My Mirror column:
A range of recent narratives, including the quietly brilliant 2019 film Aise Hee (Just Like That), offer a perspective on the unexpectedly liberating possibilities of widowhood.
During a recent stint in a hospital room, I put on the television at low volume, hoping to distract the slowly recuperating 70+ patient. I searched fruitlessly for the things I knew he might enjoy – first for live cricket, then the news in English, old Hollywood films, or perhaps a soothing nature channel. But none of these seemed to be part of the already prohibitive ‘package’. A hospital staff member walked in and said, as if solving a non-existent problem: “Uncle ke liye? Arre bahut saare dhaarmik channel hain.”
How breezily we decide what the old ought to like. I was reminded immediately of the astute, delightful 2019 film Aise Hee, in which an old lady’s desire for the simplest of things – a stroll by the riverside, an ice cream, or just interesting company – raise eyebrows and then hackles across not just her family but the neighbourhood and then the city. Written and directed by debutant , the film received a Special Mention at Busan Film Festival and the Film Critics Guild award at MAMI, while Mohini Sharma won MAMI’s Special Jury Mention for Best Actor (Female) for her wonderful performance as an Allahabad-based woman who rediscovers a taste for life after her husband of 52 years suddenly dies.
For all our post-liberalisation embrace of consumerism, for the vast majority of Indians choice remains an illusion. The lives of old people, in particular, are regulated by a rack of rigid social expectations that offer very little room for individual expression. Of course, it's worse if you’re a woman. And if you’re a widow, your last link to life’s everyday pleasures is deemed to have automatically snapped when your husband dies – even in 21st century India. Some of this is simply an unthinking re-inscribing of deprivations ritually visited upon caste Hindu widows for centuries – in a brutal early scene in Aise Hee, a posse of younger female relatives matter-of-factly divide up Mrs Sharma’s wardrobe of saris without even asking her. It is simply assumed that she must exchange her suhaagan colours for vidhwa whites, or at least dull greys and beiges.
The widespread assumption is that as a widow, she will continue the socially approved life she lived with her husband – going for paatth, religious recitation, and attending the yoga circle in the neighbourhood park. But she is simultaneously expected to curtail her existence, literally reduce the space she takes up in the world. Her son, who lives on the ground floor of the family house with his wife and children, takes it for granted that unlike his father, his mother can be squeezed into one of the downstairs rooms while the upper floor is rented out for some extra income. When his mother resists, gently but firmly, in the direction of a quiet financial independence, even dealing with bank passbooks herself, there is shock. When she actually buys an air-conditioner for her own bedroom, there is outrage.
What makes Aise Hee a joy to watch, though, are Mrs Sharma’s new friendships – with an old neighbourhood tailor whom she persuades to teach her embroidery, and later with a 20-something single woman she meets on the ghat. And what Kislay’s subtle telling makes unmistakeably apparent is the extent to which contemporary Indian society frowns on such one-on-one connections: cutting across religion, gender and class in one instance (the tailor is Muslim), and across age and class in the other (Sugandhi works in a beauty parlour and isn’t a ‘respectable’ companion for an elderly widow).
Aise Hee reminded me of a short story called Compassionate Grounds by Tanuj Solanki, part of his collection Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, in which an ageing housewife whose husband has died worriedly contemplates the possibility of taking up a compensatory job in his government office. “I’ve only read Grihshobha and Kadambini after my BA. Not even the newspapers. The last time I dealt seriously with books was when I could still help with you with homework,” she tells her 26-year-old daughter. The documentary About Love, which I wrote about last week in another context, also featured a woman bemusedly describing how living with a dominant husband seems to have stunted her brain. When I’m with him, says the filmmaker’s fifty-something mother, I just do what he says.
Another powerful recent portrait of a spirited old woman suffering the stultifying effects of marriage – and the unexpected liberation afforded by widowhood – is Heena D’Souza’s short film Adi Sonal, which was the best part of last year’s anthology film Shuruaat Ka Twist. Neena Gupta is simply marvellous as a traditional, ritual-bound Sindhi housewife who understands marriage as being about serving her husband – and clearly expects her daughters-in-law to do the same. Until she doesn’t.
In an odd coincidence, in both Adi Sonal and Aise Hee, there is a younger woman played by the same actor, the wonderful Trimala Adhikari. In fact in all these narratives, we see the lives of the old partly through the eyes of the young, which is perhaps a good way for young audiences to empathise with the protagonists. But what we also see are the lives of the young through the eyes of the old. And in those older eyes, there is bafflement, curiosity, and sometimes envy.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 26 Jan 2020.
A range of recent narratives, including the quietly brilliant 2019 film Aise Hee (Just Like That), offer a perspective on the unexpectedly liberating possibilities of widowhood.
During a recent stint in a hospital room, I put on the television at low volume, hoping to distract the slowly recuperating 70+ patient. I searched fruitlessly for the things I knew he might enjoy – first for live cricket, then the news in English, old Hollywood films, or perhaps a soothing nature channel. But none of these seemed to be part of the already prohibitive ‘package’. A hospital staff member walked in and said, as if solving a non-existent problem: “Uncle ke liye? Arre bahut saare dhaarmik channel hain.”
How breezily we decide what the old ought to like. I was reminded immediately of the astute, delightful 2019 film Aise Hee, in which an old lady’s desire for the simplest of things – a stroll by the riverside, an ice cream, or just interesting company – raise eyebrows and then hackles across not just her family but the neighbourhood and then the city. Written and directed by debutant , the film received a Special Mention at Busan Film Festival and the Film Critics Guild award at MAMI, while Mohini Sharma won MAMI’s Special Jury Mention for Best Actor (Female) for her wonderful performance as an Allahabad-based woman who rediscovers a taste for life after her husband of 52 years suddenly dies.
For all our post-liberalisation embrace of consumerism, for the vast majority of Indians choice remains an illusion. The lives of old people, in particular, are regulated by a rack of rigid social expectations that offer very little room for individual expression. Of course, it's worse if you’re a woman. And if you’re a widow, your last link to life’s everyday pleasures is deemed to have automatically snapped when your husband dies – even in 21st century India. Some of this is simply an unthinking re-inscribing of deprivations ritually visited upon caste Hindu widows for centuries – in a brutal early scene in Aise Hee, a posse of younger female relatives matter-of-factly divide up Mrs Sharma’s wardrobe of saris without even asking her. It is simply assumed that she must exchange her suhaagan colours for vidhwa whites, or at least dull greys and beiges.
The widespread assumption is that as a widow, she will continue the socially approved life she lived with her husband – going for paatth, religious recitation, and attending the yoga circle in the neighbourhood park. But she is simultaneously expected to curtail her existence, literally reduce the space she takes up in the world. Her son, who lives on the ground floor of the family house with his wife and children, takes it for granted that unlike his father, his mother can be squeezed into one of the downstairs rooms while the upper floor is rented out for some extra income. When his mother resists, gently but firmly, in the direction of a quiet financial independence, even dealing with bank passbooks herself, there is shock. When she actually buys an air-conditioner for her own bedroom, there is outrage.
What makes Aise Hee a joy to watch, though, are Mrs Sharma’s new friendships – with an old neighbourhood tailor whom she persuades to teach her embroidery, and later with a 20-something single woman she meets on the ghat. And what Kislay’s subtle telling makes unmistakeably apparent is the extent to which contemporary Indian society frowns on such one-on-one connections: cutting across religion, gender and class in one instance (the tailor is Muslim), and across age and class in the other (Sugandhi works in a beauty parlour and isn’t a ‘respectable’ companion for an elderly widow).
Aise Hee reminded me of a short story called Compassionate Grounds by Tanuj Solanki, part of his collection Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, in which an ageing housewife whose husband has died worriedly contemplates the possibility of taking up a compensatory job in his government office. “I’ve only read Grihshobha and Kadambini after my BA. Not even the newspapers. The last time I dealt seriously with books was when I could still help with you with homework,” she tells her 26-year-old daughter. The documentary About Love, which I wrote about last week in another context, also featured a woman bemusedly describing how living with a dominant husband seems to have stunted her brain. When I’m with him, says the filmmaker’s fifty-something mother, I just do what he says.
Another powerful recent portrait of a spirited old woman suffering the stultifying effects of marriage – and the unexpected liberation afforded by widowhood – is Heena D’Souza’s short film Adi Sonal, which was the best part of last year’s anthology film Shuruaat Ka Twist. Neena Gupta is simply marvellous as a traditional, ritual-bound Sindhi housewife who understands marriage as being about serving her husband – and clearly expects her daughters-in-law to do the same. Until she doesn’t.
In an odd coincidence, in both Adi Sonal and Aise Hee, there is a younger woman played by the same actor, the wonderful Trimala Adhikari. In fact in all these narratives, we see the lives of the old partly through the eyes of the young, which is perhaps a good way for young audiences to empathise with the protagonists. But what we also see are the lives of the young through the eyes of the old. And in those older eyes, there is bafflement, curiosity, and sometimes envy.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 26 Jan 2020.
