At the end of every conflict, is a question. And an answer. Most of the times though when a conflict involves two genders, may be even a third gender, questions of honour, poverty fuelled desperation, rage and possibly violence against the weak or in response to the oppressors, there are no easy answers.
At the onset, what an absolute privilege to watch Shoaib Mansoor’s Bol, a film from Pakistan in an Indian multiplex. To see faces that we recognise as our own. To hear music we can hum and connect with. To see cities, neigbourhoods, young people with hopes and aspirations and struggles similar to ours. To put a human face to a country we only see in news reports. Live the story beyond the headlines.
Though set in Pakistan, Bol captures the clash between an old civilisation and the aspirations of the young that we are familiar with in India. The young girl who sneaks away from her home for a day to shed her inhibitions and live the dream of a rock star with her boy friend could have been Indian. We see Lahore that feels like Delhi. Homes where the arrival of a patriarch is an event to be feared are common to both countries. As is the craving for a boy child. As is the use of religion as tool of gender suppression.
Humaima Malik as the fearlessly outspoken Zainub is powerhouse performer negotiating a role we haven’t seen in a while in our own cinema. The role of a woman who has real angst, real anger, something worthwhile to say, something to defend and fight for. It is also an incredibly brave film because it tries to confront and smash down walls of honour, gender, religion that hem in human freedom in a climate where speaking the truth is becoming increasingly dangerous.
At the centre of the narrative are women who suffer in quiet servitude, a life of no opportunity and total indignity till one of them decides to speak up. In a dilapidated haveli, is a meek mother (Zaib Rahman) whose job is to keep getting pregnant till she produces a son. A father (Manzar Sehbai) who believes in a convenient version of religion that allows him to produce as many children as he wants but puts him under no obligation to love them or nurture their spirits. The daughters who have been forced to give up school, are not allowed to venture out of the house, can be occasionally seen but never heard. In this repressive world, is a difficult daughter Zainub who stands up to her father. And then comes a much longed for son who infact turns out to be of no particular gender.
The idea of honour here is as warped as it is in all the societies where the unperturbed veneer of respectability is more important than even ties of blood. The young child must be done away with, the father decides but reluctantly, allows ‘him’ to live. The child grows up, craving for a creative outlet, for the love of a father figure but gets affection and warmth from only his mother and sisters.
This is a disturbing track because even though Saifi, the child is loved, he is not understood by even Zainub who once fought to protect him from a paedophile and yet foolishly allows him to go back as a teenager in a sexually aggressive environment where he has been preyed upon only because she wants him to break free from a stifled life, and wants him to be ‘man’ when he is clearly not one.
The tragedy that follows sets a chain of events in motion that is occasionally convoluted but made compelling only because of the conversations Zainub has with her father. The dialogues are powerful as when she says, “Main agar Khuda hoti toh har mard se ek baccha janwanti.” The God she counters her short-sighted, rigid father with is not a convenient, self-serving short-cut. Her God is about conscientious choices. About treating human-beings, all of them, with respect. God cannot be, she says, a license to hate, to kill, to give birth to children you cannot love, a stick to beat woman with.
The script is invested with great nuances and colour of Urdu spoken by different layers of society. Each line hits home either to repel you, to shake you up or just give you an insight into the subcontinent’s shared obsession with a male child, its disregard for its daughters. We also travel into the heart of the kind of corruption not uncommon in India where murders can be hushed with a few lakhs, a man can kill his own children for honour but will not allow them to be free. Won’t let a daughter marry for love but will have no qualms marrying her off to a man twice her age,
There are also tongue-in-cheek references to the complex relationship between India and Pakistan as when the girls are trying to catch a cricket match on radio and rooting for both Afridi and Tendulkar and are blamed for not praying hard enough when Pakistan loses. Or when a danseuse (Iman Ali) in Heera Mandi with Meena Kumari posters in her room, calls herself Meena and spouts dialogues from Pakeezah.
Living next door to the musty gloom that Zainub and her sisters inhabit, is the family of Mustafa (Atif Aslam in a small cameo) where women can laugh, are respected and treated as equals. Mustafa is in love with Ayesha (A beauteous Mahira Khan), one of Zainub’s sisters and their love story is sequenced poignantly in the song Hona tha Pyar where Ayesha for the first time gets away from her walled-in life and joyously experiences Lahore with Mustafa.
The narrative keeps unspooling as issues are ticked off. Women’s reproductive health. Their right to choose their partners, their vocations. A parallel track of how a daughter is a liability in a conservative milieu and a blessing in another where as a nautch girl or a sex worker, she can earn the livelihoods of many. You do end up wishing the script had not scattered its powers thin. Also the idea of the narrative unfolding before the media on a cold night when a death sentence is about to be carried out, with numerous phone calls being made to the President’s right-hand man for clemency, adds unnecessary melodrama to the proceedings but this is a film with a powerful intention to make a difference.
Zainub is every woman who has ever been punished for being inconveniently brave, truthful and strong. She is the voice of rebellion. The voice that exhorts all women to say what needs to be said. Faiz’s Bol Ke Lab Azad Hain Tere may not appear in the film literally but the message of the nazm is at the heart of a film, that is unwieldy in places but dunks your head in the cold water of reality at a time when an escapist Eid release is packing in the crowds. There were hardly a dozen people in the hall when I watched Bol but as Mustafa says in the beginning of the film, even if one family can be transformed after hearing this story, it would have served its purpose. A film Pakistan can be truly proud of.
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )