(Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual abuse and rape. Reader discretion advised.)
“This film is not going to leave my mind for years now.”
This is the text my friend sent me after we watched Jaggi, a 2021 Punjabi film, which after winning accolades at several international festivals, screened at the 15th edition of the Habitat Film Festival on Sunday, 7 May.
Though my friend and I had gone to the screening together, we didn’t speak after the film got over. There was nothing to say. We were still trying to process what we’d just seen unfold on the screen. Still overwhelmed, shocked, reeling in the climax.
So when I texted my friend a few hours later and asked him what he had thought of Jaggi, he simply said that it’s a film that won’t leave him, not for years. I think that summarises the film for me as well.
Still from the film.
‘Raw, Touching, & Unnerving’
Jaggi, the titular character, is a boy in rural Punjab, in his late teens or early twenties. He manages his family’s 12 acres of farmland. His father, a cop, is a drunkard. And his mother is, well, mostly absent.
Jaggi could be anyone. He could be your stereotypical Punjabi hero, listening to Harbhajan Mann’s music as he ploughs his land, moving through the fields on a tractor.
But he’s not just anyone. He has a secret, one that leaves him exposed to exploitation, bullying, and sexual harassment.
Still from the film.
Jaggi is impotent. He confides in a classmate who thinks that he must be gay if he can’t get an erection. The word soon spreads in his all-boys’ high school, where the other boys try to corner him in the washroom and in empty spaces. They molest, harass, and rape him. Constantly.
Jaggi has nowhere to go, no one to run to for cover, no safety net. He fears that if he tells anyone, everyone will know that he has erectile dysfunction. Soon enough, another fear adds on – of people knowing that he’s been molested by multiple men.
So Jaggi drops out of school. But the cycle of abuse doesn’t end there. There’s no respite for him. Even as he tries to busy himself with farm work, men force themselves upon him – leaving him mentally, emotionally, physically drained.
The film, which is inspired by true events, has certain visuals which are extremely graphic. Sitting in an almost-full auditorium, I flinched more times than I could count. It’s traumatic, triggering, and shakes you to the core. But it’s also raw, touching, and unnerving.
It shows you the reality of sexual abuse, egged on by sexual frustration. It shows you the depths people can fall to solely because of lust. Anyone with any sort of power forces himself upon someone seemingly weak – we see this when Jaggi’s farmhand tries to molest him too.
Still from the film.
Highlighting Trauma-Filled Social Realities
When the film ended, during a Q&A session with the crew, two people spoke about how they too had experienced something similar in boarding schools and family homes, respectively.
It reminded me of something a male colleague had said in passing a few months ago while reflecting on their own experience – "These people in boys’ schools who call you gay in classrooms are the same ones who try to harass you in the washrooms."
Ramnish Choudhary plays Jaggi’s role with such honesty, showcasing such mature vulnerability, that it’s hard to believe it was only his first time facing the camera. He brings a certain sense of authenticity and rawness to the film with his acting.
Jaggi juxtaposes Punjab’s beautiful fields and backdrops with Jaggi’s internal struggles, as he tries to come to terms with the stigma associated with a medical condition he has no control over.
The film breaks away from mainstream cinema as it talks about something that most filmmakers and even audiences would shy away from.
Shhh… Don’t Tell Anyone
The film also throws light on something almost all of us encounter in our everyday lives but seldom delve upon – the inability to communicate and end cycles of abuse.
There’s a scene in the film where Jaggi’s fiance Raman confides in him how she too was molested for several years by someone she knew, how it took immense strength for her to tell her mother about it, and how her mother didn’t bother at all.
Even when Jaggi tries to tell his parents about his medical condition, after failed superstitious attempts to cure it, they rubbish it, telling him not to speak about it with anyone. Maybe this lack of communication is the reason that Jaggi or his father never confront his mother about her affair.
There’s no space for expression which is why Jaggi’s diary (and the voiceover in the film) becomes his outlet.
Still from the film.
Raman is the only one who Jaggi can actually speak to, but the societal norms demarcate no space or agency for either for them.
Cinematically speaking, Jaggi is a film par excellence. But it’s a film I wish I never saw. Or rather, if I’m wishing for things, I wish this film had never been made, that it never had to be made. I wish the social realities depicted in Jaggi were not that at all but instead, just a figment of someone’s imagination or nightmares.
(Jaggi premiered at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2022, winning the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature as well as the Uma da Cunha Award for Best Feature Film Debut. It was nominated for the Best Youth Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2022. Anmol Sidhu and Ramnish Choudhary were also nominated for the Best Director and Best Actor awards respectively at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2022. Jaggi was ideated as a short film but became feature length during the process.)
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