“Ek machhar aadmi ko hijda banaa deta hai” said Nana Patekar in a now cult dialogue from a forgettable 1997 movie. The audiences in cinema halls roared with laughter and went berserk.
The dialogue tapped into the popular belief that ‘a hijda’ is somehow lesser than ‘aadmi’, that transgender people are not just at the bottom of the social structure, they don’t even belong in the social structure. They are “the other”. The dialogue reflected exactly what the majority of the film’s audience believed – that being ‘a hijda’ is nothing more than an abuse.
It has been two decades since. For a large percentage of the country’s population, that notion hasn’t changed. Our cinema, however, must.
For instance, it might not have bothered us in 1998 that Rahul could get attracted to Anjali (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) only after the tomboy transformed into a sari-clad, feminine beauty. But today, we expect a more evolved, feminist viewpoint from our cinema.
On similar lines, it is reasonable to expect that the representation of transgender people in our films would evolve. After all, films are not supposed to simply reflect the common culture, but also affect it, direct it.
Which brings me to the recently released film Kaalakaandi. Here’s a dialogue that the film’s protagonist says to a transgender sex worker, Sheela, on the roadside – “How much will you charge me if I just want to see your Southern hemisphere, your Australia, your saamaan? I’ve always been very curious to see what is down there.” The audience in the cinema hall roared with laughter and went berserk.
Sitting there surrounded by that laughter, I realised that not much has changed. While the discrimination got expressed in the form of abuse in the past, today it is represented as cool, pretentious jokes. The transgender person on our screens is still “the other”.
[NOTE: If, by any chance, you plan to watch this film and would rather avoid spoilers, then this would be the point to stop reading]
Sheela is a cliché. She is a caricature, with over-the-top, Bobby-Darling-esque mannerisms. And as I already told you, she is a sex worker. I mean, what else could she be?! She’s transgender, remember? Vineet, our protagonist, is under the influence of drugs. Obviously. He has to be. If he were in his right mind, would he have picked up a transgender woman, walked hand-in-hand with her and brought her to a 5-star hotel lobby?
He confesses to her that it has been on his bucket list (a list of things to do before he dies) to find out what is inside a transwoman’s pants. So, I guess he is probably devoid of a laptop, a smartphone or an internet connection, or maybe he has never heard of Google.
Our generous, kind lady, then, decides to grant Vineet his wish. She grabs his hand and takes him into the women’s washroom, causing the ladies there to pause powdering their noses in shock. Inside a cabin, Sheela takes off her dress so that Vineet can look down on her (Pun intended).
He does. And his face lights up. He breaks into the widest smile. It is, as though, he might have discovered a goldmine. He envisions flowers and stars emanating out of her. Seeing Sheela’s saamaan is such a high point for Vineet that the filmmaker believes it is worthy of becoming the intermission point of the film!
If my sarcasm is unable to make it clear, let me spell it out. All the aforementioned details and developments point to a single underlying thought.
In the filmmaker’s vision, Sheela is an aberration, she is “the other”. It is okay to not treat her like a woman, not afford her the respect you would a woman. It is okay to say about her – “Maine isey nanga dekha hai” – as Vineet does to his brother, to which Sheela simply chuckles, amused. Later, this brother, another urban, well-educated guy, asks Vineet, “Dude, are you gay?” I wished somebody could tell him as well as the filmmaker that being with a transgender woman does not imply you’re gay. [By the way, nothing sexual happens between Vineet and Sheela. This pretend-progressive story can’t cross that line, of course].
To be fair, I do not truly believe that the filmmaker, Akshat Verma, intended to demean transgender people on purpose. In fact, it’s quite possible that he believes he has written a rather liberal track between the two characters. What is at display here is a subconscious transphobia, which is a very common phenomenon, since people are woefully unaware of trans issues. Verma’s fault, in my opinion, lies in his lack of deep, nuanced understanding of the lives of transgender people, which he ought to have had if he was writing a story like this.
Had he, like his character Vineet, done some research, he would know that being transgender has nothing to do with one’s genitals. There is no one kind of magical form of genitals, which Vineet seeks to discover. There is no one-size-fits-all stencil for a transgender person’s anatomy. No treasure to discover there.
What was important for him to study was the human behind the bodies. Kaalakaandi does absolutely nothing to humanize transgender people, who are always looked at with the one-dimensional lens of sexuality and, well, “what is down there?”
For instance, do you have any idea how difficult it is for a hijra/transgender person to even go pee? Which washroom would they use? They’d be bullied out of all of them – men’s as well as women’s. The fictional Sheela might leisurely walk into a women’s washroom without any qualms. But in real life, transgender women often go thirsty for hours while they’re out on the roads, for if they drink water, where would they go if they had to go?
“Chill out!” people on my Facebook timeline tell me, “It’s just a funny movie; only fun and games”. Well, it’s not. Because regressive attitude veiled in humour is a dangerous thing. Especially when the film is pretending to be progressive.
You know what? I would’ve generously let everything go if the writer hadn’t ended Vineet and Sheela’s track the way he did. Despite spending a large part of the night with Sheela, despite having a couple warm moments, even sensual exchanges, the story made Vineet have a romantic liaison with a genetic, cis-gendered woman. Sheela was worthy of being sexualized, not of romance.
Hopefully, two decades from now, someone else would be writing a piece hailing a just released, genuinely funny film with a truly progressive track about a transgender person, while referring to the regressive story of a forgettable 2018 movie. Hopefully, sooner.
(Gazal Dhaliwal is the co-writer of the films Lipstick Under My Burkha and Qarib Qarib Singlle. Born a male child, she underwent a sex reassignment surgery and identifies as a woman today.)
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