Batt Koch: A Review

“The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering’… nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return,” Milan Kundera writes. Batt Koch is about nostalgia. It premiered at The International Film Festival of Srinagar and revolves around the lives of three generations of a displaced Kashmiri Pandit family living in Jammu.

The Kashmiri Pandits are one of the most pressing political issues in our country. The left denies the very reasons that led to their exodus. The right abuses the very reasons that led to their exodus.

Batt Koch doesn’t concern itself with what or who led to this. It focuses on documenting the aftermath of the exodus through the lens of the Koul family. The aging Poshkar Nath, played by M.K. Raina, is an ex-postman who keeps writing letters while reminiscing about the past. His partner, played by Kusum Dhar, is almost equally bewitched and longs to revisit Kashmir once.

“Longing has a side effect: an addiction to looking back… an overwhelming urge to turn the present into the past,” writes Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. “Longing is a scar inside the heart and a country’s fingerprint on the body. But no one longs for his wound, no one longs for pain and nightmare, but for what was before.”

Bitto, their son, keeps making promises to take his family to Kashmir but always fails to. His kids, Osheen and Nitin, are Kashmiri by descent but not by confidence. Neelam, their mother, listens to old koshur folk tunes while cooking koshur food.

Remembering is the ultimate inheritance for the displaced, so dinner tables become rituals of reminiscence. The nostalgia of dishes from the past continuing to be the staple palette for the family reveals their desire to preserve and pass on habits. This is the closest proximity children of immigrants have to their history.

Cuisine is one of the defining parameters of culture. The second is language. While the grandparents and parents talk in Kashmiri, their progeny fails to fully understand the old patterns.

In a reflective scene, Osheen tries talking in Kashmiri with her grandfather, but her accent and pronunciation fail her. This funny scene is a reminder of the diasporic insecurity of the second-generation immigrant.

She confides this to her partner: “Isn’t it strange? It’s my home but I have never been there.”

Mrs Koul, their grandmother, dies wishing for a return that never comes. She dies of ‘too much missing’ — after a planned trip to Kashmir is aborted. This represents the truth of a generation that dies without ever returning. For that first generation of ageing immigrants, Kashmir was their only identity. The struggle of Bitto after migration is just as painful. The mid-life crisis hits twice as hard under displacement, exaggerated by his children having drifted apart from their culture.

After the death of Mrs Koul, at the urging of Poshkar, the family finally decides to revisit Kashmir. Their journey is offset by sadness, since they have become tourists in their own territory.

When they stop at a restaurant, Nitin, the youngest in the family, tells Poshkar: “You shouldn’t have left Kashmir.”

“Nobody leaves their heaven willingly,” Poshkar replies. The silence arrests the viewer to introspect. On the first night back in Kashmir, Poshkar awakens from a nightmare that is delivered in the form of a sound montage…

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” Milan Kundera writes. The Koul family finally revisits their house.

Remembrance is the ultimate bravado of the displaced. Poshkar had been writing letters all these years so he could return and deliver them.

Those who used to live there are gone. He visits their abandoned houses and talks to the ghosts of the owners. In the climax, Poshkar Nath leaves a final letter on the doorstep of his house.

“A day will come when everyone will return to their homes. But will I be there to see that day?”

The film ends here.

Watch the Trailer Below: