Subverting the “Fraud” of Patriarchy: A Review of Kiran Rao’s Laaapataa Ladies by Somrita Misra

 

 

 

As the lights dim and the screen comes alive and we are embarked on the journey of two “laapataa ladies” (Phool and Jaya), we hear the insightful words of Manju Maasi to Phool: Iss desh mein sadiyon se ladkiyon ke saath ek fraud chal raha hai. Aur uska naam hai bhale ghar ki beti”. These powerful words of an old stall owner in a railway station illustrate the core message that Rao seeks to drive home with the film: the message of challenging the vicious patriarchy which is an entrenched part of the Hindi hinterland culture. Set in the fictious Nirmal Pradesh in 2001, the film follows the stories of two village girls who are swapped during a train journey because of their veils. The veil, in the film, assumes metaphorical and literal significance. Literally, it constricts and confines the woman and metaphorically it invisibilizes the woman, depriving her of her identity and her selfhood. Satire runs through the humor in the film and paves the way for a social commentary on the deep-rooted evils of patriarchy. Gender discrimination is a way of life for the women in the film where prejudice is so ingrained that if a man does not take dowry, he is told that he is full of “khot” or defect. Without indulging in pedagogic feminine discourse or slogan-inducing speeches, Kiran Rao peels off the layers of injustice and addresses the plight of innocent girls like Phool and Jaya. 

     In the film we meet two couples, the very innocent and in-love Phool and Dipak and the mismatched Jaya and Pradeep. The beauty of the film lies in this dual depiction of both marriages and men: while on the one hand, we have the naive Phool who is loved and cherished by Dipak, a simple and wonderfully big-hearted man, on the other hand, we see the clever Jaya trapped in a loveless alliance with the nefariously greedy and sinister Pradeep. This is one feminist film where all men are not vilified ogres or monsters. Instead, the film very credibly shows us, through the character of Dipak, that men can be wonderful. Dipak is progressive and liberal in both thought and action. Frantic after he discovers the swapping of the wives, Dipak runs from police station to politicians to railway platforms in search of his beloved Phool, the girl who he barely knows yet has become strongly attached to. For Phool, hardly out of her teens, to be stranded on a strange railway platform without her husband and protector is the worst of all nightmares. Confused and bewildered, she runs into Chotu who takes her to the station master; further confusion ensues as Phool is unable to even name her own village let alone the village of her in-laws. All she does remember is that the village is named after a flower. Chotu, in a hilarious turn of events, proceeds to name flowers one by one: Champa, Chameli, Dhatura., finally conceding, Phulwari ka sab phool khatam ho gaya par ye Phoolkumari ka sasural nahi mila. Finally, Phool is taken by Chotu to Manju Massi’s stall at the station where she slowly evolves under the matriarch’s influence: it is Manu Massi who makes her understand the hypocrisy of values she has been reared under. Slowly, Phool begins to question the training she has been given, wondering why girls are not given any “mauka” or opportunities and why they are made “lachar” or victims. Manju Maasi shows Phool her own capabilities and makes her realize the value of earning her own money. 

     Juxtaposed with Phool is the resourceful and feisty Jaya, the girl who desires a degree in organic farming so that she can transform agricultural techniques in her region. Willing to go to any lengths to gain an education and stand on her own feet, Jaya sees her swapping as an escape from the despicable Pradeep. She sells her jewels for her admission fees; Kiran Rao poignantly underscores the tactics girls have to resort to in rural India to gain the basic right of being educated, of being self-reliant. Even as Phool evolves under the tutelage of Manju Massi, Jaya helps the women around her evolve. We see how she makes Dipak’s sister-in-law realize how talented an artist she is and convinces Dipak’s mother to cook her favorite dish (“Kamal Kakri ki sabzi”) for herself even if her husband and son do not like it. Interspersed with the protagonists is an ensemble cast of minor figures who are as endearing as the main characters: there is the character of Ravi Kishan, the policeman who is willing to take bribes to file FIRs but who refuses to let Pradeep manhandle Jaya. Then there is the indomitable Manju Massi who speaks some of the most profound truths in the film; in her imitable style, Manju Massi educates Phool about one of the greatest lessons of life: “Apne Saath Khush rehana bahut mushkil ka kaam hai par ek baar ye koi seekh le to koi tumhe dukh nahi phoucha sakta”.  

     Heartfelt performances by the three debutantes and soulful music combine to make Laapataa Ladies a rare gem: a film that breaks the boundaries of stereotypes and entertains its viewers. Rich in color and rusticity, the film showcases the social culture of the Hindi heartland brilliantly. The film shows two faces of mutiny in women: in Jaya it is because of a genuinely bad husband while in Phool it is because of the circumstances she finds herself in. Yet, both women assert themselves in the midst of a crisis and that is where their triumph lies. The light-hearted touch in the film never lets it get bogged down by weighty preaching; instead, the film simply tells a story of two different women and through this story highlights the subjugation of women and the destruction of their dreams post marriage. Kiran Rao eschews any form of excess and in doing so drives her message home deeper. The evils of dowry, domestic violence and gender stereotypes are all touched upon by Rao without any fanfare or clamor. Ultimately, the” Laapataa Ladies” find themselves and in doing so rehabilitate not only their lives but also the lives of those around them. In a heartwarming scene, we see Manju Maasi eating the sweet made by Phool in sheer joy after Phool reaches her home. Jaya secures her own victory as she rides off to Dhera Dun for her farming degree with the blessings of Dipak and his family. The end of the film feels good because it shows us that emancipation for women is very much a real possibility and that to counter every chauvinistic Pradeep there is a loving and liberal Dipak. As Dipak says to Jaya at the end, “Sapnay dekhna kabhi galat nahi hota. 

 

Somrita Misra is Assistant Professor in the Department of English in Chanchal College, Malda, West Bengal. She is a Potterhead, a researcher in children’s literature and a thorough bibliophile.

Photo Essay on Himachal Pradesh by Partha Saha

Fifteen days in Himachal Pradesh might sound a lot, but it’s too less in comparison to the enormous beauty they have over there. This beauty, like it includes their mountains, rivers, waterfalls, it’s also seen in their daily rural life. In the tapering roads of Nako Village, minimal living is the key. Humans co-living with their domestic animals is a common sight. The kids have their own touch of beauty from Mother Nature. The temples and monasteries are mostly borne from local and exclusive architectural style. If I hadn’t visited them, I wouldn’t have known the marvel of detailed design. And above all, the high snow covered mountains beautify them like no other, anything out there is incomplete without them, like they complete the pleasure of eyes.

Partha Saha started his photographic journey in 1995. Since then he has been felicitated with various awards, the most prestigious of which was the National Award on Child Education by National Literacy Mission of India.
Several National level magazines and newspapers have published his photographs on different occasions during his career. He has been participating as mentor and judge in several events as well. Last year, he received the Best Photographer and Studio award by Rashtra Vijay Utsav 2022.

Challenging Metanarratives of the State – Exploring Folk Memory in Onaiza Drabu’s The Legend of Himal and Nagrai: Greatest Kashmiri Folktales by Somrita Misra

Folk memory, through orally told stories, is passed down the generations and becomes a potent way of preserving cultures and truths of a region. Recorded history, while carefully preserved, runs the risk of being manipulated; narratives and agendas become part of the process of writing and documentation. The significance of oral tales lies in their being able to challenge these metanarratives as they preserve within themselves the authenticity of memories, which are a way of nurturing connections within communities and also of affirming identities against a backdrop of enforced silence and evolving social reality. The present paper wishes to explore how folk memory in Onaiza Drabu’s collection, The Legend of Himal and Nagrai: Greatest Kashmiri Folktales, becomes a tool of resisting the oppressive silence surrounding Kashmir. Onaiza Drabu, in the introduction to her seminal work on Kashmiri folktales, The Legend of Himal and Nagrai, writes: “Ever since the complete communication blockade in the state from August 2019, it has become ever more important to document the stories of Kashmir and Kashmiris ₋ their imagination, their speech acts and their culture. This book is retold in the hope that it contributes to more than a nostalgic sense of home; for it to have a purpose of upholding memory while fighting erasure” (9).

     It is significant that Drabu uses the words “culture”, “memory” and “erasure” in her introduction as these words indicate the important role oral narratives can play in preserving regional identities and in resisting metanarratives. Since the early 1990s, the state of Kashmir has grappled with a legacy of conflict, with militants fighting for freedom or “Azadi” and Indian security forces struggling to protect and secure Indian interests. The residents of the valley suffer major hardships due to the raging conflict that has refused to subside for more than three decades. Kashmir comes under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Disturbed Areas Act, the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, and, till very recently, was given special status under the 370 article. In a state full of such draconian laws, stories become a way of challenging these measures. The Folk tales of Kashmir have survived the onslaught of centuries of violence and repression; in that sense, folk tales and folk stories preserve within themselves and reveal through themselves the very identity of Kashmir and Kashmiris.

     Onaiza Drabu, in her collection, brings together twenty-nine folk stories from the Valley of Kashmir; these stories are grouped into four sections (“Tales from Pataal”, “Tales from Janawar”, “Tales from Zameen” and “Tales from Bol Chaal”). Most of these tales are heard and recited by people of all ages every day in the nooks and corners of the villages of the valley, against the backdrop of the mountains and with culture as the context. Indeed, popular tales like “Aftab, Zoon, Hawa” and “Shishrum Nag and his Daughter’s Boon” are used as ways of reinforcing morals and proverbs in the Valley; many of the locales described in these stories are tourist attractions visited by people across the world: “Dapaan, the spring at Simthan is now dry. On the way to Amarnath though, to this day, we find three springs. The big one is called Shishrum naag, or Heher Sund Naag ₋ the father-in-law’s spring and the second Zamtur naag₋ son-in-law’s spring, in memory of this strange family” (“Shishrum Nag and his Daughter’s Boon, 38). In the note after this story, Drabu writes: Simthan is a tourist destination in Anantnag District, a few hours away from Srinagar. The two naags exist today as milky white springs on a mountain close to Amarnath” (39). This folk tale is a clear example of how vital stories are to the very fabric of Kashmir, with the places of the Valley bearing testimonies to the characters of these narratives.

     Kashmiris have always cherished their own peculiar customs and codes; these cultural quips become emblems of resistance in the present day because of the way the Valley is cut off from the rest of India. The multicultural, multilingual tradition of Kashmir finds best expression in its stories; stories which have circulated orally and which often begin with the word, “Dapaan”, the word for ‘say’ or ‘they say’ in Kashmiri. By this vey word, Kashmiris undercut and challenge the recorded history of their state presented to the rest of the country. The stories compiled by Drabu are thousands of years old with no traceable source; by retelling them during a time of conflict and isolation for her state, Drabu ensures that the metanarratives of Kashmir foisted by the political authorities are quietly subverted. Folktales often acquire the characteristics of legends, explaining things which often seem inexplicable to the rational mind. The very topography of Kashmir, its very origins are captured in these tales. In many ways, folklore is often ironic in its cruelty; evil sometimes triumphs, beautiful women lure men to a brutal death, and the power of fate remains supreme. In a state which has coped with one misfortune after another, and where tragedy has often struck arbitrarily and irrationally, punishing people despite no fault of theirs, these stories, perhaps, soothe and console. They explain the random nature of destiny and assure readers and listeners of a closure and a peace that is impossible to find in Kashmir any more.

     Vladimir Propp believed that every character in a folktale had a specific function. Propp’s analysis is that he is able to locate a mere seven key performers, who create seven spheres of action. That is, all fairy tales can be reduced to a set of seven characters who generate the entire plot through their relationships . . . hero, false hero, villain, donor or provider, helper, princess and her father, despatcher” (Nayar, 17). Propp’s analysis looks at the folk tale as a structure or a set of patterns leading to a story; in this set of patterns there is no space for manipulative agendas to seep in. History, on the other hand, being recorded and documented, is riddled with state agendas. Folk stories, through their set figures and morals, imbibe within themselves memories which are collective to a people. Drabu’s compilation inscribes within itself these collective memories; memories which are passed down the generations through the oral mode. These collective memories help foster community feeling and unity in a state where curfews and crackdowns are the regular norm and where a sense of identity is essential to counter state oppression. Basharat Peer poignantly captures the dilemma of living in a curfewed state in his memoir; his closing words echo the hollowness of identity in every Kashmiri’s heart: “That failure of the subconscious was the border. The line of control did not run through 576 kilometers of militarized mountains. It ran through our souls, our hearts, and our minds. It ran through everything a Kashmiri, an Indian, and a Pakistani said, wrote and did. It ran through the fingers of editors writing newspaper and magazine editorials, it ran through the eyes of reporters, it ran through the reels of Bollywood coming to life in dark theatres. . . And it ran through our grief, our anger, our tears, and our silences” (Curfewed Night, 238).

     The Indian subcontinent was forever sliced apart in 1947. The Line of Control divided people into two and subsequently in 1971 into three nations. But cultural commonalities do not disappear with the creation of borders. Two Bengalis from across borders still feel drawn to the same food, same customs, same rituals that has bound them for centuries. Similarly, a Pakistani Kashmiri and an Indian Kashmiri connect in ways that surpass border lines; Peer writes about the tragedy of a state where such cross-border connections are taken as proof of criminality and terrorism. Yet, cross-border connections do exist and nowhere do these connections find better space to foster than in folk memories and stories; just as the tales of Thakurmar Jhuli are cherished across both sides of the border of Bengal so are the stories of Drabu’s compilation enjoyed across religious and national divides in Kashmir. Folktales, like fables, epitomize the personal nature of storytelling; the multiple oral renditions of a single folktale make it a living, breathing entity; the person telling the story is also an author, adding extra elements and curating extraneous details.

 

     The stories compiled by Drabu cut across communities in the true sense; there is the ‘peris’ of Persian folklore, the ‘nagas’ of Sanskrit mythology. “Daastans” of Arabic lineage and “Panchatantra” of Sanskrit lineage coexist together in the stories, paying homage to the syncretic nature of Kashmiri identity. It is this syncretism that the metanarratives of historical truths would have the country deny; these “truths” are circulated through History books, national television, statistical data records. Folk tales and the memories preserved within these tales are testaments to the syncretic micro-narratives that are ritually silenced and sidelined. The folk heroes of Drabu’s stories, the serpent king Nagrai, the human princess, Himal, the eternal proverbs of Kashmir (‘a bear’s friendship’, ‘love as salt’, ‘leave it at the 29^th’), the lullabies of the state, the wedding jingle, “Bumro Bumro” are all weaved into the multiple stories to create an authentic cuisine of cultural amalgamation that defines the real Kashmir. It is all the more interesting that Drabu’s collection is in English, taking the stories to an audience beyond the country itself. If what unite people, more than armies, flags or gold, are stories, then these are stories that deserve to be told and read, again and again.

 

 

Somrita Misra is Assistant Professor in the Department of English in Chanchal College, Malda, West Bengal. She is a Potterhead, a researcher in children’s literature and a thorough bibliophile.

Past and Future Disasters: Meditations on Ecology, Culture and Nation

2023 was the hottest recorded year in the history of the earth. If further evidence at all were needed about the reality of global warming brought about by apparently unstoppable and irreversible human activities, then this information would be a pretty compelling one. But what good is the availability of information when much of what we do seems conditioned by myopic greed and compulsive selfishness? There were enough evidence of these attributes during the pandemic when one set of regulatory approaches were applied to the Indian NRIs, proactively brought home from abroad on special flights, including with their pets, and another were unleashed with regard to migrant labourers being forced to return to their distant rural homes across Indian highways and railways tracks where exhaustion and accidents often took away more lives than the dreaded COVID-19. Two recent shows, aired on Netflix last year, further highlighted the ingrained nature of these tendencies: Kaala Paani and The Railway Men.

Kaala Paani is set in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the recent future of 2027 when a mysterious, untreatable virus spreads across the Andaman Islands, forcing people into a state of panic, loss, lockdown and of course fears. As the news reaches the Indian mainland, the islands are cut off from the rest of the world and escaping the islands and the disease become equally perilous, the viewers are plunged into a multidimensional conflict with familiar contours. As the series develops it becomes clear that the virus itself, identified as LHF-27, is not a new one but one that has recurrently attacked the islands over the years, without ever taking on the extent of an epidemic. The virus becomes uncontainable because a water supply project, helmed by a multinational company transmits the virus across the whole of archipelago. More significantly, the virus leaked onto the lake from which the water was being sourced because a part of the restricted area of one of the islands, where the soil was contaminated with the virus, was being dug up the MNC is question in order to create a helipad so that their illustrious CEO, invisible in the series, could arrive on site in a spectacular fashion and create opportunities for some grand photographs. The sheer casualness and frivolity of the project, not to mention that fatal lack of checks and balances necessary for executing such a project, highlights the brazen quest for self-aggrandisement and thoughtlessness that often contributes to the way in which natural resources are mobilised or annihilated for the sake of profit and public relations. The only people who are able to understand the gravity of the situation are the native tribe called the Oraka who even attack the pipes of the water project in order to prevent the calamity from actualising. In fact the show reveals how the Oraka had developed a genetic resistance to the otherwise deadly virus and how they had managed to contain the virus as well by burying all those who died from this disease in one specific spot and how the burial site was then sowed with seeds of a particular local plant whose consumption was originally responsible for the development of antibodies among the Oraka. What the Oraka had managed to secure was a balance between disease and remedy through their own interaction with nature, encapsulated by the term ‘Tinnotu’ which the Oraka use to designate their instinctive understanding of natural balance or the lack of it. Unfortunately the helipad project not only loosened the contaminated soil but also destroyed the antidote generating plant which the Oraka had cultivated on that soil. The people of the island are thus plunged into a twin peril caused by the spread of the virus on the one hand and the loss of the natural antidote on the other. Eventually, the administration decides to manufacture the required antidotes from the DNA of the Oraka themselves, even if it means sacrificing the Oraka to save the larger population. The show thus becomes a metaphor not just for the thoughtless misappropriation of natural resources and their unforeseen terrible consequences but also the price that is often paid by those resist such ’un-natural’ development because of the malafide actions of others.

Uncannily, this is not new in the Indian context. We have been engineering such catastrophes for a long time, in varied scales, with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984 being one of the worst. As one goes through the events of that fateful night, as portrayed in The Railway Men, a series that attempts to capture the heroic actions of a group of employees of the Indian Railways who heroically prevented the disaster from destroying thousands of fellow Indians, one witnesses that same toxic combination of greed, profiteering, callousness and deliberate disregard for lives considered disposable taking centre stage. The permission provided to Union Carbide for their chemical factory within the limits of the city, in a densely populated area, the absence of any transparent monitoring of the safety and security procedures, the criminal reluctance associated with the deliberate neglect of failing or malfunctioning safety equipments, the deployment of ill-trained factory workers, the safe passage of Union Carbide bosses out of India owing to American pressure, the mysterious deportation of the German scientist who was ready to supply vials of critical antidote – all point to that same nexus of governmental and corporate apparatuses, the fatal consequences of demonic greed and a willingness to render others as expendable for various degrees of personal gain which we had witnessed in Kaala Paani as well.

This is not to ignore the many instances of solidarity, resilience and integrity portrayed by heroic ordinary individuals during different junctures of both shows. But those instances do pale into oblivion in the face of either the massive generational trauma cause by the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy or the uncertain and perilous mise-en-scene with which season 1 of Kaala Paani concludes. As we meander into the New Year it is these traumatic possibilities of our own making that seem to loom large. The Indian government is not only planning the establishment of a large transhipment hub in one of the uninhabited islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago but has also denotified a couple of biospheres by earmarking different plots of land elsewhere, ignoring the rootedness of ecological practices. The pollution in Indian metropolitan cities continues to increase even as green cover in the cities continues to decrease. Urban waterbodies continue to be usurped as well for either industrial or residential purposes. And unlike certain European countries, India neither has a Green Party nor do ecological issues take centre stage in any electoral campaigning. In other words there is a collective failure with regard to either the imagining of alternate futures or the building of a robust ecological conscience among the general population. Instead, ecological campaigns may well be vilified and devalued by invoking totemic tags like “tootkit” and other fictitious fabrications of menace. Yet, in Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Haryana and elsewhere we have already seen signs of unforeseen crisis. More such disasters are likely to occur. Erratic climatological events, deaths of hordes of animals or fish, acute water shortage, scorching heat waves and many such dangers are surely in the offing. Unless we can transform the artistic caveats of our times into significant, radical actions humanity is unlikely to survive much longer. But do we dare disturb the universe? Uncertain premonitions are all there is for now. What comes after depends on all of us.

Abin Chakraborty teaches in Chandernagore College, has a penchant for pedantic pontifications, dabbles in poetry, and remains interested in a variety of literary and critical topics ranging form postcolonialism to cultural studies.