Joya Dass, a business anchor on NY 1 News and host of AVS, has recently finished her first documentary on curable blindness in children in India, called First Sight. As a native of Pennsylvania and a current New Yorker, she was born to immigrant parents, and it was her dysfunctional upbringing that gave her the quest to find her own voice. Her experience as business news anchor for CNN, Bloomberg and ABC gave her the skills. Here, Joya relates her journey from a mere idea to a completed film.
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Although I consider myself Indian, my father is originally from Rangoon, Burma. Dotted by spacious lakes and massive gold pagodas, Rangoon, literally translated means “End of Strife.” Before World War II, ethnic Indians in Burma were only familiar with prosperity. As a majority population, they prospered as soldiers, civil servants, merchants and moneylenders. By 1962 however, the Japanese had invaded and the military Junta ordered “non-resident aliens” to leave meaning all ethnic Indians were not only out of a job, they no longer had a voice. My father, vulnerable at 21 years of age, emigrated to the US. This would be two years before all ethnic Indians were ordered out of the country.
My mother recalls how handsome my father was when he had come calling on the prospect of an arranged marriage. He was a strapping 5’10” with good hair and a high forehead. “He had great lips,” she recalled in her child-like manner.
1992 marked the decline of the relationship between my father and me. Truth be told, the decline was always boiling beneath the surface.
I learned at age 11, that women of 902 Valley Street, Enola, Pennsylvania weren’t allowed to have a voice. My mother never went to the police, despite all the beatings with an umbrella. Creditors, weary of late payments, regularly repossessed cars and turned off phone service. The clunk of the heavy chain hooking to the back of the car would wake me and, I’d peer out my bedroom window watching as the wood-paneled Pontiac station wagon was towed away into the dark of the night, yet again. All things financial weren’t a woman’s concern either—and in my second semester of sophomore year, the CFO of my college pointed to the portion of the bill that read “unpaid balance.” Apparently, this semester’s bill was pending and the last semester remained unpaid. Long, wiry lines would collect around the CFO’s thin mouth, as he relished the prospect of sending another delinquent nonpayer home; women apparently didn’t deserve an education either.
Determined to succeed, through a series of scholarships, loans and part-time jobs, I got myself through college and graduate school. Ostensibly, I was on a mission to come to New York and become a TV journalist. A decade would pass before I realized that I was on a quest to find my voice. I clearly remember the day Dan Rather walked into the room CBS. The dot-com era was firing up. It was a big, bad new frontier, and we were the newbie soldiers recruited to usher in the era of new media. I recall writing my mother, “I’m in the presence of greatness.”
That may have been the last “honest to goodness” time I connected with my mom as well. We too became estranged after that. I had spent so many years, equating “Indian” with “bad” that the abyss only grew larger over the years. In 2001, while working as a reporter for CNN, I went to India for the first time as an adult. At a family wedding, I watched as my grandmother sat like a queen with scads of grandchildren, daughter-in-laws, daughters, and sisters swelling around her. Every day, I got up and did the news, but a nagging feeling of emptiness persisted in my stomach as the reports I read began to disappear into the ether. What was I going to leave behind as my legacy, as my voice? I had worked so hard to get here.
On one languorous two-week vacation to Calcutta, eight years later, the idea came to me. Each day I would go for a drive from Tollygunge to Park Street. Street dust would inevitably find its way through the cracks in the windows, and find a home in one filmy layer on my tongue. It was during one of these drives that the idea for my legacy came to me. I thought I could put my reporting and producing skills to use by bringing light to one of India’s many humanitarian issues; eye disease in the country is a huge problem–India alone is home to one-fifth of the world’s blind children. Conditions such as cataracts plague many members of the rural population where a long-standing tradition of inter-marriage is still practiced today. I would use my skills to make a documentary highlighting the rampant problems of eye disease.
I got back to New York and in May 2009, started production on a documentary film called First Sight. I allied with The Sankara Eye Foundation, also based out of New York, which provides eye care and surgeries for India’s unfortunate. I found a cameraman who sold us with his demo reel of Jose, a little shoe shining, Latin American boy. My cousin in Bangalore volunteered to become the on-set photographer and later he became our full-time Tamilian translator too. With a few fundraisers and much of my own money, the project was soon underway.
During production on the ground, it was long days on the road traveling to South Indian towns with long four syllable names. However, once there, our amicable subjects made up for our hardships with their easy nature and candor. In the evenings, over dosas and idlis, we would muse that no American would ever open up their homes to us and our cameras with such trust, even despite the language barrier. Many strong bonds formed on that trip that will last a lifetime.
In June 2010, the editing process began. Thirty-four hours of footage eventually morphed into 33 minutes of movie. Three editors later, the music would come. I recall being beachside in Miami when the first bits of soundtrack rolled in. I cried. Cried for having come this far…cried for the artist’s passion poured into the music even though I could only afford to pay them mere pennies. Today, First Sight stands at 50 minutes and is in the finishing stretch, barring any last technical procedures that ready a film for entry into film festivals such as Sundance and Tribeca.
Among the many hats I’ve worn in getting this film to the finish line, fundraising has been the toughest, but it’s all part of the process. This film would be my way of making a lasting impact on the part of the world my dad worked so hard to leave.
When I was young, everyday at 6 pm, my dad would switch on the old TV and, we would watch the evening news. The year was 1976; Jimmy Carter had been elected President, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple and The Ramones performed at CBGB’s for the first time as a professional band. It was part of our daily ritual. I’d sit on the floor so I could be at eye level with the TV. I’d spread papers around the coffee table, so I could look as industrious and as busy as Dan Rather. I never had enough papers to cover the table. I imagine my dad looked at those images of war and trouble, and recalled his own struggles. I now look at myself, and see someone, who found her purpose and her voice.
To learn more about the film, www.firstsightthefilm.com
Twitter: @FirstSightFilm Facebook: firstsightfim
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