Don’t be surprised by Prem Chopra ji gaslighting Tannishtha Chatterjee and telling her that her rage doesn’t count just because he did not get offended when he was called bald on Comedy Nights Bachao. Yes, she and her dark skin need the publicity, Mr Chopra doesn’t. Also please do not be surprised by the Pink ads in newspapers with Mr Bachchan’s face next to the line, “No, means No.” Or when you see him in a promotional capsule on Romedy Now saying, “Watch ‘my’ pathbreaking film Pink.” Well said sir and well played, marketing honchos. Also don’t question why all the breathless adulation you saw being showered upon Pink is not being showered upon Leena Yadav’s Parched where Tannishtha incidentally plays a pivotal part. For one, it won’t be playing in any theatre near you and secondly it doesn’t have a patriarchal casting ruse promoting a watered down feminist idea. Parched after all is not a film where women have been sidelined to tell a story about women.
**
It is a film about women made by a woman and despite being raved about in foreign film festivals and even with Ajay Devgan’s name attached to it, it has not found enough cinema screens or the audience it deserved. So let us get this straight, please. Pathbreaking cinema cannot afford to market itself or pay mainstream stars to tower from its posters. And like a friend was saying the other day, bad cinema is just that. Bad for all the world to see. But cinema masquerading as pathbtreaking can be dangerous if it reinforces the very stereotypes it is supposed to break. Someone should remake Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala and call it Red because this is one of the few films made in Hindi cinema where women alone make a statement with red hot courage when pushed too far. This in a patriarchal village that can’t understand why a woman’s right to say ‘No’ is more important than the Subedar’s egoistic lust and the well-being of hundreds of villagers. Yes, there is a male chowkidar here who in a great, symbolic flourish, guards the women and fights for them but in the end, it is the women who settle the whole argument with fistfuls of chilli powder that they have spent a lifetime grinding and bonding over. The film was made in 1987 by the way.
**
Or there was that moment in Chak De India where a bunch of women, some of whom don’t get along, beat the daylights out of a few entitled eve teasers and despite a male mentor, go on to define the climax, as they luxuriate in their fearlessly raw, female power on the hockey field. Or Chetan Anand’s 1941 classic Neecha Nagar where a woman swings an entire court case in the favour of those fighting for the right to clean water by taking the stand in the climax, covered with the slime of a polluted water body the rich are dismissing as perfectly acceptable.
**
Or V Shantaram’s 1937 trailblazer Duniya Na Mane where a fiery young woman refuses to be tied down to her marriage with a much older widower and fights tooth and nail with men and women trying to oppress her. Or the badly made but hugely brave Hare Kanch Ki Chudiya (1967) where a woman chooses to give birth to a child even without her lover by her side and faces calumny and derision on her own terms.
**
Shyam Benegal’s cinema has always had women with voices and volition and the alternate cinema of the 70s also gave us many memorable female characters but in the mainstream slush, the bright sparks are few and far between. In Jazba for instance, the redeeming element of a central woman protagonist fighting for another woman was diluted in the last scene where Irrfan Khan’s character is asked why he let the woman he loves go and he says, “Mohabbat hai..issiliye jaane diya..zid hoti toh baahon mein hoti.” Thank God for his love because by God, if he was the stubborn sort, she would not have been allowed to walk away. Shudder.
**
I also cringe when I re-watch some of the films that I enjoyed in the 70s and 80s. And notice the blatant and covert sexism in the narratives. Even in Prakash Jha’s middle of the road, Hip Hip Hurray, the heroine is not allowed to pay for a coffee on a date as the hero mainsplains why women should not want to be like men. Or J Om Prakash’s Apnapan where feminism is explained away via a female character who wants to keep her jewels in her own locker even after marriage, wants to celebrate her wedding in an expensive honeymoon suite, sleeps late into the day, plays cards, argues with her husband and abandons him and her infant son so she can lead an independent life.
**
And as always, there is a man explaining what an ideal wife should be like. Sanjeev Kumar holds court in a scene and says, “Acchi biwi ke dil mein pyar, chehere pe laaj aur haathon ko kaam karne ki aadat honi chahiye.” A good wife should be loving, exude bashfulness and do housework without complaining! And God forbid that she should drink or smoke like the bad woman in the film who is punished in the end when her ex husband walks away into the sunset with his son and a brand new wife.
**
But coming back to Tannishtha. Doesn’t she know that laughter in our comedy shows is always at the cost of those who do not fit in? This is after all a country where the host of a tasteless comedy show (where men in drag represent the unwanted women who are either too fat or too ugly or too poor or too old to be loved), supposedly pays taxes equalling almost Rs 15 crore. Insults sell especially when they cater to a certain demographic that buys tubes of Fair and Lovely, measures women in terms of how many boxes they can check (Are they fair enough? Thin enough? Successful enough?) and laughs indiscriminately at marriage jokes about bossy wives and henpecked husbands.
**
Forget our warped yardsticks for women in India. Even Hillary Clinton is till date asked why she does not smile enough. And is shamed for an affair she did not have. Michelle Obama is often trolled as a tranny and Serena Williams has been called a man in a dress. So for whatever it is worth, Tannishtha is in the company of greatness. It is the lot of dark women, fat women, thin women, women who are too beautiful or too plain or too smart or too dumb or too much of anything or too less…to walk and fight and survive in the face of snap judgment, ridicule and cruel laughter. She is not alone. We have all been laughed at. We have all lived on to tell the tale. And to laugh right back at those who laugh at us.
**
Reema Moudgil is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US and is now retailing some of her art at http://paintcollar.com/reema. She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.
Well articulated Reema..