Fighting Shit

Everybody needs to use the toilet. Every day. But in India, we exaggerate it. By doing so we do not give it importance; we merely magnify it in the lab under a microscope. More appropriately, we bring awareness to people who probably have a bidet, use perfumed toilet paper, and have a warm jet of water to clean up with.

National award-winning actress Vidya Balan is now the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive. This is the brainwave of Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, who said:

"It is going to be a two year programme. She's had a dirty picture in reel life, but this will be a clean picture in real life. I think she will help in making sanitation a national obsession."

This is a silly comment, the transposition of dirty and clean. It is also a cheap gimmick. Ms.Balan’s giggle act and repetitious references to the film was bad enough, now a central minister wants to ride on it. There are people who have to shit in the open, in fields, in dug-up holes, and sewage even from hotels near water sources floats into our rivers and seas. Those people would have liked to have such facilities long ago. What does the minister mean by saying she will make it into a national obsession? The film became a publicity-geared obsession only for those involved. The others bought tickets, whistled, got off and moved on.

Using public facilities is a basic need. What is obsessive about it?

For Vidya Balan it is just one more satellite benefit for The Dirty Picture. She does not have to say it. Instead, the words are typically managed:

“It's an honour for me to be the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive and like Mr Ramesh just said, it needs to become a national obsession and I am going to do everything in my capacity to make sure that the message is taken across to every person.”

What will the ads tell people living in slums or in the interiors? It is the job of the government to provide public toilets and ensure that women do not have to hide their faces behind umbrellas as they sit alongside drains on roads to empty their bowels. Have you seen such scenes? Do you know how heartbreaking it is? Do you know how young women have to take someone along because there are predators waiting? Do you know that many cannot afford even the two rupees to use the public loos? Do you know that the cloth they use during their periods has to be washed in dirty water because there isn’t enough of it? Do you know that they stand for hours to fill buckets to use the water for drinking and cooking and recycle what is left? Do you know that children squat for hours only to see their malnourished droppings taken over by flies?

We look away, hold up our noses. Vidya Balan is doing it out of “conviction”, she says. Every Indian she reaches out to will remember her as she lectures on sanitation. They will probably have an inauguration in some cleaned up poor locality. After that, there will be clips on what to do and how to keep your environment free of disease on television.

The municipalities and panchayats should be regularly visiting these places. They ought to involve key workers from those areas, people who belong there, have suffered. I know that with Ms. Balan it is possible to get some industrial houses to shell out money. Yet, it won’t really reach out unless the infrastructure is in place.

I am waiting for someone to compare her to Mahatma Gandhi the minute she holds up a broom in her hand. It’s been over six decades when he started it. Has it made any difference? It did not then. It will not now. Except to honour the celebrities for their sanitised concern and conviction.

India Copulated:The Dirtier Picture

This is a marketing gimmick camouflaged as a film. I went to a single-screen theatre to watch it. Alone. After all, this was about female empowerment. Sipping coffee, waiting for the door to open, I looked at the audience. Men – young and old. Women – young and old. One woman wore a burqa, but her face was visible; another one wore a tight tunic with pants, but her face was covered and only her eyes were visible. Weird. There was an infant, too. One elderly lady told me, “No one was willing to come along.” Aha, it was ‘The Dirty Picture’.

I had booked in advance and opted for a corner seat. The film began and at some point the dirtiness started with the protagonist making funny sounds while a couple is at it in a filthy room. Dirty, remember? It was not quite certain whether she was faking an orgasm or a crap. Just as the film is a confused medley. It does not even have the grace to be a parody; it is downright slapstick with the so-called bold dialogues not going beyond what you might hear boys in school talk about when playing with themselves. Yes, boys. Despite now claiming it is a work of fiction, the makers had pushed it as a biopic based on the real-life story of South Indian actress Silk Smitha – her overt sexuality, her exploitation and her ultimate destruction and death by suicide. It is an insult to her and to any kind of sensibility, even the crude.

Silk Smitha

For months news items and television promos were showcasing Vidya Balan, the actress who essays the part, in ‘character’. Bright clothes and a wink, irrespective of which programme she was on. The film has been declared a hit at the box office and almost all reviews and stories have been applauding Ms. Balan for her courage. This is such irony. No one ever thought of Silk as courageous. She was dismissed as a soft porn star. There are many such stories and the entertainment industry, including Hollywood, has used women. Those who make it to the big grade deny the casting couch. The others like Silk have no choice. They remain where they began, bathing under a waterfall or falling off slopes with an ageing hero.

Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika had tackled the subject with finesse, although it too had its love-making scenes and even a tantalising lavni dance by Smita Patil. It, too, was based on a real-life story. We could empathise with the character and her growth. Silk, on the other hand, does not at any point give us an opportunity to feel her pain or even her pleasure.

Bollywood has been commending the fact that a ‘respectable’ actress took up the role. This is hypocrisy and exploitative. They are using the story of a woman whose family lives in poverty in some village, and yet tacitly they are running her down. All this talk about celebrating the body is so much smooth talk. There are many such young women who perform dance numbers and they are called item girls. They go through the process of shedding their clothes, but no one says they are celebrating their bodies. They are well endowed, but no one says they are the ideal “voluptuous Indian women” as though it is a national asset. These women are low down and if they flick their tongues or bite their lips suggestively it will be deemed obscene.

The pampered star takes such a role as a “challenge”, implying the hierarchy. It is nothing short of patronising. The urban herd has certified that this is not sleaze. It makes them feel smug. Moreover, women are expected to understand that this is liberating and empowering. Did Silk have a choice? Will middle-class women “unleash their sexual side” without being branded, if not as floozies, then nymphomaniacs?

Ms. Balan who is on a high right now assisted by her PR machinery talks about Silk with a know-it-all attitude: 

“She’s unapologetic about using her body and her sexuality as a big ticket to fame. There’s no shame in doing it.”

No one has asked if she, Vidya Balan,  would have done so since there is no shame to it.

That would be putting a wet blanket over a hose-pipe assisted wet dream.

(c) Farzana Versey