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The Current Transcript for September 9, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Lack of communication for sure, with the family. Lack of involvement. We were basically told, no, he's an adult and this is between Brian and his doctors.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Brian was Lorraine Johnson's son, and she desperately wanted to help him. But she says her hands were tied because of his age and because he was hospitalized. In just a moment, we'll hear about the calls by Lorraine and others to become involved in the care of their adult children who have mental health challenges. Because as she says Brian is gone — he took his own life — but there may still be hope for others like him. Then, speaking of hope...

SOUNDCLIP

In the red light district, to have hope is probably the worst thing that you can have. And that's probably going to make you lose your mind.

PC: Anosh Irani takes us into Mumbai's red light district in his latest novel The Parcel. And once you learn what, or who, the Parcel is, it might just break your heart. But the light he sheds on a dark corner of reality, is ultimately redeeming. A conversation with Vancouver novelist Anosh Irani is headed your way in a half hour. Also today, revisiting the tactics of East Germany’s secret police.

SOUNDCLIP

They would do things like go into a person's apartment, rearrange the furniture every week just to show the person that, you know, we were here.

PC: They were there and in the hearts and minds of some children of East Germany, they've still never truly left. We'll travel to Karl Marx City in an hour from now. Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

'Brian should be alive today': Mother who lost son to suicide says health system failed him

Guests: Lorraine Johnson, Dr. David Gratzer, Dr. Patrick Smith

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: When a child suffers from debilitating mental health issues and tries to take their own life, any parent would be desperate to do whatever they could to help. And that doesn't change no matter the child's age, whether they're a young teenager or all grown up. But what does change when that son or daughter has entered adulthood, are the rules around privacy at hospitals and parents’ ability to intervene in their care. It is a complicated balance, but one that the family of Brian David Geisheimer believes needs improvement. Brian took his own life at the age of 30, two years ago. And this week, his mom Lorraine Johnson, has been testifying at an inquest looking into three cases at Abbotsford Regional Hospital in BC. Lorraine Johnson is with me from Burnaby, British Columbia. Lorraine, hello.

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Hello.

PC: What happened to your son Brian?

LORRAINE JOHNSON: My son Brian, unfortunately, made an attempt on his life December 13th of 2014. He turned 30 years old on December 14th, at which time he was in Abbotsford hospital committed to the psych ward. Then, the nurses assured me repeatedly over keeping a close eye on him, he’s high risk. He was a smoker and they allowed him to go outside the hospital, fully clothed, unsupervised, for smoke breaks. There was unlocked ward he could just sign himself out and be on his own. Well, on December 28th, and I heard that he had been reduced to level one, which meant at this point he was not to have his street clothes, he was supposed to go into hospital clothes, because they were more concerned that he was less well and more of a risk to himself. Anyway, that did not happen and he was upset that morning, swearing at the nurses, the doctors. Then he said why don't you let me finish what I started. He said I'm in pain, I need help. And then at that point, they let him storm out of the hospital. Well, he left the hospital at 11:00 and he was found deceased in Mission at 9:30 that night.

PC: What a hell of a day for you and your family.

LORRAINE JOHNSON: I know.

PC: Let me understand a little bit more about your son, first of all. What was Brian's condition, what was he being treated for in the hospital?

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Depression. He'd gone through a horrible breakup with his girlfriend. And, you know, he just was heartbroken. And he was turning 30, he just felt so hopeless about his life and his future. And so, yes, depression. And the other thing I would like to say is I had no experience, we had no experience, Brian had no experience with the police department, you know, the ambulance service, the hospital, certainly not the psych ward. And so, we were not given any direction, any communication for even how to support Brian. We weren't included in his health plan. [sighs] No communication at all, unless we asked how things were going. But there was no support for us and therefore no support for him.

PC: What do you think should have happened?

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Well, for starters, locking the door to the psych ward. In speaking with other people and other, you know, cities and so on, they say what? He was able to just walk out the door and have a smoke break unattended, and ultimately storm out of there agitated, upset, and take off right off the premises. And that would certainly be one. The other one would be a locator, you know, a GPS locator bracelet. And that was, the response was oh well, no that would be against his privacy. And so--

PC: [interposing] Let me ask you about that. Sorry Lorraine, sorry to interrupt. But I do want to ask you about, because this is on the privacy matter. Your son was 30 years old, he was an adult. When do you think doctors and those helping people, helping those with mental health issues, talk to their families, their caregivers?

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Exactly. My oldest son is a doctor and he said mom, you know, he said if it's a cancer patient, a cardiac patient, diabetic, liver, you name it, he said we always involve the family. He said because that's part of the team, part of the treatment, part of the wellness, and certainly part of the recovery team when they're sent home. And so, my son was certified, which said he was a danger to himself, he was not of sound mind. And then, he’s taken in hospital, removed of his freedom to leave, hopefully, but in this case not. And then, they say oh you're an adult, you make your own decisions. It just, how could you not shake your head with that kind of a system? It was just so heartbreaking and so needless. Brian should have been a survivor. Brian should be alive today. [breathes heavily]

PC: It doesn't take much to hear in your voice. It's a mixture of emotion. So, here we are having an inquest to try to make things better, to try and make something like this not happen again. What are you hoping to change Lorraine?

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Well, I was asked that question, you know, did I have any hope about, you know, the outcome of the inquest? Certainly I have hope. But the changes that are going to be recommended need to be implemented, and then there needs to be a system to monitor that those changes are actually in place and being followed. Because otherwise it's just wasting everyone's time, and quite frankly making a mockery of the whole coroner's office.

PC: Two things that you want changed tomorrow.

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Lock down those psych wards, keep those patients safe. And involve the family.

PC: Thank you for just sharing your thoughts with us. I appreciate you making the time for us.

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Thank you so much for the opportunity to share our story.

PC: Bye.

LORRAINE JOHNSON: Bye.

PC: Lorraine Johnson testified earlier this week about the death of her son Brian David Geisheimer at a coroner's inquest looking into three cases at the Abbotsford Regional Hospital in British Columbia. She was in Burnaby, BC. Now we did contact the Abbotsford Regional Hospital, which said it wasn't able to comment during the inquest. Dr. David Gratzer has seen the battle between patient and parent rights many times. He's a psychiatrist at the Scarborough hospital, as well as a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He's here with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Good morning.

PC: So you were just listening in to Lorraine Johnson. How familiar does this story that she tells sound to you?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, perhaps too familiar. There's a natural tension between patients and their rights, and families and their involvement.

PC: Happens with adult children and their families regularly.

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, especially when chronic illness is involved. And that doesn't matter if it's chronic illness like diabetes or chronic illness like mental illness.

PC: Can you, I know you can't talk about a specific case, but what kinds of cases, I mean, you say it's everything from physical health challenges to mental ones. But is there one, like a case that you can talk about, sort of wholesale that speaks to the kinds of things you're dealing with on a regular basis?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, first of all I just want to emphasize that exceptional things are exceptional. And this is a case that's very unsettling and there's an inquest going on. But I want to emphasize that these debates between parents and children often get resolved and get resolved very nicely. So, if I might steal a line from Dr. David Goldbloom, a psychiatrist and mentor and friend of mine, as he points out when a plane lands safely at Pearson it doesn't make a headline in the newspaper. So the vast vast majority of cases families want to be involved, treatment teams want them to be involved, and patients want to be involved. So the vast majority of cases we don't have troubles and I take great pride in knowing how many of my patients families are involved. But, you know, there are times when patients have their own opinions and want to exercise their rights and let’s just remember even though people are ill, regardless of what their illness is, they're still adults and the vast majority of cases they're capable adults able to make those decisions, and sometimes that can be very frustrating.

PC: And as you, for you as the psychiatrist in a case like that, like when a patient comes to you who’s an adult and says I don't want my family to have information about my health situation, I don't want them involved. And yet you have the parents or the caregivers or the support coming to you saying hey Dr. Gratzer, we want to know what's going on. What position does that put you in?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, a difficult one and that poses a challenge. But there are always challenges when you deal with people, when you’re trying to get them better. And so that's something that needs to be flagged and hopefully addressed. And again, in the vast majority of cases it can be addressed. It's been a real shift in health care. Not that long ago in my profession in psychiatry, often we hid behind a cloak of confidentiality. We didn't have to talk to anyone because we were just taking care of the patient. What a narrow view unfortunately that was. As much as I try and help my patients, I know my time with them is so limited, I’m dependent on families to pick them up and bring their patients to the appointment, to make sure they take medications, to help them out. They need to be part of the team.

PC: When can you override a patient's right to confidentiality? They say don't tell my family, when can you say yeah, no, I'm going to.

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, it depends on which jurisdiction we're talking about. Here in Ontario, it’s pretty clearly described that in certain emergency situations, so in the life a death situation is an example.

PC: What does life and death mean? Because if someone's, you know, has suicidal tendencies that arguably I think could be said that's life and death. [chuckles]

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, it depends on the circumstance and I can't give comment on what's going on in the inquest, but I just want to say, you know, the laws are clear but it ultimately comes down to a case of judgment on the part of the treatment team. Let's just remember that when we talk about patients with mental health issues, there's no X-ray there's no EKG to point out what's going to happen, and so it comes down to a question of, you know, what does the clinical team really think?

PC: I want to play you a bit of tape. This is Deborrah Sherman who is Executive Director of Ontario Peer Development Initiative, it's an umbrella group for people with mental health issues. It's run by people with mental health issues as well. And she has personal experience dealing with the medical system as someone with a mental health diagnosis. And here's what she thinks about patients’ rights.

SOUNDCLIP

From the heart I can understand where a lot of parents, family members, I can totally see where they're coming from. But when you're talking about people's basic human rights, like the right to freedom of the person, and their right to the economy to make one's own decisions, and one's own treatment decisions, I think that needs to trump everything. As soon as you start treading into people's rights of freedom, you're getting into very dangerous ground, and you're setting the stage for all kinds of stigmatizing things to happen, which they have in the past.

PC: What's your response to what you just heard?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Well, I think these things are complicated and there's a natural tension between patients and patient advocates, and frankly, families and family advocates. And there's no easy solution here, except that in most cases it doesn't come up because in most cases it's one agenda.

PC: But when it does, I mean, we've seen the conseq-- we just heard about, you know, a specific case, but there are other consequences. I mean, when it does, I mean, do you think in Canada, well, where are we? Have we found a good balance between patients’ rights and family rights in cases that are the exception as you put it?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: I think these things are always worth us looking at and continuing the discussion. The legal framework by the way in BC is different say than Ontario or Manitoba. What do I think overall? I think we need to respect that adults are adults.

PC: So is that to say you’d lean more on the patient right side?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: I think there's a natural tension here and I think it's a complicated issue and I'm not going to give a short answer. [laughing]

PC: Fair. Well, let me ask you this then, as a psychiatrist what would help you in your job to find a better balance between patient and family rights?

DR. DAVID GRATZER: I actually, I'm not sure there's a legal framework answer to this. I think what would work better is if we as a system recognize the importance of patient rights and family rights. And from the get go we try to involve both patients and their families. I certainly do that when I see a new patient, I try and sit down with families. I always invite families, except I tell patients they're the boss. So if they say the family can't be involved, so be it, but I want to talk about that. And I think that's an approach we should take more and more through the system, because again as much as I value the work of our nurses and our therapists and our psychiatrists and other doctors, we have to recognize how limited our role actually is. We're not there when the patient’s deciding whether or not to take the medication, we're not there coaxing the patient to get the umbrella because he's going to the bus stop to go to the hospital for the appointment. So, it's a team effort and we're just part of that team.

PC: Dr. David Gratzer, thank you for your thoughts today.

DR. DAVID GRATZER: Thank you.

PC: David Gratzer is a psychiatrist at the Scarborough hospital, he's also a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He was here with us in our Toronto studio. The Canadian Mental Health Association has been researching alternative models to help mental health care practitioners by changing the way they provide treatment and manage the relationship with the patient. Dr. Patrick Smith is the national CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association. He too is with me here in our Toronto studio. Hello to you.

DR. PATRICK SMITH: Hello Piya.

PC: So, after listening to Dr. Gratzer and Lorraine Johnson before him, I mean, what do you think about the frustrations that Lorraine Johnson certainly expressed?

DR. PATRICK SMITH: Well, I think as Dr. Gratzer said it is complicated, but I think that we have to take a step back and look at some of the cultural context of this. Our healthcare system has really been built on an acute care model, very much a sickness care system rather than a health care system. And one of the challenges of that is it's very individually based. We're seeing huge changes in the health care system not only in Canada, but internationally in the recognition of the importance of family. Family as clients in their own right, I don't know the specifics of the inquest, but when Mrs. Johnson talked about, this wasn't an area they were familiar with. They needed help. We're recognizing that families need supports and services as clients in their own right. And as also as David mentioned, it's very important for what we focus on is upstream. Sometimes people are in acute situations, sometimes it's a chronic mental illness. We work with individuals to help them understand the importance of family. Clearly they have rights and when they are stable and when they can give consent, we seek to get that consent. There's something called advanced directives or Ulysses agreement, where in the moment of stability they’re educated about their rights, but also the empowerment of involving family. And family can mean close neighbours, it’s their care team, it’s who's there as their support system. Helping them understand that there may be times of crisis, where that, so, up front everyone knows about what a living will is, this is kind of like that for advanced mental health directive.

PC: But, you know, there are families like Lorraine Johnson's’ across Canada, they're in similar positions and hopefully have not lost their child obviously, you know, on that road so to speak. And they are people who have felt excluded from their child's treatment, their adult child's treatment. How do you explain to them, you know, the limitations, the law, when it comes to mental health professionals?

DR. PATRICK SMITH: Well, I think as David said, we've hidden behind the cloak of confidentiality. There's also some various understanding of the laws, from various disciplines, their code of conduct. What we do know is life trumps consent. And so, when it's clear that someone's life is in danger, life trumps consent and in all jurisdictions. But as David said, that's a judgment call to know in this moment, is this person at risk. But I think the important thing that we're focusing on at CMHA is upstream and supporting as soon as someone has a diagnosis, as soon as someone is in contact with the mental health and addiction system, we need to be able to provide good evidence-based information for clients and for family. So we have factsheets to educate them on their rights as family members, family members should not feel excluded. They should be part of a care team. It's the very rare exception that when the right process is followed that an individual, for whatever reason, of sound mind and body who can make their own choices, exclude important others.

PC: Mmm. Your organization has been looking at researching alternatives to the current way we treat mental health patients and their families. So what are some of the alternatives you found through the research?

DR. PATRICK SMITH: Well, one of the things that we have to think about is the context of our health system. There's a call from the Mental Health Commission, from the CMHA, from many advocates including Canadian Alliance for Mental Illness and Mental Health, that Canada puts seven per cent of the healthcare budget into mental health. That's the lowest of all G8 countries. We've made a clear recommendation to just match the next lowest, which is nine per cent. I think that the current government is interested in investing in mental health. Mental health deliverables are in several of the current ministries’ mandate letters. I think that if the public understood that, imagine an education system that where you lived in Canada you might just not have third and fourth grade, or you might not have junior high just based on where you live. We wouldn't accept that. But in the health care system for mental health, where you live has huge impacts on what services you have access to. And the gaps are just as significant as having almost no education system. Something as basic as cognitive behavioral therapy, and services that are based on that, people don't have access to. And in most countries, developed countries, they do. So, one of the things that CMHA has really focused on is a stepped care model. We can't have a psychiatrist in every backyard or a psychologist in every backyard. What we can do is to have a stepped care model where there's a program called bounce back, and it's peers with training providing supports to other peers. Families with training providing supports to other families. It's taking a different approach and really investing in community-based services, that when someone A, may not need to go to a hospital because they have access to the range of services, or B, when they get out, what's next for them? And when anyone is hospitalized, families need to have the information of the services that are available to them.

PC: Dr. Patrick Smith, thank you for your time as well this morning, appreciate it.

DR. PATRICK SMITH: Thank you.

PC: Dr. Patrick Smith is the national CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association. He was here with me in our Toronto studio. All right, coming up next it is the CBC News, then Vancouver novelist and Anosh Irani will join me to discuss his latest book, it's called The Parcel, and it's about the child sex trade in India’s Mumbai. If you want to talk to us about anything you hear on The Current as our new season gets under way, please do get in touch. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. You can find me there as well. My handle is @piya, that is p-i-y-a. You can find this program on Facebook, facebook.com/cbcthecurrent. You can e-mail us by going to the website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And once you're there click on the contact us link. All the information at cbc.ca/thecurrent. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, you're listening to Friday edition of The Current. We're back in just a little bit.

[Music: Extro]

Author Anosh Irani explores 'harsh reality' of Mumbai's child sex workers in The Parcel

Guests: Anosh Irani

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, during life in communist East Germany, the Stasi secret police were everywhere. It meant that neighbours spied on each other, and you never really knew who was who. For filmmaker Petra Epperlein, that included her father. She'll join me to discuss her new documentary, it's called Karl Marx City. That's up in a half hour. But first, a difficult truth dealt with in fiction.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Whenever there's a new novel from Vancouver writer Anosh Irani, it's a literary event in this country. His previous books have been bestsellers, shortlisted for prestigious accolades like the Man Asian Literary Prize, and featured on Canada Reads. But there's been a long gap since his previous book. It's been six years. Well now he's finally returned with a new novel, it's called The Parcel, and the story it takes on weighty and difficult may help explain why it's taken so long. The Parcel is set in Mumbai, and more specifically the bustling Indian metropolis’ red light district. It is an area that a young Anosh Irani grew up near, and an area filled with fascinating complicated characters, characters like Madhu, a seasoned sex worker and a hijra, or member of the third sex. Anosh Irani is with me in Toronto. Hi.

ANOSH IRANI: Hello.

PC: How long have you been thinking about sex slavery in Mumbai?

ANOSH IRANI: Well, I was born right opposite Kamathipura, so I grew up from the time I was born, until I was about seven or eight years old, I lived only 100 metres away from this convent school where the sex workers used to lineup every evening. And then as you turn right, there was the Alexandra cinema, and that was in a way the unofficial beginning of the red light district. So I’ve always been drawn to that world, I've been haunted by it over the years, inspired by it. So, in a way I've always thought about writing this book, I just needed the right point of entry.

PC: They were your neighbours, essentially.

ANOSH IRANI: Yeah, they were. And I still knew there was something very different about them. Their existence still felt alien to me, even though I lived close by.

PC: You said you were haunted and inspired by them, and we'll get into that. But maybe you can just fill that out a little bit. As a child and growing up and living in that area, what haunted you by the red light district and what inspired you?

ANOSH IRANI: I think at that point, when you're that young you don't really understand, you don't have the language to describe what you are feeling. You can either feel an ache or you feel a disturbance or you feel a longing to maybe help them or to maybe understand or to get to know. The area was very theatrical, you know, you had these sex workers who wore lot of colourful clothing, but at the same time they had, some had this black paste around their lips. And I later on, many years, I always wondered why they used to have that. And it was so that men don't kiss them. It was so clients don’t kiss them. Which is really interesting, because that's something they reserved for the people they cared about. So they used to, you know, in a way, make their lips unattractive so that the men don't kiss them. So these were things that I learned much later on. But these memories were sort of singed into me ever since I was a boy.

PC: So let's talk about your novel, The Parcel. The story centres around a character named Madhu.

ANOSH IRANI: Right.

PC: Who’s Madhu?

ANOSH IRANI: Madhu is a hijra, and let me just explain the term. The actual etymology of the word hijra is really not known. Some say it's derived from the Persian word hiz, h-i-z, which is hermaphrodite or effeminate. Some say it comes from hijrat karna, which means to migrate. And for Madhu, she sort of attaches itself to that meaning. She says I am a migrant, a wanderer, for three decades I've wandered through the city's red light district like a ghost. So, there are two kinds of hijras. Some are born on hermaphrodites, and some are sort of like Madhu, born boys but they identify with the female form, and they may choose to get castrated at some point, and then adopt the hijra way of being. So Madhu is a hijra sexworker will is now retired.

PC: OK. Tell me more about her.

ANOSH IRANI: She sort of is someone who faced a lot of rejection in her childhood when she was a boy, when Madhu was male, which was up until he was 14. He always felt he was trapped in the wrong body, but faced a lot of rejection, lack of acceptance from the parents. And that was his wound. And that one wound, that lack of acceptance, sort of made him spiral into a completely different world.

PC: OK. So Madhu enters this world in the red light district. And the title of the book is The Parcel, and that's a euphemism. So, just to set up your book a little bit more, tell us what the parcel refers to.

ANOSH IRANI: So, one day Madhu gets a call from Padamdam, who is one of the most feared brothel owners in the red light district. She says a parcel arrived, and you need to prepare it for its opening and parcel is the code for the under aged girls who are trafficked into the red light district. And Padamdam wants Madhu to prepare this parcel.

PC: And Madhu is how old at this point?

ANOSH IRANI: Madhu is 40.

PC: 40.

ANOSH IRANI: Yes.

PC: And she is told what about this parcel? What's the story of this particular girl? This quote unquote parcel.

ANOSH IRANI: Right, that she's been in a way betrayed by her aunt. She's been sold to an agent from Nepal, and now she's been smuggled into the red light district. And Madhu has to prepare her in such a way that she is ready for the client, which will be in a few days.

PC: In other words Madhu is tasked with teaching this underage girl how to be a sex worker, how to be a prostitute?

ANOSH IRANI: Yes, but also what Madhu does is actually prepare her for the harsh reality that is to come. And she wanted to do this, in the story we learn that she wants to do this. So she tried to do this earlier, because she was very disturbed by the way the men, the pimps, treated these women, the young girls, in such a way that they completely lost their minds. So in her mind it was an act of empathy that she was performing. But of course it all spirals out of control.

PC: Talk to me more about those, and maybe this sounds like a naive question, but when she has to prepare for the harsh realities, what do you mean by that?

ANOSH IRANI: Well, by that I mean she takes away the hope that she has of escaping. You know--

PC: [interposing] That this is going to be your life.

ANOSH IRANI: This is going to be your life. And she feels that she's actually doing the girl a favour by doing this. Because Madhu feels that in the red light district, to have hope is probably the worst thing that you can have, and that's probably going to make you lose your mind. So she prepares her to completely lose her own identity. She tells her I'm going to change your name, forget your name, forget your mother, father, forget the place that you came from. There's just you and me right now.

PC: Accept your reality.

ANOSH IRANI: Right.

PC: Which is interesting, given that this is in the context of India, a country that, you know, has such a history of the caste system, still prevalent in some ways today, but that is part of that system. Accept your place in this system, was that playing into this for you?

ANOSH IRANI: I don't think so, I didn't think of the caste system or anything like that. I mean, there will be reverberations of it for sure. But for me the red light district is such a, you know, specific world, especially Kamathipura, I don't think there's a red light district like it anywhere. Mainly because, unfortunately, there are sex workers then there are sex slaves, and then there are also, used to be a lot of hijra sex workers, and it's a sort of real mix, very specific to Bombay, I would say.

PC: Mmm. And an area, and I'm putting this word in quotes, a lifestyle that most Indians would look down upon would you say?

ANOSH IRANI: Yes, absolutely. But at the same time, it's a lifestyle people fear. It's also unfortunately something that men use when it's convenient. They have their own families but then they go to the red light district for pleasure, but they don't realize that they are actually interacting with women who are not there out of their own free will. They are actually sex slaves. They're trapped. You know, they have actual people who are called watchers who sit on roofs and see if the sex workers are sort of moving beyond their actual territory where, you know, their limits, their invisible lines.

PC: You say the Mumbai red light district is unlike any other cities’ red light district, and I don't know if you visited other cities, what do you mean by that, this is so unique?

ANOSH IRANI: Because of the hijra culture, I think. In that sense, it's very different from anything else. Like the hijra culture’s only specific to India. You know, I don't like using the term transgender, simply because to use any Western terminology, you can’t transplant that. There are of course similarities, but again as I said, you know, hijra is defined by the guru disciple relationship, which is again very unique. It's an unusual sort of situation where they are completely guided by these gurus. They are taken into the fold, almost protected, but at the same time slightly exploited as well.

PC: You were saying earlier that Madhu sort of gurus the parcel in a way. Is it guru to say don't have hope kid, this is your life. And it was a bit of a mercy the way that Madhu sees it, as you said, just saying you know what, hope is going to be your worst enemy. That's what's going to undo you. Where did all that fit into how you came up for the concept for this book? Like where did the concept for this book come from?

ANOSH IRANI: I always start with the main character. And for me, I always asked the question what is the wound? What is the main character’s wound? In Madhu’s case, what is it that has really hurt her? And it was the rejection, the initial rejection.

PC: From her family.

ANOSH IRANI: Family, and of her not being able to make sense of her body. In a way her soul was trapped in the wrong body, and she always tried to find some sort of release, some sort of healing. And she found that temporarily when she became a hijra, but then again when we meet her in the novel, she's again going through some sort of disturbance. You know, she's off-kilter all over again. And whenever I visited the red light district, so I live in Vancouver now, but I go to India every year. At some point, I noticed that the red light district itself was changing physically. So, for example the brothels were slowly being replaced by these small factory units, small workshops that made umbrellas or repaired mobile phones or whatever. And a lot of the sex workers were being displaced and as a result with the use of mobile phones, the sex workers were now mobile as well. So they were spreading out in different parts of the city. And that was my point of entry, so for me as a storyteller the physicality of Kamathipura was changing, and at the same time here was Madhu, whose body was in a way disintegrating. She did not feel as beautiful as she was before, she felt her body was letting her down. And eventually these two parallel things were my point of entry in the novel.

PC: You of course as you said, you grew up in Mumbai. But this is a novel. What kind of research did you do for this?

ANOSH IRANI: I had to do a lot of research, because it's a very delicate subject matter, I had to be very sensitive about it. I've been thinking about this book for almost 10 years. And the research was of course I read a lot of nonfiction pieces about, you know, the red light district, about hijras. I also interviewed sex workers, I interviewed people who had worked in NGOs, people who worked in real estate. But a lot of it was just pure observation. You know, walking through Kamathipura day in and day out just as an observer. And sometimes it was a bit dangerous, I ended up seeing things or learning things that I wish I hadn't seen. But once you see something you can’t unsee it. And I remember talking to a sexworker one day, and this was maybe two or three years ago and she asked me where I lived, and I said oh I just live, you know, this is just 10 minutes away from her, and she had sort of a blank look on her face. I said oh you don't know where that is. And she told me do you think I get out of this place? And it was a very powerful moment for me, because of course I knew that, I knew that she was trapped, but you know, sometimes you forget someone else’s reality so easily. And it was a reminder for me as to how I had to be careful when I wrote this book, but at the same time not worry about writing it because I had to tell the truth, for me. That was the most important thing, tell it in the form of a story, but make it as truthful as possible.

PC: Why that decision? Why do fiction rather nonfiction? You did all this research.

ANOSH IRANI: Because fiction is a beautiful way to get at a higher kind of truth. So there’s a difference between fact and truth. You know, factual information is what I learned when I did my research. But truth can be an emotional truth, it can be a spiritual truth. These are things that you can arrive at through fiction, at least I can. That's why I love the novel.

PC: How do you gain these people's trust, because as you just said, I mean, someone said I’ve never even left this neighborhood. They don't trust outsiders, for probably some very good reasons. But how did you earn their trust?

ANOSH IRANI: I think it's patience. Also, they have a very good instinct. They have a very good sense of intuition. So they know if you're about to do something that may damage them. I was very open about what I was doing, I had said that look, I'm writing a novel, but I also want to write a nonfiction piece about you, which has nothing to do with the book. And I think if you open and just you go there without trying to judge, you shouldn't have an agenda. I didn't really have an agenda. I was really interested in learning. And I think that's something they can sense, I guess.

PC: Is there one story in particular that stands out for you when you were doing your research?

ANOSH IRANI: I think it was definitely this moment where the sex worker told me, you know, that in a way she's trapped, she doesn't leave the brothel. That was again a very strong reminder. There have been certain moments which I’m a bit hesitant to, you know, because I can’t really share them sometimes because they’re so personal to the people. But there was this one time many many years ago, when I was in Kamathipura, I was sitting in a cab and it’s a very claustrophobic, noisy, dense place, filled with pimps and cops and, you know, lumber mills and cats and dogs and goats, sawdust, jewelers. And I remember seeing this young boy and girl outside a brothel, and there was some kind of fighting going on inside the brothel, and this girl her hair was wet and the boy was probably her brother, he was maybe seven or eight, she must have been five, and he was just gently combing her hair. And it was such a small act of in a way grace or courage in this huge mass of, I don't know, misery and suffering, that it really had an impact on me and it made me think how do these people survive, you know. And that's something I kept in mind while writing the book, is just track from moment to moment how they survive. Another one was when, so there's this place where the hijras actually live, in the novel I’ve called it the house of hijra. But there's a there's a lane called hijra gulley in Kamathipura, and everytime I ask someone OK, where is this, no one would tell me. After a while, I met this laundry man and he looked at me very suspiciously and then he said it's right here and just around the corner. And it was maybe seven or eight at night, and I just turned the bend and suddenly it became much darker. The lights were much darker, and I really couldn't see anything and then suddenly I heard this sound. Tsssk. That kind of sound. And there was a hijra, that was a way of calling me or inviting me in. And it was just such an amazing image to see her there in a silhouette, sort of standing in the stairway.

PC: You know, your novel humanizes people who are dehumanized psychologically, physically, breaking down a child in those ways, in a way so that they be calm docile and accept their lot in life. That is the similarities amongst this childhood experience these people are drawn into in India. This is the similarity, to break down their spirit so that they accept.

ANOSH IRANI: Well, the idea for me when I write a novel is to find what is human in the worst kind of existence. Just because something is not my experience, or it's not my existence doesn't mean there's no humanity in it. And yes, there is absolutely no humanity in trafficking, zero humanity. It shouldn't exist, it's atrocious that things like that happen. But I still wanted to find a way not to judge these characters and to get to know them. So for example even when I was interviewing a pimp, who I know makes his living based on exploiting women, I still had to find out about him. And what I found out was that he had a family, he had a wife, he had kids. So it’s very bizarre, it’s very, I don't know what the word is, but do you feel imbalanced when you're listening to all of this. You can’t make sense of it. And in a way the novel, you know, reflects that. There are things that, there are questions that the reader will also ask that have no answer. And that is the whole point, that sometimes that aren’t any answers.

PC: You've said that literature should create some kind of disturbance in a reader. Is that what you mean?

ANOSH IRANI: Yes. I think, you know, literature does make us shift though, it should make us a little uneasy, a little uncomfortable. It could cause a shift in our consciousness. Because only when we are disturbed will we go in search of something. And I think the great novels that I've, you know, for example if it's A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, it’s The Stranger by Camus, Lolita by Nabokov, Hunger by Hamsun, even Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler. I mean, there’s tons of novels that I think are terrific, and they do exactly that, they displace you, they take you by surprise, they move you, they punch you in the stomach, and they make you think.

PC: What do you want us to think about? You're a Canadian, you've written this ostensibly for a Canadian audience and beyond. So, you know, it's sometimes easy for us to read, especially novels about faraway places and have pity and maybe think about it, but then let it go. What do you want us Canadians to think about?

ANOSH IRANI: Well, I never decide what I want the reader to feel, but what I did realize while I was writing this book, when I interviewed so many of the sex workers, when I interviewed this one person from the hijra community who really opened her life up to me, is that are we really that different? Because you know, even we face rejection and that can create a wound in us. And at the end of it all, human beings are looking for some kind of kindness, some kind of love, some acceptance. We all sometimes slip into the void, or into the vortex so to speak, and then we try and reach for some form of light, no matter how small. So, universally as human beings this is what we have in common. So I don't think of a Canadian audience when I'm writing. All my books are translated into many languages. The Parcel will be published in India as well and in a couple of months. I’m sure an Indian audience will read it and say oh this is what goes on right across from where we live. I don't know, it's up to each individual reader. I want people to understand Madhu’s soul. You know, that this was a young boy who faced rejection and then tried for the next 20 or 30 years to find home. And to be trapped in that sense is hard enough. And what makes it even harder is when society, when people don't understand.

PC: You grew up in this area, as you said you go back every year. You've now written a novel about this area. What have you come to understand for yourself Anosh, about this area that you grew up right around?

ANOSH IRANI: My level of understanding, obviously, over the years has changed. So sometimes the research would get me really down. You know, I couldn't stay there for hours and hours, sometimes I would realize OK that's it, I have to go and probably go watch a movie or just go sit by the sea or do something else. But I think what I realized over time was not to judge, but also the absurdity of it. Because one day I was in Kamathipura and I saw this van, police van, which had the words for crimes against women and children, call this number. And it was in the red light district. And for a moment I laughed, and of course it's not funny, but it was so absurd, it was so ridiculous, that I said I don't know if anything will ever change, because this has been going on for centuries. What I've understood is unless we at an individual level, each individual at some level examines his own consciousness, that's the best we can do. You know, step by step.

PC: Thank you for coming in and talking about this, appreciate it.

ANOSH IRANI: Thank you.

PC: Anosh Irani’s new novel is called The Parcel. And it's about the red light district of Mumbai, the area known as Kamathipura. If you missed some of our conversation, you can go to cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's where we’ll post it, that's where we post everything. If you’ve missed something or if you want to listen again, you can subscribe to our podcast as well on iTunes. But cbc.ca/thecurrent is where to get all the information about this show. All right, coming up next the Toronto International Film Festival is on, it began last night, films from around the world. We're going to be talking with the director of a documentary called Karl Marx City. Petra Epperlein grew up in that city. And later on in her life, she found out a secret about her father and she set on a journey in this documentary. I'll be talking to Petra Epperlein, coming up. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Karl Marx City follows filmmaker's search for answers about her father and East German Stasi

Guests: Petra Epperlein

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current. We're going to be going back in time, to turbulent time, communist East Germany in just a few minutes. But first, I want to let you know about an interview that's coming up next week here on The Current. It is about a very different politically turbulent situation, the United States of America circa today. To many people especially those looking from the outside in, it is a mystery how Donald Trump has risen to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. Well, Anna-Maria Tremonti will be speaking with J.D. Vance. He's the author of Hillbilly Elegy, and he tries to explain Mr. Trump's support from poor white American families.

SOUNDCLIP

J.D. VANCE: He speaks to people who feel invisible, who feel neglected by the political process in certain ways. If you look at the data, it's not the extraordinarily impoverished who are voting for Donald Trump. Typically those people don't vote at all, but it's some of the, you know, maybe the people who are doing a little bit better, still aren't doing well, but live in these communities and see the struggle and see the pain in their neighbours eyes and feel neglected by the political process. They say look our lives are falling apart, our communities are falling apart, and no one is really talking about it. Donald Trump is the first candidate in at least the past 20 or 30 years to really go after these voters, to say I see your problems, I see you, and I recognize that your lives are a bit of a struggle. And when you grow up in that sort of world, when you're so hungry for political leadership, for somebody who recognizes your problems, you frankly probably have a pretty low bar after you've been neglected for 20 or 30 years. You don't necessarily need, you don't have your pick of the litter in terms of political candidates. You're willing to go for the first person who really speaks to those concerns. And that's a big part of what Donald Trump has done.

PC: J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, and he's going to be Anna-Maria’s guest next Wednesday here on The Current.

[Music: Folk guitar strumming]

PC: I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

They would call it zezetsung, or disintegration measures, where they would basically try to undermine a person's life, to destroy their life to the point that they make them psychologically, basically, kaput to the point that they would no longer offer resistance.

PC: Well, it may sound like a horror movie, but it is history, and disturbingly recent history. That's historian Douglas Selvage, talking about some of the techniques employed by the Stasi communist East Germany secret police. The after effects of those disintegration measures and other aspects of life in East Germany still linger today, haunting many, including filmmaker Petra Epperlein. Her new film Karl Marx City, chronicles her quest as she delves into the archives of the Stasi, trying to learn whether her own father had in fact been an operative. Karl Marx City premiered last night at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Petra Epperlein joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Hi.

PC: Before we talk about the mystery, about your dad, surrounding your father. Take me back to your life as a child growing up in East Germany, what do you remember? What was it like?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, me growing up in East Germany and I had a pretty normal, ordinary life, I think. I had a childhood like basically everybody else. I had very loving parents, I went to school, I did everything what everyone else does also. Which lead to the fact that after the wall came down, it was very difficult to distance my childhood from the oppressive system where I grew up in.

PC: So as a child, we're talking about in the 70s and 80s.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Yes.

PC: Yeah. Kind of the bigger politics going around, the Stasi communism, I mean probably like most children you're kind of unaware of it?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, you grow up there and of course you are not completely unaware of it, because you join the Communist Youth Organizations. Pretty much everyone joined, I joined as well. And you also know there's a double standard about what you talk about in public and what you talk about in private. And it's installed relatively early into you, because your parents tell you that certain things that are being discussed at the dinner table you should not talk about in school, because there might be people from the Stasi in basically any group of people.

PC: But I guess it felt normal to you, because every other kid was having the same talk with their parents.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Yes. Most people did, exactly. And yeah, you just got used to it and that's how you lived. And of course no one liked it, but it was just that way.

PC: What kind of life did your parents live?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: My parents were engineers. They both worked full-time. They were very loving. It was very ordinary.

PC: So, let's talk about your dad. What happened to him later in life, after you’d left East Germany?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, I never left East Germany. The wall came down--

PC: Fair.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: I was a student in East Germany, I never left. I moved and just within East Germany, I moved to Berlin and then it was just one big new Germany. Ten years after the wall came down, my father committed suicide. And as it turned out, right after the wall came down he had received a series of anonymous letters accusing him to have worked for the secret police, The Stasi. I did not know that before, and by the time I learned about it I couldn't ask him about it anymore.

PC: So all you knew when your father, I think he was 57.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Yeah.

PC: When he killed himself. You didn't have much information. Your dad took his own life. That's what you knew at that point of his death.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Yes, exactly.

PC: You didn't know much about his life beforehand. And so what went huh, Petra I got to go. What made you wonder if your father could have been a Stasi informant?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, so he received these anonymous letters accusing him of having worked for the Stasi, and I never really thought that this could actually be really true. But, you know, as time passes strange stories pop up. And actually it's relatively common in East Germany that people go and look for their Stasi archives and they find out that their spouse spied on them. Someone really close spied on them.

PC: I mean, what did the letter say? The letters that you uncovered.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: That [unintelligible] basically accused him of having worked for the Stasi, and still being in contact with people who worked for Stasi men.

PC: And so you Petra, you and your mom, you know, you become aware of these letters and what's your reaction? What's your response? What are you thinking when you see these letters?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, first of all I couldn't believe that no one had told me about it when it happened, because it happened basically almost 10 years before I learned about it, and no one ever talked to me about it. And so, I couldn't confront it. And also, no one did anything about it. You need to understand that right after the wall came down, the Stasi was basically made responsible for everything what was bad in East Germany. They were basically responsible for the for the oppressive system, although they were just the tool for the Communist Party. So having worked for the Stasi was pretty much the worst thing you could accuse someone of in East Germany. And still to this day that's actually the case.

PC: And so this sets you, Petra, on a search to figure out who your dad was in a sense, and what his life was like. Your mom, what did she think about you, her daughter, investigating her husband's life?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, it's a difficult thing to do. I mean, number one, we had a lot of time pass since it all happened, because yes, you would like to know, but do you really want to know? Because you never know what you’ll find out.

PC: I know a lot of people have heard about the Stasi, and you know, know things about what happened in former East Germany. But you were there, give us a sense. What was their role in the GDR, in the German Democratic Republic?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: So, the Stasi was the sword and shield of the Communist Party. So they basically had to do anything to keep the party in power. That was their task. And they did so, they decided that they needed to collect information on everybody in East Germany. They wanted to know everything about everybody, who is who, that was their slogan. And they wanted to know ahead of time what people would be doing, and they wanted to know what they were thinking before they were acting, so it could be prevented. So that's why these massive amounts of information were collected.

PC: Hmm. And then as you're going on this search to discover if your dad was a member, you go to the archives in Berlin, the Stasi archive, it's troves and troves of information. And it's staggering what you show us there. I just want to play a clip. This is the archive spokesperson Dagmar Hovestadt.

SOUNDCLIP

There is a total of about 41 million index cards in about 4,000 different subsystems organized by topic. Sometimes it's just the street of a city. I'll show you now this is an index card system, just a little fraction of it, of mail control. In East Germany, there was a guarantee of the secrecy of your mail, but the Stasi at any given point, they would confiscate your mail. And they actually had in the mail offices, they had secret rooms and they would open up mail with hot vapour, and they read the letters, sometimes they would film them and put them on microfiche. And obviously the person did get the letter not knowing that the Stasi looked through their mail. And it's being used to gather evidence for political trials, or sometimes even just to have gigantic database of handwriting.

PC: Petra, it's an incredible amount of information that's in the archive, they’re still sorting through it. They have shredded documents as well, tell me what they're doing with that.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: So right when the wall came down and this [unintelligible] the Stasi panicked that there would actually be too much evidence of their doing. So they started destroying the files, they shredded files, but somehow they didn't have enough time because the people of East Germany decided that the information needs to be saved, and they occupied the Stasi headquarters. And so, today there are still thousands of bags with shredded files. And the German people had decided that they cannot let the Stasi decide on their fate. What they can know and what they cannot know. And so, they are putting these shredded files back together, which is incredible.

PC: Hmm. And within those millions of documents shredded or otherwise, you are trying to find out information about one man, your dad. And I want to play a little more of Dagmar Hovestadt again, just explaining about giving you access to the archive.

SOUNDCLIP

When we started, it was for the first time ever that a society decided to open up a secret police archive basically to the rest of the world. There are conditions, and you can't just look at any file that you feel you want to look at. But it's complicated, it was never meant to be sorted through by anybody else but the Stasi. So, we're sort of caught in their system and we have to work with them and with what they did and we had to decode how they coded their information, in order to make it accessible today. And with every piece of information, we always have to look, what is it that you should get and what helps understand the mechanisms of dictatorship and what can't you see, because we have to protect the rights and the privacies of people that are noted in these files.

PC: Her speaking with Petra Epperlein, who co-directed the film Karl Marx City, a film where she's on the search about her father's real life, and whether or not he was a member of the German Stasi. Petra, what did you learn at the archive about the extent of the Stasi? I mean, you talked earlier about, like, they knew everyone's business, but digging through that stuff what did you learn?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: This was the very first archive of a secret police which was made public, like, really open to the public. And it happened first in East Germany, instead of all the other eastern bloc countries, because there was a discontinuity. You know, East Germany ceased to exist. Poland didn't cease to exist, it was a continuity. But like, East Germany ceased to exist, so we have all this material available. And when you go in there, of course you have to make a cause for the information you are looking for and then you are provided with the information. And what we discovered are these hours and hours of video and film and audio material produced by the Stasi, surveillance material, but also films what they produced. And that was incredible. Because it gives you this other view on reality. It's like, because people did not know they were filmed, it gives you this other image of reality back then.

PC: You learn a lot from people who had experiences with the Stasi as well. Udo Grashoff is one of them. He has a story of being targeted, which you talk about in your documentary. I want us to play a little bit of this as well.

SOUNDCLIP

I had contact to the Stasi once, and this was for me a quite traumatic event. Because they were in our flat when my family was absent, and I just came home and then I discovered men in our flat, and these were Stasi men, and they were looking for something in our flat. And then they arrested me after that, because I disturbed them during the action, and to some extent this changed my life.

PC: So Petra, you also speak with a man who'd been a Stasi officer, so sort of the other side of this, who says he did the kind of thing that Udo Grashoff just described. Tell us about that man, the officer.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, that officer was a special case. I know him since a very long time, because I went to school with his daughter. And I always knew that he worked for the Stasi, so the only thing, what I did, I was careful what I would discuss with his daughter. Politics were never an issue. And then when he agreed to talk to us, we were sitting in his living room and the living room looked very similar to my mother's living room, which was very unnerving. But of course, we had a very similar parallel history. At the same time, he surprised me because he said, he explained all of the actions what he did, but he also said that he felt ashamed on a certain point, as if he had realized later in his life that what he was doing was actually wrong.

PC: Hmm. And as you're hearing him say that, this this man telling you I felt shame, I have regrets essentially. Did it help you understand why so many people became Stasi informants?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: That's a complicated question. I think that's very difficult to understand. I can intellectually understand why certain people did it, they were pressured into it. You don't know how they ended up there. But to really understand, I mean understanding always means a certain amount of sympathy for an action, which I certainly don't have. So, I understand it comes from, I mean, he really worked for the Stasi, he wasn't an informant, which is different. So he was an employee there. But the informants is a completely different story, because it's this creepy spying on your family or friends or something, and living in East Germany, you were always aware that people like that were around you.

PC: So, we heard from this story on Douglas Selvage earlier, about what he calls the quote unquote, disintegration measures which were used. And I want us to get through some examples. So, this is Douglas again.

SOUNDCLIP

They could, for example, spread rumors that somebody was actually an informant for the State Security Service. And they would do things like go into a person's apartment, rearrange the furniture every week, just to show the person that, you know, we were here. And when they would tell their friends somebody came into my apartment rearranged my furniture, they would think that they were crazy.

PC: Petra, what it, what is that? It sounds crazy, right? Like, you show up back home and your furniture is arranged. It's hard to even imagine what that must be like visually and practically as an intrusion, without talking even about the mental toll that takes. What kind of, I don't know, overall effect do you think all these kinds of measures had on your fellow country people, and East Germans on society?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, I can tell you from my own experience. When I was a student at university, you had your study group, we were like 20, 30 people, and what you did first you had some friends who you trusted and then you went through the people and tried to figure out so who is the Stasi person in the room. And then you just worked your way around it. That was basically the effect what it had. You always thought there was someone in the room — all the time.

PC: You have trust issues, essentially.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Basically.

PC: [laughing] The impact of all this so lasting, it's ingrained, that you still today have doubts, that you question your own father. This is a familiar story in some ways to other people in your generation, right? Trying to find out in some sense what their own familial history was, and trying to make heads or tails of it. How much has that shaped your generation of former East Germans?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Well, that's an interesting question. Also in regards to the Stasi archive, the Stasi archive expected to wind down like 20 years after the wall came down, because they thought everyone had seen their files now, but it's actually not the case. More and more people are interested to go and find out what happened to their parents or even themselves. And it obviously needs that distance in time that you are willing to confront the past, because it can be ugly, potentially.

PC: Hmm. I want to return to your father. What did you learn about him in the end?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: So in the end we find something completely unexpected. We find out that one of his very closest friends was an informant and he reported to the Stasi about him. That was very shocking. More for my mother than for me. But at the same time, it's also not surprising because it's a very common story in East Germany. The Stasi man explains to us, when they wanted to know something about someone, they always tried to recruit the people closest to them. So obviously that's what they did, and that's why you have almost thousands, millions of people whose best friends spied on them or whose husbands or wives spied on them, or brothers.

PC: Was it hurtful?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: And this is very upsetting. Yes.

PC: Hmm. To kind of broaden out, there's this concept that exists, ostalgie. Am I saying that right? Ostalgie?

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Yeah, yep.

PC: So, explain that to me. Because I think it is a contextualizes the conversation we're having.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Ostalgie is basically just a bastardization of nostalgia. A special os, meaning east, and it's the longing for, I mean, as nostalgia is also the longing for something, but is past. And East Germany doesn't exist anymore, which makes it more painful then if there would have been some continuity. At least that's how I see it. And you have the tendency to paint everything in much rosier colours than it really was. But it's really important to see what society we were living in. It was an oppressive regime, and it needs to be, you need to confront this every once in awhile to not forget that it's not just like it was a happy. I had a happy childhood, yes, of course it was nice, but at the same time the Stasi was always present. And people love to deny that they had any contact with it. You can see it in my own mother, who says like, oh I had nothing to do with it. Until she sees the report and sees that they actually spied on her.

PC: Hmm. How do you reconcile the nostalgia, the ostalgie, with you know, that you grew up in a place that promoted fear and suspicion? And those fears and suspicions were real.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: You mean how do I feel today about it?

PC: Yeah.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: I mean, I'm not a paranoid person.

PC: [laughing]

PETRA EPPERLEIN: I know that system was back then, but it’s over. But it's important to know that it was a different system, because thinking back, what drove us to start making that film, you know, when all these revelations about the NSA came out people, were quick to say, yeah the NSA is just like the Stasi. And that's just not the case.

PC: That they breach your privacy as well--

PETRA EPPERLEIN: [interposing] I don't know, you can’t compare these two things to each other, because the NSA operates within a democratic society, you know, and we discussing them or criticizing them, no one will arrest me on the street. The Stasi was, like, a very important tool of an oppressive system. And yes, all kinds of bad things would have happened to me, I couldn't have done anything against it. So, I think you need to look at the past to see what you actually have in front of you, to act on it.

PC: Good to talk to you Petra, thank you.

PETRA EPPERLEIN: Thank you for having me.

PC: Petra Epperlein is the co-director of the film Karl Marx City, along with Michael Tucker, who happens to be her husband. Karl Marx City had its world premiere yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival. It plays again at the festival today, next Wednesday, which probably explains why Petra was being a little coy with us about the ending. She didn't want to give it away, and the ultimate outcome of her search. I am not going to give it away either. But, what I am going to give away is to tell you about another TIFF film that we’ll be checking out here on The Current. Next week, Anna-Maria Tremonti will be speaking with Italian director Gianfranco Rosi. He spent over a year on the small Italian island of Lampedusa. Which may sound familiar as it's become ground zero for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. His documentary is called Fire At Sea, and it tells the story of life on the island, of the migrants, locals and aid workers.

SOUNDCLIP

I was asked to go to Lampedusa, and somehow try to portray Lampedusa in a different way to change the point of view. It was very hard, and I think somehow there's a definite unbalance between how I portrayed the island and how portrayed the migrants, because it was very hard to spend time with them, because they arrive in Lampedusa, they spend two, three days and then left. So it was difficult to have a very strong relationship with them. It happens only once when I was able to film the Nigerian group, that they were coming from a tragedy again where people died. And I was in the sea with the Coast Guard. So I had the chance of meeting them, I spent three days with them. And then at night there was this prayer that they did, with a chant, with a song, the gospel, the rap gospel. I think that moment somehow was synthesized like thousand of the interview I could have done, you know, because it's such a strong moment, it tells the whole story.

[Nigerian rap gospel]

VOICE 1: This is my testimony. We could no longer stay in Nigeria, many were dying.

PC: Tune into The Current on Monday to hear the full interview with director of Fire At Sea, Gianfranco Rosi. Who’s documentary is about Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island. He spent months and months on Lampedusa. That is The Current for today.

The Current pays tribute to CBC colleague Peter Kavanagh

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Before we go today, I want to share some sad news for all of us here at CBC. As we've lost a member of our radio family this week. Peter Kavanagh worked as a producer here at CBC for more than 25 years. On shows including Morning Side, This Morning, Ideas, and The Sunday Edition. Peter was a brilliant and endlessly curious producer. He retired just a couple of years ago. He was also the author of several books, including last year's memoir The Man Who Learned To Walk Three Times. We're going to leave you with part of Peter Kavanagh's interview about his book. It was on the next chapter with Sheila Rodgers, and Peter's reflections on polio. The disease he was diagnosed with at the height of the epidemic back in 1953. Peter Kavanagh's going to be missed by a lot of us around here. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, thank you for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

PETER KAVANAGH: Everybody in 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, everybody was to use a phrase that's probably overused, but deathly afraid of polio. Everybody was drastically concerned, desperately concerned, that their child might get polio. At the very basic level what polio did was it paralyzed my left leg. It destroyed the muscles, nerves, tendons, and what have you in the bottom half of my left leg, and it made walking a remarkably awkward thing for the entirety of my life up until now. Polio meant I spent large periods of my life in a form of sort of social isolation, that is either away from my family in a hospital, away from my family in a room for a year, lying flat on my back in a body cast, not having much interaction with all kinds of people. And so, polio, one of the things polio did was polio made me a remarkably interior person who was very very comfortable and very very much at ease with solitude and contemplation and reflection. So, strangely enough I have to say in some senses, there are things that I drastically regret that polio meant to me. And at the same time there are things about me that I truly do appreciate, perhaps even love, that are a consequence of having had polio.

[Music: Extro]

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September 9, 2016 full episode transcript

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