(Non-fiction film; 52 min; 2021; India; English )

Directed by Joe Thomas K

The Nilgiris have gained the distinction of being a geographic indication for tea, today. Somewhere behind the present glory is a remote connection with the Chinese which remains forgotten. "Those 4 Years" is an amazing journey into the lives of those Chinese who came to India around the middle of the 19th century… speaking a language unknown to their neighbours when they first arrived. The film journeys across three countries and reams of colonial office records to retrace the places those people came from, the means and mode of their arrival, and how many of them ended up making India their home. It is a history of people, plants and places - as it catalogues their contributions to plantations, locates places and sites associated with their earliest arrival and stay and, more remarkably, manages to locate some of the descendants of those Chinese who arrived in India over 150 years ago.  

Dr. Joe Thomas Karackattu is an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. This is his second film