MAYRIG

12 Noon

It was when I was swapping channels. I was at Zee MGM when I realized that they were showing a french movie. Its always a curiosity for me watch classics in foreign languages, plus languages always fascinate me. Another point of interest when I realized that the kid in the movie is called Azad. 

The movie was already raising my interest as I thought this could be about a family that migrated from the Arab world to south of France. I was right it was Marseille in the South of France but the family is not from the Arab but one country called Armenia, where I would love to go one day. 

Azad is a Hindi word which probably came along the persian migration to the then Indus basin or maybe from Urdu to Hindi with the Mughal invasion. It is hard to tell and I have no mood to google it. But the name of the little boy Azad means free and is very symbolic in this movie. 

My friend Narine from Armenia had always told me that there are many similar words between India and Armenia. While I invited my mother and her nurse to accompany me for the movie, I also simultaneously wrote her that am watching this movie based on an Armenian family which exiled from Armenia to make a life in the south of France. 

It is family of three sisters: 

Anna the eldest who did not marry to keep a promise to her dying mother that she will always take care of her sisters. 

Mayrig who is married with one son called Azad. 

Gayanne who decides to be a spinster as she lost her love interest Zasken to death. 

There is another character called Apkar who escaped the massacre by the Ottomans, survives with the help of a Kurdish herd to land up in France and later helps the Zakarian Family from Armenia to find a home in France. 

The entire Zakarian family fuels bit by bit their sweat to build Azad and make him an Engineer. 

Half way through the movie my friend had wrote me back that this is the movie which she watch every year on 24th April. The same day to which she has lost some of her ancestors in the genocide planted by the Ottomans. She also tells me Mayrig in Armenia means Mother, which made the movie more emotional for me and my mother. 

Its incredible for me how I am watching a French movie with English subtitles about an Armenia family sitting in my hometown in Bhubaneswar, India. More than that I am translating it into Oriya for my mother and her nurse. My mother is also fascinated by the old France they show in the movie. 

Sometimes we travel a lot across countries, cultures, languages and people. Thanks to technology it is possible even if while we are watching a movie in our bedroom.