The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs

Everyone can be enchanted by Laila and her seven songs in this intoxicating film, even those who are not familiar with Lalleshwari or Lal Ded’s poems, the fourteenth century mystic from Jammu and Kashmir, or with the folk tales of Viajaydan Detha or Biji, the writer from Rajasjtan. After her wedding ceremony, the beautiful, self-conscious Laila leaves Bakarwal, her Islamic, nomadic tribe, to go to her husband Tanvir’s community, who is a shepherd in the forests of Jammu and Kashmir. All the men, but most of all the officer Mushtaq and his superior, desire her. The seven songs are the chapters in Laila’s story about her struggle to shake off the identities forced upon her, the identities of desirable woman and wife in a marriage, just like a snake shakes off her old skin.

The director Pushpendra Singh transfers Lalleshwari’s mystic poems and Vijaydan Detha’s folk tale to a modern day situation of a woman in Jammu and Kashmir. The title ‘Kenchuli’ refers to an old snake skin. The world as the inhabitants of this contested region between India and Pakistan know her, has irrevocably changed: nomadic life is limited by passports, permits and nosy security officers. In a symbolic layer of the story, Laila even embodies the state whose freedom and borders are determined by Pakistan and India. But Laila, powerfully portrayed by Navjot Randhawa, breaks through all the borders.