On March 4, Maple Batalia would have been 29 years old. She likely would have been a doctor or successful actor had she not been murdered by her ex-boyfriend 10 years ago.
This tragic story has now been re-told in a music video created by several Vancouver artists. The music accompanying the video was written and performed by Vancouver DJ Hussein “A-SLAM” Alidina while the video itself was written and directed by Gary Chatha at Vancouver-based video company Diaspora Creative. Together, and with help from several local actors, Home was released on March 3. The project received funding from the City of Vancouver’s Music Fund which was approved for a second round of funding earlier this week.
Take a listen to Home as you read on.
The video starts by showing Batalia as a young girl riding her bike, playing in fall leaves. Then we see her several years later now played by Arshdeep Purba, winner of Miss Canada Globe 2019/2020. Maple Batalia walks the halls of Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus, performs on stage, and eventually develops a relationship with Gurjinder Dhaliwhal played by Umar Khan.
The video goes on to show the relationship between Maple and Dhaliwhal becoming more abusive before they break up and Dhaliwhal corners Batalia in the school parking lot and kills her. Batalia was 19-years-old.
'Every 2.5 days'
As the video plays Hussein Alidina or A-SLAM, sings and raps information from Vancouver's Battered Women's Support Services, Leslie Morgan Steiner's Ted Talk, "Why domestic violence victims don't leave", and A-SLAM's own personal experiences of dealing with domestic violence.
Alidina explains that watching Maple: a documentary shed more light on the details of Maple's case and discussed the overarching themes that led to the crime.
"After watching the documentary I was able to get a full picture of Maple's story. Over the next month, I began working on this song, reaching out to Rose (Maple's sister) to overlook the lyrics and subjects. Rose also played a huge role in helping pull the music video together," Alidina said.
In a release accompanying the release of the music video, the question is posed: “So how bad is the issue getting in Canada?” The release provides an answer with data from the first annual report by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. The report, titled “#CallItFemicide” confirmed that a woman or girl was killed every 2.5 days on average in Canada in 2018.
“This is completely unacceptable, and the purpose of this release is to help address this growing and shocking statistic,” the release states.
