Permission

@

The Trinidad Guardian - Online 

A fusion of roots

Rohit Jagessar puts his vision in the film Guiana 1838

By Zen Dionne Jarrette

One question from his son. That was what started Rohit Jagessar on his odyssey to create the film Guiana 1838.

His son Neil was eight years old at the time. Born in America, Neil, now 17, walked up to his father one day and said, “Dad, you are Indian, but you’re not. What’s the deal?”

From this, Jagessar started looking into exactly what “the deal” was—and found himself and a movie in the process.

At the Guyanese Consulate on Gray Street, St Clair, on April 13, Jagessar waxed sentimental on the path he took to create Guiana 1838.

Born in Guyana in 1961, Jagessar grew up in Black Bush Polder, in Corentyne, Berbice. He was from a family of rice farmers, the youngest boy of seven children.

“I am the handsome one!” he exclaimed, the one time he became animated through the entire interview.

His grandmother, Sancharia, had come to Guyana from India in 1891 at seven years of age. Her stories of life and struggle left an indelible impression on Jagessar’s mind.

“She loved to tell stories,” the filmmaker recalled. “After dinner each night we would sit around a lantern and she would tell stories of India and her voyage on the ship to Guyana.”

This oral tradition kept Jagessar very firmly attached to his roots.

“When I went to India for the first time in 1981 I was very emotional,” he said. “I have since been back many times, especially to research the film.”

When he moved to New York as a teenager, he began to produce music that was particularly of West Indian and Indian fusion.

Years later, he scored a big hit internationally with a song he produced for Indian singers Kanchan and Babla. His Hindi version of Arrow’s Hot, Hot, Hot!, titled Kuchh Gadbad Hai, was a success throughout the entire West Indies and is still well-known today.

He remained friends with Kanchan and Babla since that experience. Kanchan passed away last year.

“We were family right to the last day,” he said, instantly growing sombre. He recalled that one of the last things Kanchan saw just before she died was the trailer for his movie.

“She loved it,” he said. “It meant a lot to her.”

After his success working with Kanchan and Babla, Jagessar began working to establish the New York radio station he today owns.

RBC Radio is a subscription radio station that has done quite well for him. What he calls his “little business” financed the US$1 million budget of his film. Taking time out from his business interests, Jagessar wrote, produced and directed the film.

The film talks about the relations between Africans and Indians in Guyana when the Indians first arrived in 1838 and were enslaved for a period. Understandably, there was tension between the two races because the Africans, who had arrived in Guyana 200 years earlier, felt the newcomer Indians had stymied their newly granted freedom by taking work away from them.

Photo: Zen Dionne Jarrette

The breakdown in race relations is something Jagessar said he was well aware of, but not affected by, as a child.

“Growing up in a village of blacks and Indians was a wonderful experience,” he said. “We did not let the opinions of outside the village affect us.”

Jagessar, a mild-mannered, almost shy man, dislikes talking about himself and feels his film should do all the talking for him.

“This is my vision. This is my mind. I am my work.”

That being said, how would he feel if the public has a bad reaction to it?

“I am prepared for that,” he said, chuckling. “If there is bad reaction I will learn from it. It is nerve-wracking, but I am ready for it.”

As for his son, who is in high school near their Queens, New York home, Jagessar felt the film should leapfrog the American influence in his mind.

“My son loves the West Indies!” he enthused. “This film gives both explanation and closure to people like him.”

Guiana 1838 premieres on April 26 at MovieTowne. Rohit Jagessar will be in nervous attendance.

Tuesday 19th April, 2005