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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Arts & Reviews |
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Review |
Love, Sex and Taboos
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| Love in India offers the viewer an almost anthropological enquiry into our collective discomfort with matters of the heart and of the crotch |
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| T |
WO MONTHS AGO, the Navi Mumbai police busted
the most peculiar ‘racket’. An unidentified, ingenious
entrepreneur had picked up on the city’s
space deficit and its lack of privacy. His solution
was low-cost, though somewhat uncomfortable. He set
up about eight to 10 makeshift shelters about 10 to 15 kilometres
deep inside the mangrove
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jungle abutting Mini Chowpatty, a popular Navi Mumbai hangout and rented
them out to couples desperate for some privacy. The rate
was affordable— 100 per hour. The mosquito coil was complimentary.
The incident seems like a scene straight out of Love in India,
the edgy 91-minute documentary directed by Kaushik
Mukherjee, who goes by the initial ‘Q’. In fact, if the film
hadn’t already been wrapped up and released by then,
there’s every chance this ‘racket’ would have been given the
kind of coverage and analysis it deserved. Every aspect and
player of the story—from the dearth of privacy to the ingenuity
on the part of the entrepreneur to the reporter who
ratted to the cops to the couples who no longer have the
luxury of making mosquito-free love amongst mangroves—is symptomatic of the duplicitous nature of contemporary
India’s relationship with sex and love—the premise of Q’s
compelling documentary.
What merits acclaim is the film’s tongue-in-cheek portrayal
of the complexities that govern our dichotomous behaviour—our collective adulation for adulterers Radha
and Krishna, and yet, our intolerance towards adultery; our
veneration of the lingam and the yoni and yet, our disapproval
of sex education; our endorsement of on-screen vulgarity
and yet, our aversion to “indecency” off-screen; our
indulgence in pornography behind closed doors and yet,
our opposition to public display of affection.
When did sex become taboo? What are the repercussions
of our collective repression? What are the symptoms of this
malaise? These are among the key questions that the film
poses as it investigates the popular conception of love and
sex in India, pitting it against our traditional understanding
which, as the film proposes, has been shaped by our reverence
for Radha and Krishna.
Love in India kicks off with a personal exchange between
Q and his lover Rii, who questions him about their affair:
“What do you hate about me?”
“Anger.”
“What do you love about me?”
“Your smile.”
“What do I like wearing the most?”
“Nothing at all.”
“How many times did you kiss me in five years?”
“Three lakh, sixty thousand, seven hundred and eighty
six (times).
“Do you love me?”
“What does that mean?”
Love in India is an attempt to answer precisely that question,
and to understand the equation between sex and love.
The matter of sex was simpler to investigate, love, not so
much. “Love is a social dimension. It is not a fact,” Q explained
to me over the course of a phone interview. “Sex
is a fact, a physical reality. Love is an abstract idea which
somehow every human being can claim to understand.” He
decided to approach the subject as precisely that: a social
dimension, a societal construct that has been successfully
implanted within a societal and cultural context.
The film surveys Q’s relationship with his lover Rii and
the world that exists outside of their affair but which informs
and influences its current nonetheless. Narrative
layers emerge through the spoken, the visual and the musical
that sustain this movement between worlds and add to its complexity. Q’s overarching narration holds all the
fragments together to create one ambiguous whole and
offers the viewer an almost anthropological enquiry into
our collective discomfort with matters of the heart and of
the crotch.
“A long time ago in India, we understood love and celebrated
sex,” said Q. “Today we live in confusion, repression
and dichotomy.” This is the general feeling that overwhelms
the viewer as one confronts footage of scenes and images
that are only too familiar. Like that of a couple trying to steal
a kiss, or another playing badminton in a park, or other couples
playing dandiya; graffiti featuring confessions of eternal
love; and images of Bollywood kitsch depicting a hero
and a heroine in the throes of filmi passion.
The idea of love is clearly pervasive in the Indian imagination.
But being taboo, it assumes the status of the forbidden.
Couples are punished, harassed and fined for the
“crime” of merely being together in a park or for kissing in
public. Living together is seen as an indulgence in sin, marriages
continue to be “arranged” and not surprisingly, divorce
rates have begun to soar.
The consequences are lethal and predictably, the casualties
are mostly women. “Every six hours, a young married
woman is burned to death, beaten to death or driven
to suicide by emotional abuse from her husband. Every
four hours, an Indian woman commits suicide over dowry dispute. More than two-thirds of married women in India
have been beaten, raped, forced to provide sex, and 56 percent
of Indian women believe that wife-beating is justified
under certain circumstances,” the voice-over informs as
the camera depicts the all-too-familiar image of marriage
rites being performed over a havan, a holy fire.
Although the narrative seems tightly wound and the film
seems neatly packaged, Q confessed that the structure was
never quite apparent. That is at least not until the third year
of filming, which is when he decided he needed to put himself
into the narrative for it to be more poignant and effective.
“The film wasn’t there, at least not until the last moment,”
he said. “I didn’t make the film, it made itself. I was
just shooting and filming and editing for five years.”
In an age when Indian documentary filmmaking is more
often than not inspired and influenced by the director’s
activist stance, Love in India feels like a refreshing retake.
Though the director is a part of the narrative, the perspective
is rarely ever tilted in his favour, which allows for multiple
points of view from a host of people—housewives, divorcees,
mystics, sculptors, researchers, friends, family and
relatives. “I tried to talk to my mother, my aunt, my uncle,
friends, people I knew. I went around in concentric circles until I found the right people. We must now learn from people
who are uninformed,” Q said.
But the film doesn’t confine its survey to the uninformed.
Instead, the director broadens our perspective by tapping
into an existing historical discourse on love and sex through
engaging interviews with scholars, baul singers and tantrics.
And by referencing a vast repertoire of myths.
Besides Q and Rii, the two protagonists central to the film
are Radha and Krishna, the “immortal couple”, as the documentary
note calls them. Perhaps the most poignant moment
in the film is the montage of a sculptor assembling clay models
of the two mythological figures, coupled with a voice-over
of a scholar who tells us how even the myth of Radha and
Krishna has been appropriated by our conservative society.
While we are encouraged to worship the two lovers, we have
relegated them to the space of the divine so that they are seen
as gods. “But they are us!” the scholar adds profoundly.
Production wrapped up in 2008 and the film premiered
a year later at Hot Docs, an annual Canadian documentary
film festival held in Toronto. Since then, the film has been
doing the rounds of the international film circuit. Love in
India was selected for the South Asian Film Festival in New
York, the South Asian Film Festival in San Francisco and the Asia Film Medial in Rome. Soon enough, distributors
stepped in and the film began to reach a larger audience.
Arte, the television channel that co-funded the film, broadcast
it to viewers in France and Germany. And rights were
recently sold to Noga Channel 8 in Israel.
Within the first few weeks of the distributor posting
the trailer online, over 400,000 hits had been registered; an indication that viewers could identify with the content,
and that the subjects the filmmaker dared to explore
were universal concerns. The documentary is now available
for sale in India through Under Construction, an enterprising
nonprofit group that curates and distributes
independent films.
This ability to tap into an underlying collective consciousness
and curiosity defines Q’s forte as a director. But
while Love in India has established his status as a provocative
filmmaker, it’s the hype surrounding Gandu, his latest
film, which has made him something of a cult figure. The
buzz isn’t entirely serendipitous. Q’s background in advertising
most certainly helps him communicate with his target
audience—the intellectually minded subcultural group
within and outside the country that’s been waiting for years
for someone to push the envelope, without having to rely
on mainstream methods to ensure commercial success. “If
there’s nobody else doing it, then I’ll do it,” said Q. “I’m a
very happy rebel.”
(Love in India is an Overdose Joint production, distributed
in India by Under Construction (www.ucfilms.in), and is
priced at 500.)
Rosalyn D’Mello, a freelance writer based in Delhi, is currently editing Venus Flytrap, an anthology of women’s erotica, for Zubaan. She is also working on her first book, A Handbook For My Lover.
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