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Ocean of Pearls brings out the
painful Sikh experience
WSN Network
 Ocean of Pearls
which opened in San Francisco last week at Landmark’s Bridge Bridge
Theater is directed by Sarab Neelam. It is a well crafted film which
is effective on many levels and with a pulse that draws the
spectator in within seconds. First, it presents an awareness of an
aspect of the health care business in the
US
that is relatively unknown. Even those medically insured risk being
wiped out financially or dying because their “life services” have
been reached in the event of a major medical emergency. This happens
to one of the patients in Ocean of Pearls.
Sarab Neelam who
is actually a Michigan gastroenterologist reported in a visit to
San
Francisco
this week that we need to read the fine print on any insurance
policy and that everyone should have medical insurance in
America. He said
he was concerned in showing different economic classes of patients
in his film to drive home this point.
Secondly, the
film is semi-autobiograpical and focuses on the discrimination that
Sikhs experience for wearing a turban. Asmit (Omid Abtahi), a young
Sikh M.D. whose family has immigrated from
India
to Canada comes to terms with this reality when he is enticed to
take job in a Detroit hospital and promised he can start up an organ
donor transplant unit based on his research. His turban turns out to
be a problem not just in private life but at work. The turban adorns
a head full of hair that has not been cut since birth and ignorance
of its spiritual and cultural significance is a factor that effects
his life and his family in America.
 Sarab Neelam
said that Sikhs have been historically used for comic relief in film
and compared this to the early screen representation of African
Americans. He added that not since The English Patient has there
been a Sikh protagonist, (Kirpal Singh played by Naveen Andrew),
though this representation in the film by Anthony Minghella is
claimed to depart from the novel by Michael Ondaatje.
Since 9/11 Sikhs
have unfairly suffered discrimination. Neelam urges people to get to
know the Sikhs and their culture and confront the prejudice out
there. Ocean of Pearls goes a long way in presenting positive
imagery for the task. Neelam’s debut film shows how one can become
an outsider in culture despite having worked very hard to fulfill
the American Dream. Asmit makes an inner and outer journey to remain
true to himself and discover the importance of his beliefs.
26
August 2009
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