Why I am Not India's Daughter:

4th March 2015

Kolkata celebrates Holi today. Delhi will tomorrow. Delhi is India's capital city. It is also the city with the most number of rapes reported. The Delhi gang rape of a medical student in a bus kindled nation wide protests. The documentary 'India's Daughter' has lengthy interviews with one of the convicts. India's problem with the film also lies there. The country has banned the screening of the film. On Holi day 2015 BBC however broadcasted the film in the wee hours of the morning and later released it on Youtube. This is not just a victory of freedom of speech. It is also a strong statement against state repression.

How?

The film maker held interviews with the convicts who are now in Tihar jail. She did so after obtaining the necessary permissions from the concerned authorities. Lawyers of the convicts also speak. The problem here is that a 'foreigner' penetrated the state and subjected it to criticism. Jails are the epitome of state brutality. India is one of the few countries which still enforces capital punishment. The convicts have also been sentenced to capital punishment and have appealed to the Supreme Court.  This country has consent to brutality by the state and has further shut it out from people and made it impregnable. 'India's Daughter' and its director Leslie Udwin penetrate this capsule of violence.

As usual safety of women has been used to keep the truth under the hood. India has banned the documentary. They say that the content of the film is against women. Minister Venkaiah Naidu has said that it is part of an international conspiracy against the nation. Is a person convicted of rape blaming the victim while in jail international conspiracy? Or is the representatives of the judiciary saying that there is no place for women in Indian culture and that she has to be protected by men? If that is the case the film is a truth which has to be showed not just in India but around the world.

Another pertinent issue is that of how permissions were obtained to shoot in a prison. Why are our prisons camera shy? If prisons are state's models of efficiency shouldn't they be welcoming it? The issue is two sided. The first is the belief that prisons and its inmates are the property of state and should adhere to its whims and fancies. The second is that it is an 'other' which has crossed this barricade. In such situations even those who are otherwise anglophiles turn nationalists. The theory is that of an 'outsider' passing comments about the functioning of a family. Families are allowed to do anything. Domestic violence is allowed. Dowry is okay. No questions asked. The convict, Mukesh Singh, who believes that the victim shouldn't have protested and that it was all her fault and repeats this view throughout the documentary is a part of the family. It is intriguing that it is not this misogynistic view that has provoked the state but the fact that it is a British woman who brought it out. State is not protecting the convict. It is protecting the public opinion which is similar to that of the convict's. This is precisely what the documentary topples. 
 
BBC's India's Daughter

India's Daughter is a mediocre film. Nothing artistic about it. Moreover it is somewhat like Slumdog Millionaire in that it looks at India as a third world nation sinking in poverty and anti-social activities. A country which needs reformation. Glee at an opportunity to criticize a former colony is rather evident. India of slums, youth dropping out of school to earn a living, women who only seek protection from husbands- the sketch is just perfect.

I don't know if documentary is still seen as a quest for truth. I don't believe that cinema seeks the ultimate truth or that one even exists. I believe that from the time a camera is placed and a frame is obtained, through cuts to sound design, film making is a story of including and excluding. What is in a frame is also what is not in it. What a cut excludes is also what it includes. In that sense, the 'India's Daughter' has an outlook which says that India is a lot of uncivilized people engaged in heinous crimes. At the same time it is not advisable to ban it for this reason. This is the primary difference between fiction and non-fiction forms of art. Even while opposing the politics of Slumdog Millionaire, India's Daughter poses itself as a big pillar of truth. There are no actors here. No script. It is before media that one of the lawyers for the convicts said that he would set fire to any woman in his family who had premarital sex. He repeats the same in the documentary. Another lawyer says that woman is like a flower and that she will be worshiped if kept in a temple and be crushed if left on the streets. The convict says that rapes will not stop with their capital punishment. On the contrary people will now just murder women without a second thought under similar circumstances.

This is the politics of rape. To know the kind of power patriarchy enforces you only have to listen to the convict for a while. Mukesh Singh speaks of the victim's intestines being pulled out by a convict and being discarded on the road as if it were weather talk. He says with pride that his brother (another convict) is a gym instructor and that he is quite strong. It doesn't scare me, this machismo. On the mirror that is 'India's Daughter' it is silver-cold.

It is this reflection that the state wants to wipe away. The high of bhang is wearing away slowly from Kolkata. Youtube video has been removed already. For me, today's colours have Jyoti Singh too in them. Over all inebriation is a dark cloud of rain; of how an average Indian man looks at women. I am not India's daughter. I don't think Jyoti Singh was either. India is in fact Mukesh Singh. I cannot adhere to anything which originates there. Neither as a woman nor as a human being. In this festival colours i am with a 'foreign' film. A mediocre one which posed threat to state, a film which made me part of a conspiracy. Jyoti Singh, today, i miss  you.

Holi 2015

 Read the malayalam version here

Kerala's Bleeding Women

December in Kerala was a happy respite from the chilly (for a 'madrasi') Kolkata winter. On 19th December BJP president Amit Shah was to make a speech in Palakkad, Kerala. My cameraperson and I were planning to shoot the speech. A day before that I, along with the rest of my state read about Nazeera who was ousted from a KSRTC (Kerala State Road Transport Co-operation) bus at night because the conductor was afraid she was menstruating. I thought of my own journey and for a moment wasn't sure if I would make it all the way from Kochi to Palakkad on public transport. 

Now for the uninitiated, periods is a complete no-no in religious India. Earlier in Kerala there were separate rooms constructed solely to house bleeding women every month. So that the rest of the family wouldn't be touched by or even be in the vicinity of such 'impurity'. Hindu faith demands that menstruating women don't enter places of worship or read religious texts during her cycle. In Christianity there exists silent consensus to the decorum that women don't go to church while menstruating or even if they do abstain from receiving the holy communion. During December faith takes a more bizarre turn. That is the month when devotees of Lord Ayyappa known as 'ayyappans' take a 41 days long fast after which they make a visit to Sabarimala temple in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala. This 'vratam' (fast) asks the devotees to refrain from any worldly pleasures. This includes sex, having fish or meat and it is also required that they be 'pure' in all ways possible. Bleeding women being impure by definition, this translates to devotees staying away from them.

The absurdity of it all was up for display when Nazeera along with her two children and mother in law was asked to leave the bus packed with Ayyappa devotees. The conductor was reported to have said that it was not possible for him to determine if the woman was pure (read bleeding) or not. The Ayyappa devotees themselves were silent in front of this government employee who had donned the coat of a defender of religious faith.
Soon after this incident was reported the online world, especially women, reacted with statements in solidarity and by even changing their display pictures to a sanitary napkin stained with menstrual blood. On 21st December, a group of women gathered at KSRTC bus station in Ernakulam to protest against the injustice Nazeera faced. Their plan was to board a similar bus and occupy the seats reserved for women to state that there were no laws preventing women from travelling whether or not they were bleeding. These women were arrested and removed from the place while they were having tea even before they got on a bus. This time state was acting as the guardian angel of pristine religious sentiments.

State's intervention in organized protests against moral policing, fascism and any form of injustice is at its pinnacle in the state. Khaki's new found epithet is kavi (saffron). Kerala had already witnessed it when Kiss of Love protests met with police brutality in three districts in the state. So it was of no surprise when the police refused to register a complaint when Nazeera approached them in the middle of the night. Later the city Commissioner of Police R Nishantini IPS said that women should learn to value religious sentiments and that they should opt for means of transport which were not as provocative. That there are no buses 'reserved' for ayyappans seemed to be of no relevance to the honourable officer. That the existence or a sign of it of a womb, an organ in a human body, could be provocative almost seemed believable.

Fear of the womb, however is not strictly religious in origin. It is also often connected with hygiene, which is deemed to be of supreme importance in a Malayali's life. The truth is that hygiene can be the perfect partner in misogyny when required. Thus proved another incident which occured in Kochi where a sanitory napkin was found in a toilet in a private firm and 45 women employees were asked to strip to find out who was bleeding and therefore using a pad. This fastidious care about hygiene is quite ironic when it comes from a place where the fight against indiscriminate waste dumping (Laloor, Thrissur district) went on for more than 25 years. The principle is quite simple. Women are people so long as their cavities keep mum. A member of parliament of BJP recently threw a casual advice that all Hindu women should bear at least four children. Yes, the womb has to remain silent and invisible and be host to eccentricities of religious fundamentalism or violence at all times.

On my way to Palakkad on Indian railways' dutifully late train I found myself bleeding and in a compartment packed with ayyappans. I thought of the possibility of an impurity meter on means of transport and its business prospects while clicking in solidarity with Nazeera. I think it's time Kerala's bleeding women started getting sacrilegious with their bodily functions. Period. Oops! No period.

Two women on a night

That night was all about hushed speech and gripping fear. Two women were fleeing. R was on her bed trying to make sense out of her sleep and S was by her computer. They were seas apart but bound together by a thin supple silver line of fear. There was someone outside the door. He was listening to them talking. He could hear their plan. It wasn't foolproof. When R got up from bed and stealthily moved towards the switchboard she was scared that with the light the stranger would also find an entry into the room. Even when nothing happened she was scared. She bolted the door and unbolted it in a moment thinking of the possibility of him already hiding in the room. There were two doors to open and close before she reached the road. The rusted iron wouldn't easily budge. She had to pull at it with all her might and was worried if she would have to seek help. She couldn't afford to involve another person in the plan. She had to flee by herself. The railway station was only a few kilometers away. The journey was only ten hours long. She could sleep and get up to home. It was 5.00 am.

A teashop was open. The tea wet her throat and curbed hunger. Tea was the best thing one could find in the morning. An auto was fast asleep in the nearest junction. The driver was in the seat in deep slumber. 'Chetta', she called and he sprung up. Railway station would be Rs. 50. Okay. While getting off  she apologised for having awaken him from sleep. He smiled and said it was no big deal. She felt like hugging him to say thank you. Good thing she didn't know how to hug.

At 6:25 the train moved. It was hard to keep her heavy backpack on the rack. The weeklies in the side pocket were falling off. After securing her place near the window she went to the toilet for a quick smoke. For the first time in her 7 years of cigarette addiction she had forgotten to take her cigarette packet on a journey. Unrest began. She will have to sleep till destination so that the restlessness out of lack of tobacco wouldn't drive her crazy. She had a coffee and went to sleep. When she got up only five hours of the journey was over. Her arm was aching from pulling the suitcase in the morning. She had a body, she was aware because of the pain. This is all she could do in a day, she thought. Only five hours in a stretch. The plan had worked only half way, S, she tried to communicate through her thoughts. She got off where she had met S four years ago. They were in 'Life is Beautiful' now. Father and son playing a game which was anything but, to live. To live. When she thought of that R's throat glued its walls together. Only one survived in the movie. She couldn't let that be. They had to flee together. Together was the only way they could be.

The city welcomed her. The fear still hung in the air. She thought of S. She only thought of S. Survivors only think of each other. They survive to love. Love to survive. One more night, one more night and she will be home. One night a day. Safety is only one night away.

Ad-renalined.

I don't remember exactly when i started noticing advertisements. In highschool i remember singing ad jingles whenever we played antaakshari. 'washing powder nirma' was one among my favourites. I still nurture the secret desire to be an ad film maker one day. I think it's extremely difficult to make one and that it is possible to make strong political statements through them. Advertisements continue to be grossly sexist, casteist and racist most of the time. I have always been happy to see any of them break this norm. The most recent one i liked this way was one from tata docomo for their power recharges.

This 30 seconder says a LOT of things. First of all it addresses an issue which is very common. Men on road do this all the time. Sometimes it is a song which they start singing just as a girl approaches. It quickly leaves their lips as the girl moves out of vicinity as well. If someone questions them they have an excuse all ready. 'We were just singing a song. How can you stop us from singing a song?' Some funny ones have even sprung 'It's a democracy' at me. :) It is a way of hassling women which can be done very easily. You don't even have to be a singer. So what is the problem with someone singing a song? Well, believe it or not, we really don't like being sung to, unless it is a concert we paid a nice sum for. Not on the road from a stranger, please!

The advertisement also shows in a shot that the girls are not comfortable with the man's whistling. Below is th shot.

Then it shows that there is a girl who sees that the girls are not comfortable with it and then we see her reacting to it and how! It takes courage to raise voice is what the tag line says. It is obvious that what she did at that bus stop indeed takes courage. This act says a lot of things. For one it states a fact, that more often than not it is just one person or a minority who raises voice. It says that for such a minority to do so it requires courage and that they shouldn't be shunned and on the contrary should be respected. The second important thing the film says is that you might not always succeed the first time you raise your voice. In this situation, even after the woman screamed the first time, the man attempts to whistle again albeit a little weaker. Women who have been in similar situations know only too well that this is true. Most of the time the offenders try to defend themselves and even accuse the victim of madness, loose morals etc. In the film, the woman persists. She succeeds. It exudes energy and positive vibes.

Another thing to be noted is that the girls who were affected were watching as the woman was screaming and they saw the effect it had on the man. She set an example and we know that the girls will react the next time something of this nature happens. The last shot in the film is of the girl who reacted herself. We see that she feels good. She is smiling to herself.

There is a shot which i liked particularly in the film. It is that of this woman standing, almost ready to leap at him in case he repeated his act. She stands out in the place. She dominates it. It's lovely.

I also saw two other advertisements which i found a relief from the common ones for sanitary napkins. They are narrations along a lighter vein and not addressing periods as 'un dinom' 'ആ ദിവസങ്ങള്‍' etc [those days] and not equating success in various fields of work or play (rock climbing, journalism, dance, sports etc) with the quality of your sanitary napkin.Thanks to Rakesh Warrier for sharing them.
First Moon Party and The Camp Gyno


Looking forward to more of the kind. Gives me an ad-renaline rush ;-)