Movie Review Aligarh

Movie Review - Aligarh

Last night when I watched the latest Hansal Mehta Biopic on Prof. Siras – Aligarh, I was compelled to write about it. Aligarh is a movie which needs not only to be seen, and written about but also talked about a lot – esp. in the current times of political and social upheaval.

Three things stand out in Aligarh – one about the social issue of equality, liberty and justice, the essential tenets of our constitution; Two the movie itself, esp. its direction, cinematography, editing and acting; And the third being about homosexuality – in that order.

In one dialogue form the movie, the editor calls the main incident of the movie, a sex scandal to which the young journalist responds that it is not a sex scandal but about human rights. This dialogue kind of sums the message of the movie.

While the theme of the movie and the real life incident has been has been characterized as being about homosexuality, but in reality this is more about how much of freedom exists for an individual to live as per his or her choices and how much over-arching is the social fabric and morality of the society on the personal spaces of an individual.

The preamble of our constitutions speaks about guaranteeing to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; Article 21 of the Indian constitution also gives to its citizen a fundamental right to privacy.

Can then, the collective morality of the society override this guarantee? That is the question which the movie raises. Aligarh, in its very subtle narrative brings out this point and how an individual actually is nothing in front of the mob mentality and the mob justice that seems to largely prevail in this country, esp. in the domains of religion, sexual preferences and more recently nationalism.

Aligarh is a movie to be seen with patience, to understand its layered messages and to understand the conflict that exists in the current times between simplicity and politics; between poetry and quick conclusions; between the essence and the word; between the various shades of gray the life is and the boxed black & white view of the world that the society wants to have. The society wants to label you either as a hero or as a villain. The human seems to get lost in between.

In terms of the movie, Aligarh is simply a masterpiece. A work of beauty created by Hansal Mehta, It can easily fall in the category of text book movies to learn about subtle direction, cinematography and editing.

The direction is so subtle that if you are not fully into the movie, you could miss a lot. The facial expressions of the artists, the way they are dressed in a particular scene, the camera angles used etc are very suggestive of the underlying narrative that is being told.

It is hard to write about these nuances, the best way would be for Hansal Mehta to release a “Making of Aligarh” as a potential tutorial for many aspiring movie makers and for movie buffs.

In terms of acting, this by far is the finest role done by Manoj Bajpayee. He so beautifully depicts the sense of isolation and alienation of Dr. Siras and what he goes through in a hostile society, where even his so called friends also refuse to help. Manoj give us a window to peep into the life of a person, who braves to be different at the same time who is also human, with his own needs of acceptance, inclusion, recognition and pride.

In a way, one gets to know Dr. Siras as a person and about his entire life, way beyond the events depicted in the movie.

Finally the last piece about – Homosexuality; Hansal Mehta and his team have done a brilliant job of not making a caricature of it and not boxing the protagonist in a small box.

The question that the movie raises is that while for a “normal” human being his or her sexuality is just one piece of his or her being, how come when it comes to homosexuals, their sexuality seems to be the only lens through which the society sees them. The movie, while exploring the sexuality of Dr. Siras does a complete justice to present the complete human that he was or anyone else could be. And how narrow the society gets, when it judges people only by one aspect of their life; not just judges, but admonishes them.

Kudos to Hansal and his team for such great cinematic achievement and a piece of art that they have created!

- Ameet Mattoo 4th March 2016

Birthday – Any other Day

What is a birthday? It is a time of celebration, wishes, gifts and a party. Since it is a date in the calendar year when we were born. Really?
Or is It more like a reference to a point in time that happened a while ago.

There are two unsaid and unchallenged assumptions in this concept.

One that this is the day when we were born and two that it is an event to celebrate.

The solar calendar that we follow is a human construct, which identifies, measures and records the dimension of time, based on the physical motion of a celestial body - the Sun in this case. Which means that if we independently look at the motion of sun, it has nothing to do with the concept of time. It is only when we use a particular type of motion of sun as a standard of time, a correlation exists. And if we would have used a different measure - other than the motion of the sun - our birthday would fall on a different date. As is the case in many Hindu families in India and also in some other cultures, where the lunar calendar is used and religious festivals are tacked by the same. Naturally their birthday each year falls on a different date of the solar colander.  Some of them even end up celebrating two birthdays - one with family based on the lunar calendar and one with friends based on solar calendar.

I am compelled to wonder, what if we had chosen a measure of time which was significantly different than what we have today - and would cycle too soon or two far away!

So the day we were born is just an event in time that occurred only once. Still we find ways to believe that the day happens again and again. And the cyclic nature of our calendar makes our birthday repeat. The belief is so deep that some of us even end up believing newspaper columns predicting future based on the month we were born in.

The depth of this social construct is such that we even judge the dearness of our relationship by checking who all remembers our birthday. And the reverse if also true - we remember the birthdays of our close ones, lest they feel they have been ignored. I pity the state of the people who are poor in remembering dates - they get judged for their love and affection based on the memory power!

 

And the another unchallenged assumption is - that birthdays are events to celebrate.

We were born, just an event in our life. We will die, another event. So what is there to celebrate!

The question is : Is it because we have made birthday's repeated annual events that we have to celebrate them or we want to celebrate hence we want to believe that birthdays get repeated!

My guess is that, it is latter.

Most human beings are essentially narcissistic in nature. We simply love ourselves. We love to receive compliments, praise and recognition. It makes us feel good. Most of us don’t miss an opportunity to look ourselves up in a mirror - it sometimes is even the glass-door of our car. We adorn our photographs. While watching an old wedding video, we usually try to look for ourselves in it.

Only when we are ready to look at these beliefs and assumptions, would we be willing to challenge them and look beyond the vanity of getting caught up in the birthday mania; look at it as just another date in the calendar, don’t get mad at friends and family who forget the date; don’t get psyched-up in remembering the birthdays of our loved one - since the “birthday” has literally nothing to do with when we were actually  born.

However there is no harm in celebrating oneself. I would like us celebrate ourselves every day, why limit only to the birthday. By celebrating ourselves, we feel good, happy and confident of ourselves.

So no harm in indulging. Happy Birthdays and also Happy New Year and any other annual event!

Ameet Mattoo

Jan 2015

Movie Review: Queen through the prism of Gender Dynamics.

Queen is a story of a young girl Rani, who finds her independence after going through struggles, when her UK based fiancé refuses to marry her and to overcome the shock, she decides to go alone on her honeymoon to Europe. The movie depicts very subtle gender biases and the gender dynamics that exist in our society.

Plot:

Rani is from a very conservative family in Delhi. Two days before her marriage, her fiancé (Vijay) meets with her in a cafe and tells her that he no longer wants to marry her, claiming he has changed because of living in the UK, and she would not match his lifestyle anymore.
Shocked by this and the impact it would have on her and her family Rani shuts herself in her room for two days.
However, encouraged and supported by her family, she decides to take control of her life and plans to go alone on her pre-booked honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam.

During her Europe trip, she meets and befriends different kinds of people and in the process learns a lot about life and herself. In Paris, she meets an independent girl of Indian origin, Vijaylakshmi, who makes her feel confident about herself and helps her find courage. In Amsterdam she meets 3 men from different nationalities, with whom she shares a room.

With Oleksander, one of her room mates, she seemed to connect at a deeper level. Conversations with him makes her reflect on her life back home. She relives the memories of her fiancé patronizing her and forbidding her from doing things. These conversations and reflections and questions helps her discovers her own self.

She meets an Italian restaurateur, about whom she feels free to express her femininity and to some extent her sexuality, without getting caught in the morals of her back home reality.

Once by mistake, she accidentally sends a picture of hers in a modern outfit (what she considers as revealing) to her fiancé. Seeing the picture, the mind of her fiancé changes and he comes searching for her to Europe and wants her to get back to his life. Rani, however has moved on. She refuses to go back and prefers to live an independent life of her own.

 

Gender Dynamics:

Unaware of dependence / Never questioning the status quo:

While Rani may have found independence and also happiness in this independence, what is interesting is that she was unaware of her state of dependence and dis-empowerment in her life till she discovers herself. Her worldview was limited to getting impressed (pataov) by the guy, getting married, wanting the ceremony to go well, excitement about the 1^st night, what to do in honeymoonetc.

She seeks her fiancé’s and parental approval for most decisions of her life and she would never question this dynamics.This is one big issue in women in India; that they themselves are not fully aware of their own dis-empowerment and dependence and they would never question this social system.It is interesting that mostly the family does not have ill intentions for the girl. They think that they are doing good to the girl. They are unaware that in the name of safety, security, morality and tradition, they are actually disabling and disempowering the girl and making her incapable of managing her own life. As a result, there is always the need of a male support and approval that the women needs, be it in the form of father, brother or husband.
This in-turn limits the relationships she is able to have with men, beyond these pre-defined relationships.

More so, many girls simply introject the expectations unquestioningly and hence actually do look forward to such a life of dependence, since that is what they have been conditioned to think, as the route to happiness. In a way, they somehow enjoy this disguised slavery.

Only when Rani goes to Europe, she is able to discover the person she always was, but could never be. And she might have continued to never be, if her fiancé would not have left her.

This happened, since this was probably the 1st time Rani experienced life, without the burden of expectations that her family / social setup had on her. Finding herself free to do what she wanted to, emerged the possibility of finding herself.

 

Freedom to be:

Once after the party at a night club in Paris, Rani and her Indian origin friend Vijaylakshmi are in a taxi going back to their hotel and Vijaylakshmi burps. Rani is quite amused, how someone, esp. a girl can burp so unabashedly in open. She says “we are not allowed to do so”.

While in the movie, they had fun talking about it, what touched me the most was the innocence with which Rani speaks about what all the girls are not supposed to do India. I really felt sad at the moment.

It depicts how girls in India do not have freedom to be themselves; to just be. And how they have to comply and stifle themselves in order to follow the biased societal norms.

Freedom to decide:

In one scene, Rani asks her father that she would like to do a Job.
Rani’s father is seen getting nervous with her question. He tells her that she needs to ask Vijay (her fiancé) and let him decide.  Next she is seen having this conversation with Vijay. Obviously Vijay gets uncomfortable and tries to dissuade her from doing so. He tells her, what is the need for her to work, when he is earning; does she not have trust in him! Hence no need for her to work.
Rani agrees without too much of resistance.

This scene is contrasted in Rani’s conversation with Oleksander, when she tells him that she wants to do things that she would like to. Oleksander ask her, why does she not? Who is stopping her?
This makes Rani reflect about her freedom in life, to decide for herself.

An interesting dynamics of decision making in our society is shown, where girls don’t necessarily have the freedom to make decisions for themselves and how they seem to be subservient and dependent  on the men in their lives to decide for them and how they happily seem to accept this as their fate.

Support and Encouragement:

In one scene, Rani and her friends were out partying and all three of her friends are drunk by the time they leave. And then there is a cop, who asks all of them to leave immediately. Suddenly Rani finds herself on the driving wheel of the car, with the other friends not in a state to drive. Suddenly she is left with no option but to drive. She safely drives the friends back to the hotel.

This scene is contrasted with another scene, where Rani is seen learning to drive while her fiancé is sitting next to her. The fiancé is shown obviously getting irritated with Rani’s driving and is seen as discouraging her.

Even while the girls might be wanting to get freedom in some aspects of their life, do the men in their lives really encourage them to achieve it. Or are men busy discouraging and dousing any desire of independence and self-reliance that might be there.

Acceptance of Femininity sans morality:

When Rani lands in Amsterdam, she is shocked to learn that her friend vijaylaxmi has booked her in a hostel, where she would need to share the room with three unknown men. She is too scared of the thought; first she decides to leave the hostel, however not finding an alternate option, she sleeps in the lobby of the hostel.
She finds the idea of a young girl to share the room with three men completely shocking and going by the culture she comes from, completely immoral.

From getting to terms with eventually sharing the room with three men, Rani explores another aspect of her personality; that of her own femininity and romance. She is shown as having a crush on an Italian Restaurateur with whom she works in a cooking festival. She consummates this crush with nothing more than a kiss, her first one ever! She is able to do so without getting trapped in morality.

 

Reflection:
A very funny reflective moment for Rani happens when she is narrating a story to vijaylaxmi.
She tells vijaylaxmi how she has become like Gupta Uncle. “Gupta uncle has got Cancer. He never drank alcohol in his life; he never smoked; still he got cancer; wouldn’t it have been better if he had done so”.
She seems to be repenting on her state, that she did all that was supposed to be done by a “nice girl” in her family (and not do things she was not supposed to do) and still she got dumped. Might as well have done all that was not allowed to be done.

Male chauvinism:

Towards the end, Vijay comes to Europe, searching for her to bring her back to his life. However The attitude demonstrated is that of, “I can come back when I want and repossess you”; the guilt is minimal; He is very un-apologetic and wants her to come back immediately with him back to India.
And not wanting to know how she is feeling; what she must have gone through post the break-up; and what does it mean to be on a honeymoon, alone.

He behaves as if all this does not matter and now that he wants her back in his life she should just come back, as if nothing had happened.
Far from being apologetic, he is on the contrary seen as questioning Rani is a very deplorable manner as to how could she share a room with three men. He even scares her by asking “What if his mom comes to know, what she will think of her”. He also patronizes her by telling her, that she does not know how these foreigners are, what all they could do to her. Eventually the conversation gets worse and he tries to physically grab her and command her to come with him.

This was the low point (high point of male chauvinism) that was depicted in the movie, where the guy feels like he owns the girl. He is completely possessive of her and all that matters is how he thinks and feels and there is no space or sensitivity towards how the girl would be feeling.

Such a malecentric attitude of our society, where what the man wants and desires is of prime importance and the woman is just an object, which the man has to possess, when he desires to, for me is the root of all the gender bias that exists in our society.

Let Go:

The let go from the past finally happens on the last day, when Rani and her friends leave the hostel room. We get to realize that in the entire trip, Rani was carrying her wedding card in her purse.

When the friends leave the hostel room, tourists, as a custom, drop a piece of themselves in the room.
Rani, as a part of herself, pins-up her wedding card on the wall of the room.

This was very symbolic, of her moving away from her past life of dependence.

From Dependence to Independence

The character of Rani moves from a state of dependence to independence, (with a small stint of counter-dependence) (and of course not yet moving into the space of interdependence).
In the beginning, Rani is shown as completely dependent on her family for anything she does. Even when she has to go out, her Kid brother is there all the time. Anywhere she needs to go, her parents send her brother with him; including her first date with Vijay.

This phenomenon, which exists mostly everywhere in our society, reeks of huge amounts of gender bias; that a girl cannot manage herself alone; she needs a man’s presence to take care of her; even if the man is a small kid brother.

 After Vijay dumps Rani just before the wedding, Rani goes into a complete shock. She locks herself in the room and does not listen to her mother or father. She does reverse of what they say. These were her brief moments of counter-dependency.

When Rani goes to Paris, her friend vijaylaxmi helps her develop self-confidence which makes Rani get comfortable to be alone. Initially she had been contemplating of going back to India from Paris, since she was too scared to manage herself, she later get confidence to got to Amsterdam and continue her journey.

However this encounter with vijaylaxmi and Paris does not make her independent yet. At the railway station, to catch the train to Amsterdam, she is seen persuading vijaylaxmi to join her. She is seen very upset by the prospects of leaving vijaylaxmi behind.

While explicitly it comes across as an emotional loss of leaving a friend behind, it still demonstrates her dependence only that the dependence has shifted from her family to the new found friend.

Only after more experiences in Amsterdam, which include participating in a cooking competition along with the Italian cook; confronting Vijay and not going back with him to India and instead joining her friends in the rock show; does independence seep in and she starts to assert herself.
In her last evening in Amsterdam, while dancing in the rock show along with her three friend, her friends take her leave as they need to go someplace else.

In the next scene, Rani is not seen as gloomy, missing her friends. Instead she, after completing the farewell formalities, is back in the rock show and very happy and confident dancing alone.

According to me, this completed her cycle from dependence to Independence.

This independence gets demonstrated further, when back in India, she visits Vijay’s home. She chooses to leave him and returns the engagement ring. But now she is not stricken with remorse; she even goes as far as thanking him and having Gratitude for him, for giving her the opportunity to discover herself.
Had he not dumped her, she may never have found herself !

Ameet Mattoo
Aug 2014

Published in ISABS Newsletter "Here and Now" - Aug 2014
http://www.isabs.org/newsletter/aug2014/Here_n_Now_vol27__Aug2014.html   Page 8.

 

What is the Color of your Topi?

What is the color of your Topi


From being the symbol of simplicity, austerity and piousness,


the topi has taken many colors, many hues.


Starting from the Gandhi topi -


worn by the father of the nation as a symbol of resistance to the imperial brutality - a white khaki topi.


It was associated to cultural pride, self-reliance and solidarity with India's rural masses.


Later on the cap was made more popular by Nehru and other politicians,


that is when it took the shape of being a symbol of political activism and being a politician.


Recently, It got a new birth, in a new avatar as the white cap by Anna, where it found a new meaning: of standing up to claim our own right against the corrupt sarkari Imperial.


Since then the simple cap has taken many turns and many colors.


First, what looked like a simple copy paste by the AAP, eventually turned out to be a political turn.


Looks like the topi cannot stay away from political agenda.


Seeing the popularity and value of the symbols it brought in, other parties could not stay away.


We have the Red cap of the Samajwadi Party.


The Saffron cap of the BJP


Blue cap of BSP


And then of course, there is the much debated skull cap.


It is not uncommon to see common men wearing these multi-colored topis to show solidarity of the party they support.


The emotional ploy has worked!


Are all these topis a way of putting topi on the emotions of the poor citizens ? What will really happen and which topi will eventually win. Only time will tell.


Meanwhile, what is the color of your Topi?





April 13, 2014 at 5:59pm

On Women's Day

Dad, is there a need to celebrate women-hood?

My darling daughter - Yes and No both.

Yes, as I would want you to celebrate yourself, and anything and everything related to you,
the same way as I would like to celebrate myself, and anything and everything related to me.

You are unique and so is everyone else. And I want you to celebrate this uniqueness.
How you are, how you look, how you think, how you feel - celebrate all of it.
Celebrate both your femininity and you masculinity. Not one at the cost of other.

I also don't want you to celebrate yourself in contrast to anybody else.
I don't want you to celebrate being a free daughter, an empowered wife or loving mother.
All these are tags in relation to the other.

I want you to celebrate who you are, independent of the other.
To feel free irrespective of the other.
That in true sense is equality.
You are in no way less than any man or woman.
Nor are you in any way more than any man or woman.
You are you - Unique.
Celebrate that my Love.
And you don't need a special day to do so.
Do it everyday, every minute, every moment of you life!

March 9, 2014 at 1:00pm
 

Appearance do makes a difference

Recently I have been visiting a local hospital to get some physiotherapy done on my ankle.

I noticed, there is a security guard at the entrance who checks people who come in.
He does frisking and uses a metal detector both.
Interestingly I saw him using different protocol for different people.

I have seen him frisk people - mostly poor local people of the area as well as use the metal detector on them. I usually used to visit the hospital directly after my office and he used to use only the metal detector on me.


I did not notice this preferential treatment I was being given till one day I visited the hospital on a weekend. Being a weekend, I was very casually dressed, rather shabbily dressed. And when I reached the hospital, the security guy used the complete protocol - frisking and metal detector. When he frisked me, that is when I realized the difference.


I walked in smiling to myself and wondering how our biases are deeply ingrained in our society. A security guard - due to whatever reasons, has learnt that there is a class difference who need to be treated differently. I am not sure if he himself is aware of his own behavioral pattern. I also began to realize how there would be / are so many people in various roles and positions in organizations and society in general, who live these biases unconsciously.


I was also left wondering, what it would be doing to the receivers of these biases. For me, being frisked was an interesting amusing discovery. Am not too sure if the impact on the poor people, for whom this would be a norm, this would be as interesting or amusing. Maybe they are oblivious to this bias or they won't be minding it, since it is a part of their existential reality.


Other day, I was visiting the hospital again after my office. And this time I had my driver with me and he drove me right up to the porch of the hospital. The security guard saw me getting of the car. And guess what happened to the security protocol - no frisking, no metal detector!

May 29, 2013 at 10:06pm