A Burden Dressed in White

Written by Sonakshi Garr, Diversity and Inclusion Co-Director Graphic by Nicole Glesinger, Contributing Graphic Artist

The women I saw on the Bollywood screen had dark, almond eyes—this is what I remember most. These eyes were lined with inky kohl, almost always turned towards the floor, their heads shyly bowed. Inside these women rested a haunting, fierce kind of hunger which I could only understand when I looked at their lips. The edges of their pout were tucked upwards, rarely parting to let out a sentence. These women were angelic. They were elegant. They were patient. They embodied relentless, alluring femininity. Their virtue dressed their desires as bizarre and their burdens as necessary. India is a country made up of 1.3 billion people.1 The Indian film industry has a net worth of 183 billion rupees, producing close to 2,000 movies a year in over 20 languages.2 Cinema is rooted deep in Indian culture. For me, the world of Bollywood provided the sense of connection and representation I never received in mainstream television. For my parents, Bollywood is a sense of comfort, a curated version of the home they left. The movies themselves are the epitome of melodrama. A typical Bollywood narrative clings to a clear hero and a clearer villain. They are designed to grip audiences with a threehour Cinderella-like plot—a slow exposition, some ups and downs, a climax which usually involves a fight and a happy ending.3 India’s longest-running movie, “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” translates into

¹ “India,” Data Commons, accessed Feb. 2022. ² Elena Nicolaou, “What Makes Bollywood Movies so Special,” Oprah Daily, Nov. 2, 2021. ³ Joe Bunting, “Story Arcs: Definitions and Examples of the 6 Shapes of Stories,” The Write Practice, Jan. 21, 2022. MODA | 12

English as “The Big-Hearted Will Take The Bride.”4 The movie follows Simran—a woman steadfast in all her resolutions—and the story of how she must be a good daughter, a good friend and a good wife. She has intensity, dry wit and a general yearning for a life bigger than herself, which all boils down to her identity as a bride.

Upon the discovery of her engagement to someone her father knows, Simran takes a girls’ trip to Europe where she meets Raj, a man who is the perfect contrast to her persona of order. They fall in forbidden, riveting love. For 30 years, India has loved Raj. They have reincarnated versions of the character to star in every box office hit since. That’s why, at the end of “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,” I found

myself rooting for him, even through his harmful doings to Simran. At the climax of the film, a fight breaks out as Raj attempts to run away with Simran. Blood-soaked fists are thrown left and right and Simran is a piece of clay,

molding to the sweaty palms of the patriarchy around her. Simran’s poisoned virtue is not just a product of her time. “Sultan,” a hit released in 2016, tells the story of a retired, washed-up wrestler reflecting on his past. Sultan is a stubborn, smart wrestler who marries Aafra, a woman rooted in her determination to win the wrestling state championship—an achievement Sultan has yet to have himself. Discovering she’s pregnant with his baby, Aafra gives up her wrestling career for Sultan, who ends up not being present for Aafra during their son’s premature birth. Their newborn son later ends up passing away due to complications, and Sultan falls into a depressive spiral, hence his retirement. The plot, by itself, is nothing special. Both Eastern and Western audiences have a permanent appetite for a tragic love story. But in this case, one of the only female characters in the movie drops her potential as a wrestling champion to fulfill the role as a romantic interest to a man. Even at the end of the movie, Aafra only appears to provide Sultan with words of encouragement for his last fight. Her role in this movie was to remain virtuous and immobile in her anger with her husband and her grief over her son. Despite this, people loved “Sultan.” Aatish Taseer, a New York Times oped writer, found himself “bawling [his] guts out in a Times Square theater” after seeing the movie for the first time. Taseer commended the movie for its critique of India’s cultural movement towards modernity.5 It was a beautiful review about the story of Sultan, a wrestler trying to become relevant again—but it lacked any mention of Aafra. Sure, she was not the protagonist, but she was the quiet force behind the message Taseer raved about. The same bias that stains the plots of these Bollywood movies also exists within the industry as a whole. Men are allowed to embody a sort of constant juxtaposition—their anger is accorded a certain softness and their warmth is yielded a certain edge—that women are never granted. In the lens of Indian cinema, men are limitless. Shah Rukh Khan, the star of “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” and the most famous actor in South Asia, has been intoxicating fans with his charm since 1992. However, the actresses he co-stars with are only getting younger as women are shifted in and out of the spotlight. When we portray women as virtuous, we portray them as subhuman. The real issue with virtue lies in its ambiguity. When we expect a woman’s patience, we demand her tolerance. And in India—along with many other parts of the world, including the U.S.—that tolerance may come at the cost of her life.

India has consistently been rated one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women.6 Every hour, 14 cases of “cruelty by husband” are registered there.7 Women

⁵ Aatish Taseer, “Why Do I

Love Bollywood?” The New

York Times, Aug. 24, 2016. ⁶ Neha. Chauhan, “How

Gender-Based Violence in India Continues to Rise.” YourStory, Sept. 17, 2019. ⁷ Sachin Agarwalla, “The Growing Concern around Violence against Women in India – being treated as second-class citizens is a common, global theme, but in India—a country dusted with millions of dynamics—poor treatment of women has surpassed politics and morphed into its very culture. Culture births emotion. Culture births morals. Culture births tradition. According to Tina Kubrak, a behavioral scientist for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, movies directly influence “the assimilation of commonly accepted values, norms and forms of behavior.”8

Are Bollywood movies the main force behind the patriarchy in India? No. But all movies project the values of the society they are made for at the time. The entertainment industry is made to serve.

Multidimensionality is not an easy story to tell or hear. Yet it is a story that must be told and heard if we are to shift the cultural dynamic in India and begin to appreciate women past their surface-level beauty, their surface-level sweetness and their sur- face-level virtue. Women are so much more than their reactions to men, but Indian media refuses to listen.

Despite everything, I still do not hate Bollywood. I do not have it in me. Any child of immigrants can understand this chokehold of duality. Isn’t to critique something to love it? To pay enough attention to something that I understand its flaws, and celebrate it anyway? Indian movies have a dedication to emotion, color and music that Western cinema will simply never understand. You can get lost in purgatory trying to claim a consistent identity, and I do not have it in me to try and forget another part of mine. As I tear my childhood movies apart into cream-colored shards, I still see Indian cinema as an impeccable work of art—it’s reliable, it’s entertaining, it’s consumable. The only tradeoff is that women in real-time, globally, are seen the same way: reliable, entertaining, consumable.

Art imitates life. The media we consume matters. ■

Where Do We Stand?” IGC, Nov. 25, 2020. ⁸ Tina Kubrak, “Impact of Films: Changes in Young People’s Attitudes after Watching a Movie,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, May 2, 2020.