DECEMBER 5, 1997 GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE 19
EVENINGS OUT
Two wives escape Indian tradition, with each other
Fire
Directed by Deepa Mehta Cedar-Lee Theatre, Cleveland
by Doreen Cudnik
"I'm going to shoot you, madam!”
This statement, along with similar threats, was a response hurled all too frequently by incensed Indian men towards director Deepa Mehta, following the screening of her film Fire at the International Film Festival of India last January.
The film questions the role of women in Indian culture, exposes the hypocrisy of the ancient traditions, and presents an honest portrayal of lesbian love. That, apparently, was enough to drive these otherwise genteel men to consider murder.
Indian women, however, responded quite differently to the film.
"I had never seen so many explosive males and so many jubilant women in one place, all ready to have a fistfight in order to support their particular view of Fire," Mehta said following the premiere of the film in Trivandrum, India.
She recalls that the men most upset about her film would not even say the word lesbian.
"This is not in our Indian culture," was a refrain Mehta often heard, yet when she produced evidence of same-sex erotic love from Indian literature, paintings, and sculpture, she was accused of "fabrication."
"All very confusing!" Mehta said. "It was amazing that a film which explores choices, desires and the psyche of people who are victims...of tradition, would cause such an uproar," she added.
Mehta's film revolves around a middleclass New Delhi family steeped in tradition. At the head of the family is Ashok, who is on a spiritual journey to become "more like
God." His quest includes ridding himself of all desire, including sexual desire, which his swami teaches is the "road to ruin." His wife Radha (played by the preeminent actress of India, Shabana Azmi) is unable to have children. That, combined with her husband's religious beliefs, has turned her into a woman for whom sexual desire is a distant memory.
For fifteen years, Radha has been the dutiful wife. She lovingly takes care of Ashok's sick mother Biji, oversees the houseboy Mundu, and helps run the family busi-
DILIP MEHTA
The life of Radha (Shabana Azmi) changes when Sita (Nandita Das, right) comes to live with her family.
ness, a combination video store and restaurant. She moves with a quiet sadness, but the traditional chores keep her too occupied to think about it.
The family begins to change when Ashok's younger brother Jatin and his new wife Sita (played by New Delhi native Nandita Das) come to live with them. More influenced by Western culture than his brother, Jatin's marriage was nonetheless an arranged one, at Ashok's insistence. Since Ashok could not have children of his own, it became Jatin's "duty" to marry and carry on the family name. For all of Sita's youthful romanticism, Jatin is bitter about the whole affair and in no hurry to give up his Chinese girlfriend.
With Jatin off pursuing his girlfriend and Ashok following his swami, the two women spend almost all of their time together. Immediately, Sita's presence begins to influence Radha, and her exuberance rubs off.
Radha is at first shocked when Sita questions their traditional role as wives, but she begins to quietly agree when Sita expresses her dissatisfaction.
"We are so bound by custom and rituals," Sita tells Radha over dinner one evening. "One only has to press my button marked tradition, and I respond like a trained monkey."
As the women become closer, Radha recognizes desire returning. When Sita reaches out to her as a lover, she accepts, and the two women begin a journey that uncovers choices they did not know they had, and consequences they could not have imagined. They do, after all, live in a culture whose language has no word to describe love between two women, and where elder women like Sita's mother pass down the belief that “a woman without a husband is like boiled rice-bland, unappetizing, useless."
Mehta's desire to make Fire was rooted in her childhood spent in New Delhi. Like Sita, her mother's marriage was arranged, and Mehta recalls being surrounded by women who were "constantly hav[ing] to go through some metaphorical test of purity in order to be validated as human beings."
She also wanted to make a film about the burgeoning middle class in India-which now includes more than 350 million people. This rapidly growing middle class has created new choices and new confusions in a culture whose ancient scriptures define Indian women as pious, dutiful and self-sacrificing, while Indian popular cinema portrays women as sex objects, a dichotomy that creates the subplot of the film.
"The struggle between tradition and individual expression is one that takes place in every culture," Mehta said. "What appealed to me was that the story had a resonance that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries."
As it turns out, the most vocal opponents to Fire, middle-aged Indian men (younger and older men are ardent advocates of the film), were less offended by the lesbian relationship than by the idea that women were being encouraged to question their insignificant role in marriage.
"On one hand, I've been thanked for opening a dialogue between men and women and, on the other, have been accused by men of destroying their happy, 'safe,' and satisfied marriages," Mehta said.
It is this shattering of taboos that makes Fire such an engaging film. Richly photographed and superbly acted, the film asks the questions: What choices do we as women have, and, ultimately, what price are we willing to pay for those choices? Fire offers some provocative answers.
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