Bim - Plot

Plot

Bim/Bheem Singh, an Indian boy living in Trinidad, is sent to live with his aunt after his father, a trade union leader for sugar-cane workers, is shot to death during a wedding. At his new school, Bim is isolated and picked on by the black students because of his "coolie" (Indian) heritage. As tension builds during his very first day he is forced to stab one of the students as a means of defence to make it home alive. This incident gets Bim kicked out of school and his aunt's home and he is forced to live a life of violence and crime to survive. As Bim matures and becomes older, he moves from crime to crime, until involved by implication in a murder he flees back to his home place, the sugar cane belt. Approaching one of his father's old friends, he is able to take revenge on his father's killers and rise to prominence as a trade union representative for the Indian sugar-cane workers.

During this time, tension is rife in the country because the previous colonial regime is rumoured to be coming to an end. This causes resentment among the Indians as they feel that once the "blacks" have power they will be worse than the colonials were to the Indians. Bim's swift rise to power is tempered by loneliness and drunkenness. When he is invited to the Governor General's house (a high honour in colonial times) and is approached by the black political leader. He rejects both the black leader and the people to stagger outside. Then he ends his political and personal life in a dramatic way by killing some men who kidnapped his then girlfriend/helper Anna in a drunken power-drunk rage, ending the film in a scream.