Film Review: KRITI

Just got here from watching Kriti, and I can't help feeling astonished. That Shirish Kunder could come up with something like this is simply unbelievable. As a Twitterzen, he is all wit. And no one can believe that he is the same guy who tortured us with films like Jaan-e-mann and Joker. Here he shows style and class. 

Of course he receives great support from his two main stars. Radhika Apte is brilliant. As is Manoj Bajpayee. The others are important only in relation to these. The film is about Sapan (Manoj), a writer, who is talking to his therapist and childhood friend, Kalpana (Radhika) about a woman, Kriti, with whom he is in a relationship. After that I won't tell you anything else, because I don't do spoilers.

I was quite impressed with the film. The sets are beautiful (and rather unreal). The wide open spaces, the profusion of white, is quite a treat for the eyes. Radhika's house reminded me of Alice in Wonderland for some reason, the whites on his side of the room, the reds on hers. The music, which is vaguely threatening, adds to the effect. It is suggestive of the faintest whiff of something about to go wrong.

The mannequins all over Sapan's house, the painting with the bloodied tears, they all added an unreal quality to the film. I actually felt disconcerted as Sapan walked through the house looking for Kriti.

As a writer, I know well the importance of names and i see it underscored here. Once again, no spoilers.

Once the film ends you begin to see the clues and you are better able to click things into place. Manoj’s nervous laughter as he speaks, his shyness, the hood he wears, all of them and many other things begin to strike you. 

You get clues but you don’t see them as clues. Not at the beginning. At that time, they are only serving to build atmosphere.

The film is short, just under 19 minutes. Just right, if you ask me. The pace is ratcheted up midway through.

Halfway through I suspected part of the truth, but the whole twist at the end still came out of the blue.

Of course it is Bollywood. So a writer can afford a house like that. So urbane and perfect. No boho chic here.

Also, because it is Bollywood, agoraphobia is reduced to the phobia of stepping out of the home which might beg the question, where did Sapan and Kriti meet? Must have been out of the house. Didn’t she suffer the Bollywood version of agoraphobia then? And even if they met at someone else’s house, how did he transport her from there to his house? In a pizza box? Also, zero marks for research. The psychologist shares the half-baked information on agoraphobia as though that is all there is to it.

Some things are too simplistic. Which writer would use a typewriter these days? Only someone totally clueless about the availability of something better like a PC or a laptop. More real. Try writing a first novel on a typewriter. All that plotting and character delineation that needs to be done – if you tried click-clack-click on a typewriter, your head would burst. Either longhand or word processor is the way to go, for the joy of cancelling and drawing arrows across the page, or deletion and cut-copy-paste.

Sapan's house didn’t look like it was set in Mumbai. It actually looked like a picture postcard snow-covered (snow? Global warming is really playing havoc with our climate) house. And then a Mumbai policeman dropped in.

It reminded me of K3G (Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham), where the palatial London style mansion with its own football field attached was supposedly based in Chandani Chowk. 

None of that takes away from Radhika and Manoj. This was the first time I saw Radhika on screen, and she was just brilliant. She looks sophisticated and fabulous despite the Over-the-top makeup and the large eyes that cause you to step back a pace or two. Clearly, she has left her contemporaries far behind. 

Manoj has always been good, and here he proves his worth yet again. He looks gaunt, like someone who has found love after a long time. He looks damaged in his own way, right at the outset.

Neha Sharma as Kriti doesn’t have much to do even though the film is named after her. 

The writing is good. The details are given out bit by bit. Despite the thread of tension, I laughed when the inspector says to Manoj, "You’re not my wife that I should listen to you."

Great production effects. No shoddy work here. Perhaps other filmmakers ought to adopt the short film as a genre.

You can say so much in such a short time, sort of like the short story as opposed to a novel. In the hands of the master, less can be more.

And that is what Kriti turned out to be.

The last shot with both Radhika and Manoj looking into the camera is too cute. Manoj, especially. Once again, no spoilers.

The biggest surprise is Kunder. I’ve never liked his films. On the cringeworthy scale, they are only marginally better than those of his brother-in-law. But here he might cause you to do a re-think on him. Provided he doesn’t undo what he has achieved here.

PS: Just heard that a Nepali short film maker, Aneel Neupane, has alleged that Kunder has plagiarised the idea from his film, BOB. You can watch Bob and figure out for yourself. Incidentally, Bob was released on May 13 and Kriti on June 22.

Too close for comfort.

Book Review: FOR SUCH A TIME

Title: For Such A Time
Author: Kate Breslin
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Pages: 430








For Such a Time by Kate Breslin makes the horrors of the Holocaust come alive. We come to know of the unspeakable acts of cruelty that the Nazis perpetrated and how, among other horrible acts, they used hunger as a weapon to break down the Jews.

Hadassah, the heroine of the novel, is a true heroine in every sense of the word. A Jew, she is sent to the concentration camp at Dachau only to find herself spared the horrors there. She is able to cheat death too, all on account of the false papers that her uncle, Mordecai Benjamin, made for her in the name of Stella to prepare for just this kind of eventuality.

Col Aric Von Schmidt, SS commandant at the transit camp at Theresienstadt, in Czechoslovakia, rescues Stella and takes her to his own home as a secretary. Stella is a “bald, bruised scarecrow of a woman” and there is no reason why the colonel should have picked her for a secretary, other than that he completely believes in the accuracy and validity of her false Aryan papers.

Beginning with hostility, Stella finds herself softening towards him as she becomes aware of his vulnerabilities and also his deep compassion not only to herself but also to the Jews that are prisoners in the transit camp at Theresienstadt.

While Stella herself is comfortable as part of the colonel’s household, she is painfully aware of the horrors that plague her fellow-Jews in the camp. Even though the plight of the Jews at Theresienstadt, despite its severity, is much better than the plight of other Jews in other concentration and death camps. 

Soon Stella feels morally compelled to speak up on behalf of the Jews, particularly an elderly gentleman, her uncle, all of whom are the brunt of the brutalities of the colonel’s men. Captain Hermann and Lieutenants Brucker and Koch think nothing of assaulting the Jews, including the old and the frail, and the children.

A Jew who has lost faith in God, Stella finds her faith and moral spine renewed with every reading of a Bible that she finds in her room. Relating the verses in the Bible with long forgotten verses from the Talmud, Stella prepares to meet the biggest crisis of her life.

Her attempts to do her bit to save the lives of at least some of the Jews expose her to the attentions of the colonel’s men, who are determined to kill him and take over the transit camp. Before long, the truth about her beliefs and faith is exposed and Stella is sent to the concentration camp, from where she and thousands of others will be sent on the ‘death’ train to Auschwitz.


Interspersed with the narrative are Stella’s memories of the time she spent in the concentration camp at Dachau, and the oppression she suffered at the hands of the Nazis, particularly the officers of the Gestapo.

The narrative is mostly from the viewpoint of Stella, with the colonel as the unmistakable enemy, the Nazi and Jew killer. Occasionally it shifts to the viewpoint of the colonel, and we find ourselves undergoing a change in our attitude towards him.

The story mirrors in its barest outline that of Esther and Mordecai in the Old Testament of the Bible. Kate draws parallels between the Biblical story of Esther (also known as Hadassah), her cousin Mordecai and the king, and Stella, whose real name is Hadassah, her uncle Mordecai Benjamin, better known as Morty, and the colonel.

Reading this story is a grim reminder of the worst excesses of the Holocaust. How the Nazis meted out the harshest of punishments for the smallest of crimes. How the Jews had to put up with terrible consequences for the most innocuous of actions. How young children were forced by the war and by the atrocities of the Nazis to grow before their time.

The Holocaust was the bleakest and the darkest period in the history of human cruelty. To see hope and love and faith and redemption would have been well nigh impossible for those who lived and survived its horrors as well as for those who fell prey to its many atrocities. And yet Kate Breslin has dared to build a romance in this tumultuous time, a time of genocide and senseless killing, particularly of the old and the very young, and of others who served no purpose in the agenda of one insane man. That’s not the only gamble that Kate has pulled off.

At a time when millions were struggling against hopelessness and despair, she has breathed faith, strength and courage and the willingness to sacrifice all, even one’s life, for one’s fellowmen.

Her writing is poignant and beautiful and invites you to understand the pain that millions of Jews suffered on account of one twisted mind.


Worth reading. And re-reading.

(I received this book for free from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. I read it on Netgalley.)

Anands don't die

“Babu Moshai,” the leading man with the crinkly eyes said to his tall, gawky doctor friend, and viewers smiled in admiration. It was the first time that Hindi cine audiences had come across the term, Babu Moshai, Bengali for a gentleman. But there was no doubt that the term would make a place for itself not only in the lexicon of Hindi filmography but also in the minds and hearts of viewers.

Anand (Hindi for happiness) was the eponymous hero of the film, written and directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Anand (Rajesh Khanna) exemplified the cancer fighter’s motto, ‘I’ve got cancer. Cancer hasn’t got me.’ 

The film begins with Dr Banerjee winning a literary award for a story he has written based on one of his patients, Anand. Then begins the flashback detailing the character of Anand, a man whose unquenchable thirst for life even Cancer could not quell.

An orphan with no family of his own, Anand comes to Bombay to seek treatment for his sickness. Admitted to the clinic of Dr Prakash Kulkarni (Ramesh Deo) for treatment of lympho-sarcoma of the intestine, he rebels against the depressive atmosphere of the hospital and chooses to go home with Dr Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan).

Slowly Anand's charm and sweetness help him gain the affection of all those who come in contact with him.

I am no Rajesh Khanna fan. Even so, Anand is one film I can watch again and again. And again.

I am amazed at the strength and courage that a man on his deathbed needs to have to be able to touch the healthy around him with his philosophy of life. In contrast, so many of us have only to catch the Common Cold and we start moaning as if we were going to die within the hour.

Anand's spirit is undeterred even though he has the misfortune to know that his day of death is fast approaching. Even as the candle of his life melts faster and fiercer, Anand continues to forge new connections and friendships, backslapping random people and hailing them as Old Friend Murari Lal. He explains his strange behaviour by saying that every human being is a transmitter and a receiver; a person transmits a signal or a vibration and another person receives it and becomes a friend. 

Anand's behaviour teaches us an important lesson: that we must live life to the fullest, squeeze every drop of living out of it before it's time to go quietly into the night. In another instance, Anand is attracted to a young girl from a drama company. Since she can speak no other language but Gujarati, he buys himself some Gujarati language learning books in order to be able to converse with her, even though he knows he won't be around to test his language skills.

It was Anand who brought Shakespeare's All the world's a stage into my life. When I heard the Hindi version of those lines, I was impressed beyond belief, even though I was a mere child then. Years later when I studied Literature, I marvelled at the manner in which Hrishida had re-invented Shakespeare's lines.

Every character in the film was carved out so memorably. Even Durga Khote, the mother of Renu, Dr Banerjee's love interest, made her presence felt. As a child, I remember feeling the anguish provoked by her innocent questioning of Anand, as to why he wouldn't be able to make it to the wedding of Dr Banerjee, if it was solemnised a year hence. 

Other characters who left their mark in the film were the matron, Mrs D'Sa, who is stern, yet soft hearted, Dara Singh, the head at the akhada, who is recruited by Anand for the task of teaching some roadside romeos a lesson, and Isa Bhai, the head of the drama company, played by Johnny Walker, who is the one man who eventually answers to the call of Murari Lal.

They are all characters who have become memorable to audiences. Their sheen has not worn off despite repeated viewings.

The songs are another beautiful facet of the film. Zindagi kaisi hai paheli hai -- What a mystery is life. The lyrics of the song bring out the pathos and sadness of knowing that a person who is so full of life is about to be snuffed out forever.

Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye -- When the sun sets in the distance. This song portrays the sadness of seeing death advancing upon a person so inexorably, and of knowing that he has nowhere to hide.

Anand may not be an accurate depiction of a cancer patient. It does not matter if he has not lost his hair to chemotherapy and if his cheer is too good to be believed. The '70s were never the setting for realism in Bollywood.

The best thing about Anand is that Anand mara nahin, Anand marte nahin (Anand did not die. Anands do not die) when so many of us permit ourselves to die a thousand deaths each day.


(This post has been written in response to a prompt on Indiblogeshwaris, inviting posts on memorable Hindi films.)

Special 26: Con Banega Karodpati

Special 26 has received rave reviews for being a good thriller. But not much is being said about the skewed sense of right and wrong that the film is unintentionally reinforcing.

The film shows four cheats, Ajay (Akshay Kumar) from Bombay, PK Sharma (Anupam Kher) from Chandigarh, Iqbal (Kishor Kadam) from Jaipur, and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) from Old Delhi, who pose as CBI or Income Tax officials and raid corrupt politicians and very rich businessmen to steal their ill-gotten gains. For a raid at a minister’s house, they take the help of sub-inspector Ranveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) and lady constable Shanti Yadav (Divya Dutta). The heist yields them a rich haul.

Leaving Ranveer and Shanti at the minister’s house, the four make a quick getaway. Unwilling to talk about his black money, the minister refuses to file an FIR and is content with the suspension of Ranveer and Shanti.

Bristling with indignation, Ranveer is determined to bring the criminals to book. He makes some investigations of his own and appeals to the Central Bureau of Investigation for help. Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee), an upright officer, is assigned to help him.

Khan makes it his personal mission to catch the four red-handed, even as they are determined to pull off one last big heist, their 50^th and biggest, before they can retire. In order to pull off their most outrageous caper, they recruit 22 graduates ostensibly for a “top-secret raid.” The four chors, along with the 22 recruits, are supposed to be the Special 26. Keen on catching them red-handed, Wasim Khan succeeds in infiltrating two policemen into the roster of new recruits.

But will the good guy outwit the thieves or will they retire in style?

The film does a very good job of portraying urban India of the mid ’80s. Ah, the glorious days, when they could not tap your phone through remote access but had to send a telephone linesman to your home. The props are all there, including the rotary phones, scooters, Maruti 800s, Premier Padminis and Ambassadors on the roads, the old currency notes, no-colour newspaper, the lack of skyscrapers, the lack of crowds outside the airport and the hoarding for Thril on a Best bus stop (Wouldn’t it have been more thrilling with the second ‘l’?)

We were planning to loot Rs 2 crore in 30 minutes, says Sharma. It didn't seem like all that much until I remembered that the film was set in 1987 when Rs 1000 meant a fortune, average salaries were in the 100s and the 4 anna was in its element. Sigh! The reality shows on TV have really spoiled us.

Special 26 gains much from the thin layer of dry humour that coats it. The sequence where Waseem asks his boss if he should start accepting bribes since his promotion and increment are taking too long and running the home front running is proving to be tough. In another sequence in which the four interview some potential candidates for their final scam, the candidates, when questioned, say that they want to join the Central Bank of India, because they are very honest and want to rid the country of corruption. One guy, told to speak English, answers, “I want to do India.” Another girl tells Ajay, “Milke ukhadenge.”

Unlike some of their recruits, our four chors have no larger-than-life motivation for what they do. It's just the means by which they earn a living. There is no guilt attached to their actions. Even though Ajay tells his ladylove that she makes him want to be a better man, the truth is that the said lady never really mounts any sincere protest against his method of making money.

Robin Hoods they are not. While they steal from the rich, they do not give the money to the poor. On the other hand, they do not splurge on themselves either. So where does the money go?

 

Nor was there any heavy-speak about why they did what they did, except for a wishy-washy explanation about how Ajay was keen on working for the CBI but failed the interview and the test.

The visual narrative goes out of its way to invest the four thieves with a sense of grandeur. The walks towards the camera in slow-mo, the corporate attire and the air of confidence and flamboyance, all key weapons in the tricksters' armoury.

The film begins well with a high-energy raid on the home of a minister. In fact, the heist sequences are the most watchable.

The director ruined his own show with the love track between Ajay and his bland love interest, Kajal Aggarwal. In fact, Divya Dutta with her cameo makes a better impression. She has very little dialogue in the film, but there is one line that she repeats thrice, each time underlying a different significance.

The romance totally marred the story. I guess they felt compelled to put it in, given star Akshay Kumar's lover boy image, but the cat-and-mouse chor-police game was far more interesting, and would have been even more potent without the baggage of the love story and the Punjabi wedding with the mandatory gidda.

Kher is outstanding, one moment playing the part of a law enforcement official to the hilt, secure in the righteousness of his duty, fearing no one, the next moment suffering nervousness and slouching for fear of being caught.

The four actors complement one another well. Unfortunately, Joginder and Iqbal have nothing much to do, except blend into the background and provide able support. Interestingly, not one of the four suffers any doubts or regrets in relation to the work they do.

Unnecessary time and footage is devoted to showing the modes of transport by which the four escape to their respective homes after the heist. Do these irrelevant pieces of information help the story?

How did the four, hailing from four distant regions, meet for the first time and decide to team up to pull off these con jobs? How did they go about their first illegal raid? That would have helped flesh out the characters and their motivations far better than Ajay’s insipid love story, Joginder’s joint family sleeping in the yard, Iqbal washing clothes while his wife nags, and Sharmaji’s hum do hamare chhe family with one more in the making. Unfortunately, the only thing known about their interpersonal relationships is that Sharma and Ajay share a warm father-son kind of rapport.

While the plot of the film, loosely based on the Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri robbery in the mid-1980s, works, there are a lot of goofups that ruin the total effect.

For instance, the mantri seemed completely shaken by one raid. I found that hard to stomach. What a blot on the high standards of our elected ministers! Had he no Swiss account? Was he so stupid as to keep everything stashed at home, in such obvious places as cupboards, false ceilings, car seats, in a niche beneath the deity and behind the book case?

Also, when we know that mantris care little about transferring senior police officers for their honesty and ineptitude alike, it was strange to discover that this mantri did not even know the commissioner of police looked like.

Also, the visual effects shriek ‘fake’ and Opera House seems to have shifted to Fountain.

I didn’t like the impression the film conveyed, that crime pays and how, and that the good guys, played by Manoj Vajpayee, are just a bunch of smart fools. Had the cops been corrupt, one would not have felt so guilty about cheering the thieves on.

I certainly resented being arm-twisted into rooting for the sheer audacity of the four chors, when my sympathy should very clearly have gone to the good guys, who had been gypped in spite of their hard work and intelligence.

I wondered, is our moral compass so off that when Ajay sends Rs 100 back to Waseem, saying that he will not take the earnings of an honest man, he seemed to rise in our estimation. So much so that he nearly dwarfed Waseem whose sense of honour and honesty is actually beyond question.

Unfortunately, everyone comes out of the cinema hall having a good time, not questioning the four phonies for outraging our morality. It just goes to show how willing we are to adjust our morals to suit the occasion, in a world in which the disclosure of yet another scam leaves us blasé.

Director Neeraj Pandey's debut film, A Wednesday, raised high expectations, which he let down here somewhat. The film is an above average thriller, hampered by the love story, but it missed out on the opportunity to take a moral stance. Today we are sufficiently deluded and disillusioned with the moral realities of today. We don't need our films to emphasise the rewards that await those who choose to muffle their conscience.

Balak Palak: A must-watch for palaks (parents)

It’s been a while since Marathi cinema came of age, but it reiterated its maturity with its willingness to tackle a tricky subject like sex education for teenagers. Balak Palak is Marathi for children and parents but the initials BP could just as well stand for Blue Picture, the means that four teenagers in a Mumbai chawl, the one-time bastion of conservative middle-class domicile, employ to enlighten themselves on a subject that is stirring their interest.


The film starts with a man who loses his temper on discovering porn stash belonging to Shlok, his 11-year-old son. Even as the poor kid gets soundly thrashed, his mother reminds her husband, Avya, to understand, not punish, the child’s curiosity.

Cut to a group of fast friends, boys Avya and Bhagya, and girls Dolly and Chiu, on the last day of their school exams. Bursting with expectations for the upcoming Diwali vacations, they return home to find their chawl caught up in a strange hullabaloo. Jyoti tai (Marathi for sister) and her family are leaving the chawl out of disgrace. The children overhear Pednekar kakoo, the neighbourhood gossip, declaring that those who eat shenn (literally Marathi for eating cowdung) deserve such treatment.

Unaware of what the phrase means, the children make the discovery of the meaning the goal of their Diwali holidays. When the dictionary fails to yield the answer and their parents angrily brush their questions aside or slap them for daring to ask, they contact Vishu, a no-good under-privileged classmate of theirs whose circumstances have exposed him at a very early age to the knowledge they seek.

Vishu happily assumes the mantle of a guru, offering to initiate them into the intricacies of what he refers to as dhichuk-dhichuk. They start by reading cheap editions of pornographic literature, then graduate to hovering outside the windows of newly married couples. When both methods fail, leaving them with only the faintest idea of what constitutes dhichuk-dhichuk, Vishu tells them there is only one way to get all the answers they seek. They must view a BP to complete their education.

I took the trouble of looking up the meaning of Susangati Sada Ghado, a beautiful song to whose rousing rendition the quartet hustle about the important task of collecting Rs 115, the cost of hiring a VCR, the device that revolutionised home movie viewing in the 1980s, and its partner, the video cassette.

The song invites children to keep good company, to listen to kind words and eschew impure thoughts, to never use their hands to do something that would defile their character. As the song builds up to a crescendo, the visuals of the film show the Five ‘Find-Outers’ reaching the climax of the evocatively named, Raat rani ki shaitani.

The tryst with the forbidden knowledge alters their beautiful friendship forever and changes the innocent equations between them. As they try to come to terms with the sudden awareness of their sexuality, Bhagya develops a crush on Neha, a collegian residing in their chawl, who has always been a ‘tai’ to them. Avya meanwhile imagines himself in love with Chiu.

The film offers a visually delightful look at life in the chawl, the sense of community that it represented, where doors remained open throughout the day and, whether for good or for ill, people considered their neighbour’s business their own. The chawl, which serves as a microcosm of society, is filled with its share of characters peddling sexist attitudes, reinforcing the myth that you are a bad girl if you dress in a certain way.

There were several moments during which the entire audience burst out laughing spontaneously, particularly when Vishu, using a geometric compass, etches the name of Sampada, the girl he loves, across his forearm. Unfortunately, spellings aren’t his strength, and so Sampada begins to look like Sanpada, a suburb in Navi Mumbai. Later Vishu advises Avya to love Dolly instead of Chiu because ‘Doli’ is easier to spell.

The imagined dance sequences, once a staple of Bollywood films of the ‘80s and ‘90s, offer a glimpse of the mindsets of the teenagers, as they seek to navigate tricky terrain through an imitation of what they see on the big screen. Incidentally, the film is set in the mid-1980s.

The sub-titles are superb, enabling even non-Marathi speakers to relate to the film completely.

The film makes a case for adolescents, who are driven by their curiosity to ask questions that make their parents uncomfortable. And yet those parents were once children themselves, but have forgotten what it once meant to have hormones raging, and to see the whole world differently.

At one point, Kaka Kadam, a strict yet paternalistic figure whose kids have flown the coop, observes the behaviour of the foursome. He attempts to warn Avya’s father and later Bhagya’s, both of whom fail to recognise that their children are growing and that they might now need to alter their parenting frameworks and gain their children’s friendship. Another time, when Dolly’s mother hazards the suggestion that they could consider answering their children’s questions, she is ticked off by the other parents.

In the end, Shlok’s father speaks to his wife about the need to find the Vishu among their son’s friends. She wisely tells him that today’s kids carry their Vishu everywhere with them, in the form of DVDs, CDs and the Internet. It was a masterfully written line, which caused an oh-so-wee upheaval in my heart. Am I prepared for when the questions start popping in La Niña’s and El Niño’s minds?

She adds that when the quartet was grappling with the great mystery, they were 13; their son is 11. Strangely, she says, over so many decades, curiosity only became two years younger.

At the rate at which Vishu has pervaded our lives, I wonder how much younger curiosity will get by the time today’s generation of little kids grows up.

My only grouse was that Shlok’s father, the Avya of the flashback, so quickly accepted the error of his position. Having built up so beautifully, the ending of the film was a little too pat and dry. Aside from that minor quibble, kudos to the crew for fantastic direction, acting, characterisation, music, lyrics and cinematography. And above all, for bringing up an important message without sounding preachy.

Zogwa: What an awakening!

I can’t remember the last time I have felt this distressed and disturbed on watching a film. I am talking about the Marathi film, Zogwa, which is a scathing indictment of the devdasi system that has victimised an untold number of youngsters in past decades. The film makes a mention of the superstition that perpetuates this heinous practice and debases thousands of innocent lives.

The film centres on the lives of Suli, a young girl, barely out of her teens, and Tayappa, a young man, who are forced into this inhuman system by others who are older and supposedly wiser.

For Suli, the ordeal starts with the discovery of matted hair. For Tayappa, it is the passing of blood in his urine. Conditions that could have been rectified by medical aid, if not common sense and home remedies, cause them to become entrapped in the web of fear and exploitation that the larger community, which benefits from it, and other zogtyas, who have made their peace with it, encourage.

And so Suli and Tayappa are both married off to goddess Yellamma. The families, buying into the belief that letting their children be married to goddess Yellama will guarantee happiness to the rest of them, become willing participants in the farce. They also fear that the goddess will curse their family if they fail to dedicate their child to her.

Caught up in a world in which superstition is everything, the families go back to their lives, while Suli and Tayappa begin to accept their doomed existence. Their days are now spent earning a living by performing song and dance routines in praise of Yellamma.

But that is not all there is to it. The vermillion on their foreheads, the mark of a zogtya or zogtin, is their undoing. From now on, zogtins like Suli must be prepared to be propositioned by the males in the village. Not for them the sanctity of marriage. Should they ever find a man willing to take them away from the stranglehold of their lives, they must expect to be kept.

Sexual exploitation is the hell they live in day after day. Dedicated to goddess Yellamma, they are exploited as devachya randa (Marathi for god’s prostitutes), available to any man.

For the zogtya, the male victim, it means living a life of humiliation and gradual and inevitable neutering. They live their lives not as men anymore, but not as women either. They gradually lose all pride in their manhood until they reach a stage when the touch of an attractive and sexually vibrant woman arouses as much feeling in them as it would in a stone.

Zogtyas are expected to be sexless, to have no desires of their own, but to willingly offer themselves for the service of the community, read – lecherous males.

Tayappa, like other zogtyas before him, initially refuses to accept his new reality. Later, however, when he is humiliated and rejected by his own family and the village, of which he once formed a favoured part, he willingly walks into the welcoming embrace of the zogtya community, the only place where he can hope to find acceptance and understanding.

The sense of abandonment that you get from the two protagonists is dismal. Assimilated in the ways of the zogtyas, Suli and Tayappa allow themselves to feel at ease in the companionship of others whose fates they share. But the sense of comfort does not last. They are still a trifle rebellious, not yet completely overawed by the zogta culture. The voice of reason, in the shape of the village teacher, More Master, who tries his best to educate the zogtyas about the evils they give in to, also helps to strengthen their resolve.

As their journeys wind down the same path, Suli and Tayappa reject the debasement of their zogtya reality and seek to escape its smothering and inhuman confines. And so they turn for comfort to each other as man and woman.

Tayappa, in particular, makes a brave yet hopeless attempt to assert his masculinity, even to cling to it, in spite of the saree and other accessories of a Hindu married woman that are the only garb he must wear. This causes him to be further ridiculed by the villagers and belittled by his own family.

Interestingly, the first time we see Tayappa, he is dressed up as the bride of Yellamma, his face a mask of resignation. Over the course of the film, he gives way to his new reality, knowing well that nothing can undo his circumstances. So well does his body language reflect his reality as a reluctant female that when he wears male clothing towards the close of the film to signify his breaking away from life as a zogtya, it startles and delights the viewer.

In the final sequence, Suli and Tayappa are defiantly standing off against the belligerent and angry zogtya community that is determined to quash the rebellion and the romance by castrating Tayappa. The atmosphere is taut with tension. Sitting on the edge of my seat, I found myself wanting to cry out physically, calling on Suli to pick up the bamboo sticks lying on the ground and hit Akka, the head of the community, who sought to restrain her.

The makers of this film have done a fantastic job of bringing the devadasi system into focus for mainstream audiences. The film is a visual treat, as delightful to the eyes as a Konkan village in the monsoons. The riot of colour that assails the screen is enticingly rich and leads you right into the lives of Suli and Tayappa, making you feel for them and resenting every slight against them.

Zogwa is indeed an awakening, not just for Suli and Tayappa but also for those of us who go through life thinking that we’ve got the rawest deal.