An impossibility lurks over Vivek Chaudhary바카라s documentary I, Poppy. A sense of having one바카라s hands tied, whichever direction one takes바카라how do individuals carve their way out of such situations? Through the perspectives of the elderly poppy farmer Vardibai and her middle-aged son Mangilal, the struggle for a better life is illuminated in all its conflicts and hard decisions.
Vardibai is terrified and pained at her son바카라s defiant path. She knows his choice to resist will have major ramifications. She insists he fall in with tradition, do what바카라s always been asked of them. In all her years of hard work, the family never ran into debt. Poppy has given them everything, she says. It바카라s helped fund her son바카라s education, erect their house. However, with Mangilal바카라s protests, they have landed in a soup. She holds an intimate, sacred relationship with the land, wary of wanting too much lest the little she scrambled together might be taken away. But her son takes on the machinery itself. Mangilal is rarely on the field, burying himself in protest work.
The toughened stability of Vardibai바카라s life threatens to come wholly undone. As he rallies for the farmer community to come together and put up an organized front, consequences spiral. Vardibai바카라s farming license is pushed into precarity of non-renewal.
Mangilal reckons with an ultimate loneliness in his struggle. Even as he sporadically gets people to join his cause, 바카라farmers are cowards바카라. There바카라s too much at stake. Livelihoods might be permanently endangered. Mangilal is constantly advised to get off his chosen path. Can바카라t he see the dangers? His mother pleads. The dilemma is many-pronged, odds too skewed. Poppy farmers haven바카라t had a spike in payments despite decades passing. But the morphine goes into the most staggeringly priced medicines. Narcotics officers get rich off the farmers바카라 misfortunes. Terms of engagement between the two are historically unfair. While one builds the most lavish life off extortion, the other바카라s dumped in the trenches. Farmers have to tackle complaints of low morphine in poppies. However, if they pay up, the same bunch of poppies get passed.
What Chaudhary establishes in clear-cut, bracing terms is how farmers are cut off from institutional aid in every form. If there바카라s no official license, business gets branded illegal. Narcotics fling them in jails. So far as hefty bribes are paid, farmers clutch onto an illusion of safety. How do they even afford with such a recurring, measly pay? It바카라s a Sisyphean cycle of misery. Vardibai has resigned herself to it but her son keeps raging for change. Rights should be lent till the very last person standing, he tells his students in class.
Caught in his activism and canvassing support, he grows increasingly oblivious of his own son바카라s needs바카라college fees that need filling. Mangilal is determined despite all signs urging him to call off his plans. His sons question him on such an alienating course, but Mangilal is certain. There바카라s a staunch idealism in him that powers through every defeating setback. He believes in his pursuit of rights in spite of attacks. As others come and go, he stays undeterred. Chaudhary takes a matter-of-fact approach, delineating the everyday tussle to protect crops. Be it birds or smugglers, poppies need constant supervision till they are cashed.
I, Poppy swings between the mother바카라s growing despair and the son바카라s resolute faith scratching through the dark. There might be occasional payoffs, arrests of few officials, but punishment to Mangilal바카라s family rushes in immediate. That they are Dalits further ensures any socio-economic rise or hope for power remains out of sight. Is it justice at all if saddled with such dire consequence?
Chaudhary drops us in absolute bleakness. Each resistance is met with only greater clampdown, a deepened non-recognition. Those like Mangilal make only small dents, uncreased eventually. The film draws quiet tragedy from a simmering lack of true, positive choice. Chaudhary displays maturity and emotionally honed instincts in accelerating no drama. Heartbreak, defeat that gnaws through one바카라s whole바카라these pluck at I, Poppy. This is an intimate film, concentrated on a single family바카라s vicissitudes. Nevertheless, its unshowy triumph is it encapsulates entire communities on mere survival바카라s anvil.
I, Poppy had its world premiere at Hot Docs 2025.
