media who brought her story to light, a private hospital in Delhi, a Norwegian NGO that helped raise money for her treatment, and the support of the royal family of Tripura, Roona was finally able to get the care she needed.
Rooting for Roona is a story about struggle, survival, courage, indomitable spirit and the most important of it all – hope, for many such children and parents.
Stars: ****
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