PIYUSH ROY
In a pertinent scene from Lipstick under my Burkha, we see two characters, a lady in her 30s being waxed by an, in 20s, girl and owner, of a small-time, women only, beauty parlour in a lower middle class suburb, somewhere in Bhopal. The latter has just suffered a nasty rejection, by her ‘now-on-now-off’ boyfriend for being tad frequent in her demands for sex. She asks her lady client gently, “You have never been caressed below, right…?” Nudging further, she ponders, “Your husband never kisses you, either…” The client remains silent as a tear drop trickles down. The salon girl asks again, “I hope you are not crying because of the waxing because my service expertise is such that clients have never felt any pain”. The silent lady finally answers, “Why are you asking about all this, when you are aware of the truth…”
The lady is question, a Muslim mother of three and multiple abortions, is repeatedly shown being humped like an animal by her Saudi-returned husband, night after night, as she lies emotionless on a bed of violence sanctioned by marriage. For her husband, having sex, is just another routine activity (towards procreation), like having dinner, watching TV. There is no love or consent in their cohabitation.
Vigilant media and empathetic social groups have played a major role in somewhat mitigating the humiliation of rape victims, by championing their fight for justice as inspiring acts of courage. Marital rape, which is much more rampant, remains a hushed topic in both conservative and modern India, with its victims abounding across divides of class, caste, region and religion. It is one of the biggest lies of an ‘all are equal’ proclaiming, ‘Shining India’! Domestic violence, despite its gross under reportage, makes for over a third of crimes against women, far ahead of molestation and rape (Ref: National Crime Records Bureau data for 2013).
Lipstick under my Burkha,which has been creating a revolution of sorts since its making, on attitudes towards women and the attitudes of women towards sex, highlights the above factoid boldly, along with some more uncomfortable realities. Like the truth about a young Muslim girl, who wears jeans beneath her burqa and leads two lives – one of a ‘no-questions-asked’ free labourer in her abba’s tailor shop and the other of a cigarette smoking, shop lifting, western music loving, campaigner of feminism at college. Or the truths about a 55-year-old Buaji, a spirited widowed elder of a Hindu joint family, who reads erotic fiction hidden within religious patrikasor a young woman entrepreneur, who like the men in her neighbourhood, doesn’t feel shy to seek pleasure.
Little wonder, Pahlaj Nihalani’s ‘puritanical’ Censor Board found not just bits or parts, but the entire movie too hot to handle, and refused certification for its “sexual content, abusive words and audio pornography”, dismissing it for being too “lady-oriented” and a “fantasy above life”.
This, despite the script of Lipstick under my Burkha, being developed by a woman filmmaker in a National Film Development Corporation writing lab. The year-old film, eventually released last week after the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal okayed it with an adult certificate. The film, incidentally, is far more subtle, sensible and refined in its treatment, than the innuendo ridden obscene sex comedies of the 1980s and 1990s, helmed by stars like Mithun Chakraborty, Govinda and Anil Kapoor, with some directed by Nihalani himself (Andaz, 1994).
Lipstick under my Burkha, directed by a woman (Alankrita Shrivastava) and distributed by another (Ekta Kapoor), makes an unabashedarticulation of a woman’s need for love and pleasurable sex irrespective of her age or context. It also opens a spirited window to a quiet sexual revolution that has been sweeping India since the dawn of the anonymous, multiple identity offering era and edge of mobile phones and the Internet. The anonymity and diversity in the virtual media has been both, debilitating and uplifting, in its providing of opportunities, choice and secrecy for wants often suppressed by the nature of one’s gender.
Paradise Liebe(Paradise Love 2012),the first film in European Cinema’s latest acclaimed film triad, Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Trilogy, has a protagonist, Teresa, who Ratna Pathak’s Bauji character from Lipstick under my Burkha would perhaps relate to the most. Teresa is a fifty plus lady with sagging vital statistics and increasing weight, predictably relegated to the unattractive zone by the men in her country, Austria. She, and few of her similarly aged lady friends go on a customised holiday package to Kenya, where she experiences a sexual attention of sorts, being constantly wooed by handsome African men,albeit for moneyonly. Her upbringing initially holds her back from fulfilling her awakened sexual needs. But once her search for true love is exploited, she becomes the exploiter forcing male prostitutes,half her age to perform uncommon acts for her pleasure. She subconsciously becomes atease, enjoying in the moment, yet regretting later, and then again seeking someone further younger…
Of the many attracts of a tourist destination – example, spiritual, historical, gastronomical, health and medical — sex tourism is a big crowd puller. It is no secret why Bangkok on the other side of the Bay of Bengal is a ‘hot’ holiday destination for Indian men or Amsterdam for Europeans. Traditionally, these have been men only privileges. Now, financially independent women, within and outside expected ages of propriety, too are demanding pleasures they can afford. Meanwhile, the Internet keeps fulfilling those who cannot pay for distant pleasures, to seek an anonymous rendezvous closer home, through global dating sites like Tinder, whose biggest attraction is safe opportunities for casual sex. Most of its Indian users are in the 18-34 age group with the dating app recording a 400 per cent membership jump in 2015 only.
Not black or white, but grey is the inherent nature of the human make. Sex or ‘kama’ is an enshrined purushartha among the four motivations of life– dharma, artha, kama and moksha – as acknowledged in our scriptures. Repressing any healthy, necessary articulation of either will only further foster the incidence of deviants.
Lipstick under my Burkha was running to packed houses even in an early afternoon show in a Mumbai multiplex where I caught it with my spouse this week. Yes, some uncomfortable viewers did walk out. But we enjoyed the element of hope in its ending, for its protagonists who would normally have hurtleddown to an inglorious doom in similar tales about ‘daring dreams’ from a decade ago. Remember Mrityudand?
This is the India of today; you may accept, reject or ignore it, but after centuries of suppression, women’s articulation for sexual choice and liberating joy is here to stay; irrespective of the anger or the embarrassment of conservative mindsets. After all, the journey for equality in the public begins from the most private space in a civilised human being’s existence, the bedroom.