The Tale of a Male Chauvinist and a pair of Submissive Women.

If you have heard about a movie called "Sasanam (The Will)" - which the director boasts about claiming it to be an art movie with emotions and values - that was released recently in Chennai's premier multiplexes, here goes the warning alert for you!
"Do not even attempt to watch the movie. If you are a cinema buff going crazy over meaningful and alternate cinema, this movie is definitely not your kind of choice!"
This movie is from the much acclaimed director Mahendran whose earlier ventures were really worth watching. But, pathetically, the story line of this movie is a much worn out and a cliche'd one!
The story, apart from moving on a beaten track of extra marital relationships (which you would have heard thousand times in Tamil movies), glorifies partriachy and casteism. What the hell? And more shocking aspect of the movie is that the intellectual artistes like Gouthami and Ranjitha performing such uninspiring, conventional and an age old roles in the movie. If the actresses have accepted this hoping to get a big break through this hopeless movie then it would be very hard to comment on their naivette.
A man (Arvind Swami) from Nagarathar community (is it a subcaste of Chettiars?) in chettinad lives a happy life ( as you always see in Tamil movies, 'happy' means wife serving the man of the house and he in turn 'protects' her) with his wife (Gowthami). But only if Ranjitha had not entered! Does it ring a bell? Yes an extramarital relationship! I was wondering, through the course of the worst experience of watching this awful movie, how does it become so easy for a man(director) to justify an illicit relationship in support of a man on screen? Doesn't he know about the status of million women in our country who are being maligned, abused, tortured and exploited through these forced realtionships? Isn't he aware 0f that? Would he dare to support a woman who has got a similar extra marital relationship? Does the director think it is normal and within the codes of society for a man to have an extra marital affair?
There is one more awful aspect in the movie which makesit worse than the dozens and dozens of hopeless movies on similar plots. It is the reason cited for the hero to land up in such an affair. The reason cited is that, on the day of his father's death, in search of comfort the hero lands up in Ranjitha's house and ends up making love with her! On the same day of his father's death! For heaven's sake! What does the director mean by 'comfort'? Does he try to say that a man could be comforted at the worst situations, like the loss of hero's father, only through sex? How could the director even come up with such a ridiculous and an inane argument? Isn't it very clear that what the hero has been upto was nothing but the sexual exploitation of an insecure woman?
And the worst part comes thereafter when both the women start to praise and worship him. The conversation between Ranjitha and Gowthami assuming the hero to be the lost child in a trade fair(is it the proper translation of Tamil word "Thiru Vizha") is the height of stupidity and vulgarity. They literally pamper the hero! Oh my god, didn't the director get even a bit of aversion towards the hero's character? This so called art movie cannot even pass off by being labelled "a badly directed movie". This is one of those movies which tries to preserve the partriachy, male chauvinism and sexism in the Tamil society which already has enough dosages of all these social evils to keep women chained and restrained from progressing towards a free society.
The movie does not stop with that. It tortures you by letting each and every character in the movie to praise the hero and his caste. But one question, when the director has taken such efforts to present the tradition and life style of this upper caste community, why did he then forget to boast about their tradition of oppressing dalits that continues till date? Probably, he would give a sequel with the strong dosages of casteism to preserve this tradition in Tamil society.
To rubbish this movie, you need not be a fierce feminist! All you need to have is an important organ made of soft tissues called brain contained in your hard and rigid skull.

P.S. If you have by any chance read the review of this movie in Friday Review, The Hindu, please do not believe it! The author of the review has a high reputation of being a conservative, anti-feminist and a traditionalist. And this time too, she proves herself to be worthy of her hard earned reputation through her reviews for loads and loads of movies hailing male chauvinism.

What Colour?

Talking about movies will not be complete without the mention of movies from Iran. Iran is hailed worldwide for the kind of thought provoking real movies it offers to the international audience.These movies are intellectualy heavy and talks about human relationships, women's empowerment and the real plight of people in its country.
Most acclaimed directors from this country are Samira Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostoki and many more. All these directors are famous worldwide.
And to say about Majid Majidi's creations, his movies are critically acclaimed and has won several awards in the film festivals held acros the world. And one interesting fact is his recent movie "Baran (The Rain)" has even seen a commercial theatrical release in multiplexes in India. India which has never seen any foreign films except Hollywood movies was ready to see his movie in theatres. Such was his ability to reach out to even the conservative societies.
And the most wonderful film from his creation is "The Colour of Paradise". This movie is unique, liberative and thought provoking in a sense that though the story line is about a visually challenged boy the movie does not try to sensationalise the issue at any point of its flow! A rare thing to be seen in Indian movies.
The movie poetically portrays the boy's thoughts and feelings as the story unfolds softly in its own pace. The picteresque locales add more credits to the movie.
This movie tries to capture the poignant moments in the family when the boy returns to the village to spend the vacation with his grandmother, father and sisters from the boarding school in the city. The selfish father, who has even planned to remarry, is reluctant to bring him home. Ignoring the grand mother's protest, he makes his son an apprentice to another visually challenged carpenter in a distant town. The grandmother unable to recover from grief dies and later on, the father tries to bring the boy again to his home.
Another attracting feature in the movie is the aptly used metaphors! The scene in which the hair clip presented to the grandmother falls into the river water, the old lady trying to save the trembling fish-out-of-water that has been washed ashore by the flood, the carnivores roaring in the forests and the broken mirror are the examples of poetic touch and judicious use of metaphors in the movie.
Not even in a single scene, the challenge the boy faces is portrayed as an handicap and he is shown as no less an efficient individual. The scene where the boy saves an young one of a bird fallen from the nest from a cat on the prowl is an apt example for this.
This commendable work of art is an excellent piece of portrayal of human relationships sprinkled with poignant moments.
The colour of paradise! What is a paradise? Could one say that the society which includes everyone without any discrimination on the basis of ability, gender, caste etc. is the real paradise? Or is it far from the reality?
But what is the colour of the paradise? Is it the colour of humanity? Is it the colour of unbiased society? Is it the colour of acceptance? Is it the colour of inclusion? Or would it be an exaggeration if it is said that the real colour of paradise is the colour of everything? Yes! It is the colour of each and everything that is humane!

the search that never ends....

Everyperson seems to live in her/his own world! we our have our own dream lands.Aren't we? What seems to be a non-existent for others would sometimes be real and original for us!Perceptions differ from person to person. So what? That does not exclude the people from common world! why then some people are deliberately pushed away from their world, from the world that is common to all the living things, into a confined space. Why are they deprived of their basic rights? So what if they live in their own world, seeing things that others could never possibly see? So they are schizophrenic?If it is true that they are schizophrenic, then aren't we all the same at times when we start dreaming of the future that we want to be shaped into as something that we desire for or at times when we think of the past where we had missed those golden opportunities or those misfortunate moments happened to us? So does schizophrenia give the eligibility for a person to be excluded from the society that s/he has been a part of so far ?
So many questions, and not so many answers! Shit, isn't it an animal behaviour to exert powers over the weaker section! So, Man, I mean just the MAN, has not evolved from the past. He is the same, the same old animal in search of food and...
Ok! coming out of the detour of nasty behaviours of men and going into the schizophrenia, the recent English movie "15 Park Avenue", directed by Aparna Sen, does give a detailed account on schizophrenia. It shows the reality... the movie does not come as the one raising voice against the exclusion of schizophrenic but has its philosophical moments of drawing a parallel between those affected and those who claim to be normal! yes somewhere down the line, the movie claims that there is none who is normal. That is clear in the ending sene of the movie(of course it is an open ended film). But the movie never fails to give a detailed account on the big S and at times there is possibility for the viewer to get a "documentary-watching-feel".
But the movie does not stop with that. It comes in multiple layers of complex issuesof the society. As the movie flows, the layers unfold and the issues present themselves and start questioning us! If you could call that as the wonderful aspect of the movie then you could also say that the movie has failed to make an impact at certain moments for the same reason! When just one single complex issue is beyond reach for the Indian audience, it is not a wonder that the this powerful movie has failed to reach even the so called Intellectual group!
You could find everything in this movie: feminism, violence against women, spineless bastards who call themselves "men" and treat women as sexual objects,love life of a not-so-young-but-single woman and everything.
Shabana Azmi, with her realistic and excellent performance( though it is not a surprise!) steals the show!She, as the elder (step)sister who is in charge of her schizophrenic sister (Konkana Sen Sharma) has been portrayed realistically without any exaggeration! She,a divorcee, comes as a strong intellectual woman. She does not come as that motherly elder sister like in those melodramatic and unrealistic movies who does all the kinds of sacrifices that one could possibly do on the planet for the life of her 'hopeless' sister!Instead, she comes as the one who treats her sister as normal as anyone(except in those moments when she turns suicidal)!And she has her own spaces too in the movie, affair with her colleague and the doctor who treats her sister!
Konkana Sen plays her part beautifully! It is a commendable performance done by her!She comes as a rape victim (the movie does not address this issue much). And this incident triggers off her Schizophrenia which had been so far lying dormant in her!
Rahul Bose, the lover of Konkana, plays the role of not-so-important-person, that usually all the men get to play in an Aparna Sen's movie. He dumps Konkona Sen for being raped eight times(though he is called a bastard by Shabana Azmi in the movie, that did not put off my burning agitation that was ready to pop out at the slightest provocation while watcing the movie. And my friend sitting next to me recieved the pinches and punches on behalf of Mr. Bose). In the movie, he is shown to portray the real nature and mindset of men in our country. After all, aren't women their men's property?
Shafali Shah, wife of Rahul Bose, comes as a surprise!After coming to know the past love life of her husband, she finds it hard to digest the fact that it has been kept away from her by him all these years. As an unsatisfied wife, she shows the real status of Indian married woman on screen. This is clear in the scene when she responds to her husband by saying "aren't we all?" when he says to her that his former girl friend actually lives by an illusion. And the moment she comes to know that Konkona Sen had been raped eight times, starts crying who has all the while been just a person grappling with her husband's past! Her life in the movie would definitely have resemblance with all the married women of our country!
This movie in which all the protagonists are women is definitely one of the powerful movies of the year! But the movie does not present the issues blatantly and the subtleties with which the movie adresses these issues have failed to reach out to the audience! And the truth is many people have failed to understand what the movie is all about! Importantly, the climax has not been understood by anyone who has watched the movie. The last scene in which everyone in the frame searches for "15 Park Avenue" tries to tell the truth that everyone in her/his life is behind something that doesn't exist or that is beyond reach and no one is contented with the life he/she is living. It is defintely not just the schizophrenic people who are abnormal!

No Spices for Empowerment (my article in the magazine, The Rally)

Yes! The story has magic in it. Of course it is about the supernatural powers of one single woman! So what? Everything is fine if the story has been woven with intellectual stuff to deliver human values and the importance of independence that women really deserve. And so is Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni’s novel “The Mistress of Spices”. It is the story of an Indian woman, Tilotamma, named after the spice sesame seed, owning a shop called ‘Spice Bazaar’ in California, who has magical powers to talk to spices and solve the problems of others through these spices. However, the story does not give the reader a “fairy tale” feeling or the feeling of reading an immature piece of work on some supernatural powers. In other words the book is intellectually heavy in its own terms for it deals with the story of a woman called Lalitha who suffers the domestic violence of being raped every night by her own husband and chooses later to fight against the brutality of her husband with the help of spices to live on her own. It is also the story of another young NRI woman, Geetha, who lives an independent life in America only to be disowned by her parents and an old fashioned and typically chauvinistic grandfather who thinks that his granddaughter is unwomanly and uncharacteristic of an Indian woman to lead her own life as per her whims and most of all to fall in love with a Mexican man. And there is Jagjit, a teenager Punjabi, who is friendless and lacks confidence and courage and Haroun , a taxi driver who suffers the worst of racial discrimination that is more commonly prevalent in post 9/11 US. How Tilo, the mistresss of spices, helps them to recover from their pains and empower all these sufferers forms the crux of the story! Beyond all these is her passion and desire for a white man in a foreign land, which is against all the rules of her magic world, as she should not love anyone or for that matter not even touch any outsider. But the assertive and strong willed Tilo goes in her own ways to get what she wants and desires. And thus it ends up as a story of a courageous woman who isn’t deterred by the conventional rules of the magic world and goes unflinchingly to achieve the goal she has been desiring to have.
But all these flavours of independence, courage, assertiveness and equality have been brutally destroyed in the movie version of the novel! The movie directed by Paul, husband of the famous director Gurinder Chaddha, has not transformed well on the screen. The screenplay written by Gurinder Chaddha and Paul lacks the fervour and poetical touch that the book has as it mainly focuses on the romantic affair of Tilo with the white man leaving out the importance of other characters in the book! Surprisingly and shockingly, the character of Lalitha has been deleted in the movie. This is the height of injustice to the book as the story of Lalitha in the book unfolds as a voice against the cruelties to women like domestic violence and rape that most of the Indian housewives in America face. It is very much true that most women after marrying immigrant men become victims of domestic violence in the alien land. Lalitha’s story brings out that brutality realistically to the readers and emphasizes the immediate need of empowerment of women and protection against such cruelty. Ms. Chitra Banerjee herself being a President of a helpline of South Asian women, MAITRI, has presented the problems of such women realistically without exaggeration and also the need for women to be courageous enough to come out of such “inhuman marriages” where women are not only treated as just sexual objects but also been deprived of all the basic rights a human being ought to have. The author, writes in her book, to all the victims of domestic violence:“No man, husband or not, has the right to beat you, to force you to a bed that sickens you”. She talks about the rights a woman deserves. She talks about the happiness and dignity a woman deserves no matter where she is or what she is. And she talks about the empowerment of women through the characters of Lalitha, Geeta and Hameeda. In her narrative, She gives satirical comments about status of Indian women in our society. She talks about how they are brought up without being used to say the word ‘NO’, how they have been pushed to accept whatever comes to them and not rebel against any such things and how they are brought up to be just perfect wives for their husbands and not themselves. She has not even spared the male chauvinistic idols of Hindu mythology like Rama because she comments on the injustice done to the Goddess by Lord Rama by saying “Who shall I ask to bless me? Ram, who banished poor pregnant Sita to the forest because of what people might say? Even our gods are cruel to their wives”. This is the original essence of the book! Giving an identity to the women breaking the stereotypes! The essence of individuality and independence of women! But the movie, ironically, does not bother to deliver this essence to the audience which is the real need of the hour, because not so many know the real status of women married to an immigrant in a foreign land. Even Geeta’s character, played by Padma Lakshmi, who rebels against the conventions of Indian marriages, does not attain its full form on the screen. But the director and the screenplay writer have taken pains to leave out on all these important issues but just to present the movie as one of the feel-good-movies, something of a Hollywood type not knowing that they have failed in that attempt too because the movie never makes you feel good and definitely not for the people who have read the book already. The director has been keen only on showing glam and romance on screen; the basic reason for Aishwarya Rai doing the role of Tilo makes it clear. She is a great injustice to the role as she has not brought out the vibrant and assertive Tilo alive on the screen. Moreover in the book, Tilo is not a young woman but an old woman (ofcourse an young woman trapped in a old woman’s body!). Modifying the character of old woman to young woman proves that the director is not interested in showing an old woman on the screen. He just wanted youth and beauty to be splashed on the screen. And in the book, even the young Tilo is not as beautiful as she is portrayed in the movie. This proves that the director has been very careful that he does not break the conventions of the tinseldom that presents heroines as mannequins. When would the movie world come out of chauvinistic stereotypes like showing women as such beautiful dolls? Does only beauty speak for women? Let women have their originality , individualty, independence and dignity ! To scale down such promising characters from a powerful novel to painted dolls in a movie amounts to a mindless mangling of values and character!
The movie about the magical spices, has the spices of superficialities like romance, passion, beauty and glamour. But the real spices of intelligence, independence, assertiveness, courage and dignity that formed the basis of a good novel are pathetically missing. And significantly, the basic reason for disappointment and angst is that there are no spices for the empowerment of women in the movie version which is the bottomline of the novel!
K. Deepan Kannan
Student Editorial Board
kannadeepan@yahoo.com

A woman is not a man's chattel...

What is the role of a woman in Tamil movies? Is she portrayed with the dignity that a human being really deserves? Is she seen as that "real human being" who has got all the rights like choosing her own life, dressing in the way she wants to, choosing a man as per her own whims and fancies or atleast as the one possessing the fundamental right of speech?
You would have never seen a woman doing all the above mentioned things in a Tamil movie! example: Sivakasi, Thiruppachi, Thiruppathi, Thambi and other loads and loads of Tamil movies that have been made only in a man's view point. Pathetically, all these movies completely lack in a woman's point of view. All these male directors have never portrayed women as someone of their own mind! Women in Tamil movies have always been shown as wives, mothers or sisters whose lives revolve around men but not as individuals with the dignity of choosing their own lives. Women on screen have never enjoyed the privilege of living an independent life! It is as though their lives would never be complete without men...