That Day After Everyday: A Commendable But Flawed Effort

Since December 2012, when the brutal Delhi gang rape (and murder) shook India, discussions of violence against women (VAW) have not only gone mainstream but taken on a new urgency. Television slanging matches, social media debates, miles of newsprint, and of course the generally ridiculous statements from political and religious leaders have shone a not particularly flattering light on the state of women in the country.  It is in the context of this renewed discussion that Anurag Kashyap's short film That Day After Everyday  (see film above) was released earlier this month.

An aside: I wonder if we should count the short, despite its online release, as the director's 'Diwali release' (to use that much hyped term). In purely audience terms, it has certainly garnered the eyeballs necessary to count as a success! 

Kashyap has long made 'realist' cinema his signature (with caveats of course), depicting a gritty, dark reality of India, often ignored by more mainstream 'Bollywood' directors. In many ways, his films are heirs to the 70s 'parallel' cinema, apparently more 'intellectual' as opposed to the 'fluff' produced by the industry. Just to be clear, this is not my classification or description but a distillation of commonly held and aired views by film critics and scholars about Kashyap's oeuvre as well as 'Bollywood' vs 'parallel'/alternative/new/multiplex cinemas. In my own view, over the past century of Indian cinema, the 'fluff' makers have often better, more insistent and regular at engaging with complex social concerns than many self-conscious 'parallel' film-makers, and with the added advantage of reaching a wider audience. However, that is a discussion for another time.

That Day After Everyday, as much of Kashyap's work, has high production values. The camera work is stellar, adding to both the sense of claustrophobia as well as fear of the protagonist. His use of mobile phone cameras to capture digital stalking of the women highlights the sense of micro-violations that is a daily experience for Indian women (and yes, I will not 'caveat' that - it is a rare Indian woman who has not experienced sexual harassment, gender-based intimidation, micro-aggressions and violations. And that rare woman will have to live in rarified socio-economic atmosphere available only to the likes of the country's super-elite such as Priyanka Gandhi). The constant sounds comprising of horrific news reports of VAW, crass comments by various colleagues, casual sexist comments by family members are effectively utilised. The actors are uniformly good with special kudos to Radhika Apte, the protagonist. The costumes, make-up, setting all signal a 'realist' non-glamourised, non-Bollywood world, similar if not the same as the one inhabited by most Indian women. Then there is the script, tightly structured with a couple of sharply etched and readily recognisable lead characters. Written by Nitin Bhardwaj, it works well to create the claustrophic, sinister lives circumscribed by casual sexism and persistent micro-violations.

So far so good. But then come the discomforting moments: the film ends with the harassed women fighting back (after getting trained in self-defense). While this makes for a suitably feel good moment, it also feels cliched and for a Kashyap film, surprisingly 'Bollywood.'  I must also say that I found the fight sequences less than convincing, as Kashyap seems to jettison all rules of self-defense and hand-to-hand combat to grant his 'heroines' their 'feel good' victory. Really? A knuckle duster? Which is seized by the opponent before even the first contact and then thrown away? The 'victory' such as it is feels contrived and unrealistic. Given the gritty realism Kashyap brought to Gangs of Wasseypur, Gulal or Dev D, the fight sequence and its conclusion feels gauche and heavy handed.

Then there is 'Didi' (played by Sandhya Mridul), the woman who apparently teaches the protagonist and her friends self-defense. I suppose there is some comfort to be gained in the non-heteronormative way she has been represented: short hair, 'butch' clothes, cigarettes. In my more sympathetic moment, I thought of her as a hopeful representation of female queerness in Indian cinema. But then I wondered why does a character bending gender-norms have to be represented by simplistic and reductionist masculinization? Why is her body language so gendered and in such cliched ways? Why did she remain in the background during the fight? There is a clever but unexplored cinematic moment as Didi and the husband stand on two ends of the fight, watching the harassers-turn-avengers. That tiny moment could have opened news ways of representing and seeing female characters; instead it re-inforces the masculine gaze that the film fails to subvert. Finally, she left me wondering if even our best 'alternative' filmmakers are open to considering gender and sexuality in ways that are not caricatured and stereotypical.

But the discomfort does not end there. The film ends on a 'humorous' note - of the demanding, sexist husband now cowed by his 'warrior' wife into making her tea on the morning after the fight. And yet this scene is heavy with tragedy as he asks her about the amount of sugar she prefers, indicating yet again that despite his new (temporary?) demeanour, he has made little or no effort towards the marriage. For Kashyap and the film, fear, not affection, and definitely not choice, appears to be the only motivation for men behaving kindly, gently, humanely towards women!

The ending in many ways encapsulates the problems I have with this film: in guise of making an inspirational short, the film peddles age-old victim-blaming narratives, this time from the other end of the spectrum. If the family members in the filmic text tell the women to not fight back as a way of avoiding sexual harassment, the film seems to assert that the only way to not be harassed is to fight back physically. In both cases, the onus is squarely on the women who are the victims of harassment. There is never any mention of the perpetrators, nor is there any real critique of them at any point in the film. The implicit message seems to be 'men are brutes that women must protect against.' That is a bizarrely regressive message from a director lauded for his 'progressive' films!

The film also individualises any fight back against VAW. Yes, by the end, the particular goons who have been beaten up may have learned the lesson against sexual harassment, but as any woman who has navigated public spaces in India can explain, there is no end to men who have not been taught that lesson by a mythical 'warrior' woman. There is no space in the filmic narrative to consider what happens to women who can't fight back, or if the same heroic protagonists are faced in the future by a new set of thugs. There is no understanding that the solution to VAW is not individualised punishment meted out by the state or citizens but rather structural changes in how women are perceived and valued.

Worse still, the film takes the simplistic route of equating class with VAW, and thus the 'fight back' is limited to the drunken thugs on the street, but not the men - both in the women's housing society and in the office - with cameras whose micro-violations are just as terrifying, sickening and unacceptable. Nor is the fight back aimed at the family members who are party to the embedded sexism and discrimination that aids and abets VAW.  As a result, Kashyap's protagonist, having learned self-defense can fight off goons on the street, but will stay in a loveless marriage where her husband can only muster up basic acts of sharing and affection (such as making tea) as a result of fear. There is in fact not the smallest attempt to even reference the structural aspects of gendered violence.

A corollary of this simplification is to set up men and women as irreconcilable antagonists, locked in fear and violence. Furthermore, in presenting a uni-dimensional view of men as predators or cowardly enablers, the film serves Indian men ill. Surely Kashyap can imagine a wider range of masculinities? Worse still, with the sole older woman in the film replicating and repeating misogynist narratives while the younger women battle alone, the film appears to set up VAW as a problem only for young and attractive (even if un-made-up) women. Thus the film repeats the long-held but false corollary of rape and VAW being about sexual desire rather than about power, and as such undermines its own intent, message and effectiveness.

I realise that the points raised here may well be rebutted with "it's only a short film." But even twenty one minutes are ample in hands of a sensitive, thoughtful filmmaker to make a truly revolutionary point. Perhaps if Kashyap had considered his film on the Bechdel test, he would have come up with a different story line, viewpoint and characters. Or perhaps if he had remembered his own varied cinematic examinations of contemporary Indian masculinities, the film would have had a different slant. Given Kashyap's skill and intelligence, I look forward to another film that can fully deploy his directorial skills towards making a truly inspirational film about the topic...of the current filmmakers in the country, he is one of the most capable of doing so.

Till then, I suppose we should be grateful for the scraps that India's artists throw out towards concerns of gender discrimination and VAW.

PS: I really wish this film had been subtitled. It seems a sadly inward looking to release a film with international appeal, and online, without allowing non-Hindi speakers access to it.

Casual Bigotry and Daily Living

Initially this was a post I was planning on every day sexism, but as a woman of colour, and despite the many mainstream press articles by leading neo-imperialist feminists about how intersectionality does not exist, my experience as a woman is often exacerbated by the way I experience the world because of my visible racial markers and my not-so-visible sense of self that has been shaped (and continues to be) by individual and structural responses to those racial markers. So instead I am left trying to address a complicated intersection of casual bigotry - both misogyny and racism - that I experience on daily, painfully destructive, basis. These micro-aggressions come fast and furious on a quotidian basis. For most part and on most days, I like many of us utilise the myriad of coping strategies and move on. But then...there is always that one, slightly vulnerable moment, when the defenses are down, or perhaps just the micro-aggression is a little less micro and more socially sanctioned. In those moments, suddenly and without warning, all coping strategies fail and one is left feel as isolated, marginalised and devalued as ever. Then the casual bigotry stops being casual, and suddenly grows again into the destructive, horrific, nasty force it always has been.

We often talk of bigotry - both racial and misogynist - in overt terms: names called in the playground or street, laws enacted to limit our freedoms, safety, dignity, histories of structured discrimination and centuries of complex and Hydra-headed narratives that enable it. And for many of us who live the daily experience of bigotry, as a woman or a person of colour, or in that double-whammy, as both, we know that we have continuous legal, political, economic, social battles to fight, and struggles that continue regardless of how long we have been fighting. But there is another sort of bigotry that many of us face, probably more frequently, one that is more insidious, damaging and soul-destroying. It is also more prevalent and harder to counter.

This sort of bigotry is not as easy to counter with intellectual debates on structures of power. Nor is it as terrifying and upsetting as slurs or shouted abuse on the streets. Or as physically harmful as hate-motivated physical violence. It is far more subtle and insidious. And perhaps because it is none of the above, it is the one we often are taught no strategies to counter.

As a young girl, I was taught about personal safety, specially in face of sexual harassment or assault. The men and women in my family were enlightened or informed enough to teach me the four key points to strike in case I were attacked. I was taught, perhaps more than most women, how to yell out, attract attention, make an escape. I was even taught how to speak up and seek support both from family and friends, and from the law. Unfortunately, the first time I faced sexual harassment, none of these lessons helped at all. You see, it wasn't a stranger on the street, with a scary mask and police record. The attempted assault came from someone we knew socially, was part of my parent's social circle, and occurred in a house inhabited by family friends. Suddenly, hitting hard or yelling to attract attention didn't seem like applicable or effective strategies.  I remember removing myself from one part of the crowded room to another, running into another teenage friend who giggled nervously about 'groping hands' and feeling utterly powerless. And yet in some ways, the social groper is still an overt phenomenon, one you can fight against in a range of ways...personal and social.

But how do you cope with embedded prejudice that shows up not only in a host of ways that are not only socially acceptable but also socially sanctioned and enabled by everyone around you? For me, and for many others, there is a social ritual: we walk into a gallery, book launch, literary talk, and we smile while we are consistently and repeatedly othered, devalued, dehumanised by those who are holding forth.

Yes, rape jokes in comedy clubs are a part of this experience as are literary events where 'witty' writers are lauded and applauded for their use of language while their misogyny is enabled by that same appreciation. Subtle valuing of male opinions over female ones, especially on 'big' topics such as economics, politics, war, are part of this casual sexism.  Here race gets a slightly better hand: thankfully racism disguised as wit is not nearly as acceptable these days, at least in overt ways. However, racism cloaked in more subtle forms walks the same polite spaces: what many race activists call 'white saviour complex,' is rife in the more polite parts of Western capitals as is an embedded Eurocentrism that values certain narratives, experiences, histories over others. It often manifests itself with 'amusing' personal anecdotes about travels abroad or apparently unself-conscious tales about 'foreigners' (the key to this is the implicit 'othering' with its corollary of exoticising, devaluing and dehumanising the foreigner). It shows up in academic studies including scientific ones that extend and reiterate reductionist views and stereotypes, often in guise of 'study.'  It shows up in the choice of approved cultural informers, be they journalists, writers, artists, who can and do restate older dominant narratives rather than challenging or subverting them (and are rewarded for the subservience).  It also shows up in virile defensiveness when the othered dares offer an opinion that is contrary to the accepted, popular one.

For the 'othered', this subtle socially sanctioned form of bigotry is much harder to counter. As a woman, I can call out misogyny in my writing, in my classes, and in public fora. Yet when faced with persistent casual sexism in social situations, I have no recourse. At a recent literary event, I sat feeling utterly repulsed not only by the speaker's casual misogyny but also by the laughter around me that enabled the speaker's continued and cherished belief that he were merely exercising his 'wit.'  At the end, the only act of resistance available for me was my decision to not buy his book (even though that is usual form in this particular forum) and thus register a silent, personal and most likely unnoticed dissent. Had I called him out on his sexism, I know exactly how the conversation would have unfolded: it would start with a vehement denial of the prejudice, followed by rallying of support from surrounding similar minded people, and ended with accusations hurled at me for lacking humour or worst yet, that ultimate social poison, 'being difficult' (sometimes the order of these changes slightly or all three are simultaneously taken up).

As a woman, I know from experience that I am supposed to 'play nice' or be punished with professional, social and personal repercussions in face of such subtle, socially enabled misogyny. After all, terms like harridan, harpy, bitch have all been created for and deployed against women who are socially inconvenient. As a person of colour, I am even more aware that any attempt to point out socially embedded, accepted and enabled racism - either structural or individual - marks me as the 'angry' one, the one who cannot be 'trusted to behave appropriately in polite society' that I have been let in to as reward for 'good behaviour' (as in not challenging the prejudiced narratives and actions).  The punishment for not playing nice is grim and has social, professional and personal repercussions...after all any token 'other' is easy to replace by a more amenable one!

Yet the price for living with such casual bigotry is immense. Despite the decades that have passed, I find myself seeking solace in repeated readings of Franz Fanon, if only to remind myself that the constant sense of feeling conflicted is neither a new nor solely my experience. I find myself questioning myself on a daily basis whether I am enabling the rife and casual bigotry by not taking a more active stance in challenging it. And yet, I also know that I am unwilling to pay the social, professional, personal price for a more aggressively dissident stand. On good days, I tell myself that I am working from within the beast, that every time I survive a micro-aggression, that every time I make it back to the safety of my mind and home, I am fighting the good fight. On bad days, I find myself wondering if I am a modern version of the 'house slave' (or the ayah, the collaborating Maharajah, the Macauley's elite) who help sustain the edifices of prejudice by participating in them for the lure of the dregs from the master's table.  And on both sort of days, I find myself angry at the invisible privileges that ensure that I shall remain on the margins, regardless of all I work toward and/or achieve. And on all days, I am reminded consistently that there is no escape for the likes of me! 

A Writer's Toolkit: Thoughts on Writing

Finishing a novel and starting research on a new non-fiction book within the past six months has made me acutely conscious of my own writing process and how it has evolved over the past years of publishing. Much of it has been a case of trial and error, and often just serendipity. Like many who accidentally stumble upon a winning (or at least working) formula, I have learned my process mostly on the fly but repeated and refined whatever seems to work. Many of these lessons now make up my writer's toolkit, and are essential to both my process and product.

Over the years, I have figured out my writing process and honed my craft. When I was writing my first novel, I was convinced that I needed the 'bohemian' life that went with - at least in my mind - with the art of fiction. So I cloistered myself, wrote through the night, sleeping only after the sun had risen high into the sky, and drank a lot of whisky. In my own mind, I was following in the footsteps of the greats, although mostly just punishing my liver with suitable determination. 

Once the manuscript was done, I had to gingerly return to the real world and mundane things like making a living. I remember the strangeness of those first few months of re-entering the world: I had lost the ability to have normal social conversations and needed to remember basic social skills. I could either not speak at all or would chatter incessantly, with words spilling out in generally an incoherent jumble. Although I did not recognise this at the time, I was also recovering myself as an individual from all those people who had long lived in my brain (but more on this later). 

Worse though was the depression that followed, which I initially blamed on the rejections from publishers I was rapidly accumulating.  It wasn't until nearly a year later that I realised that the depression had a more basic reason:  for the first time in my life, words had deserted me.  At the first sight of a blank sheet of paper, my mind wiped out into nothingness. I could not even write a basic message on a birthday card! As someone who has always relied on words as if it were oxygen, those were terrifying times, especially as I wondered if I had run out of words, whether I had only ever had one book in me and could and would never write another.

At the end, despite looking for professional help, it was words that saved me. An editor friend insisted that I produce something, anything, for her magazine, publishing even writing exercises that often took me days to shape and form. Her insistence that I meet deadlines forced me to write, pushed me to use the exhausted word-producing muscles that I had given up on. Then just as the novel found a publisher, I was asked to write a book on single women in India. 

Suddenly, just as I was recovering my facility with words, I had a big project. But there was no space to write it, living as I was with family, siblings, and a very large dog in a small Delhi flat. That fantasy writer's 'bohemian' life was going to be impossible if I were to deliver the book. But as my dad reminded me, "न नौ मन गेंहू होवे  न मीरा उठके नाचिहे " (As there will never be nine maund (Indian measure of weight) of grain, so Meera shall never rise to dance), a Hindi proverb emphasising that there are never ideal conditions for any action.  So I wrote my second book, still mostly at night, with a fifty kilo Rottweiler snoring at my feet and aided by copious cups of hot tea. Slowly but surely, I was learning the most important lesson of all: that writing was a discipline and a demanding one, not a lifestyle choice.

It was also the first time I noticed the cleansing powers of non-fiction. As I finalised the book, the idea for my next novel had already taken hold. I began the initial writing even as I was promoting the book on single women, writing in my parents' house in the hills, in my cramped Delhi flat, even on noisy train journeys to-and-fro as we prepared to move out of India. In my parents' house, my father and I spent hours weeding the lawns, working in companionable silence, while my mind filled itself again of characters and plots and vast colourful universes.  And then came the strange switch: even as I worked on the early stages of the novel, I moved to Barcelona. 

There I was! Finally! I was living my dream of truly being the 'writer', living in Europe, drinking loads of wine, talking about art and literature and philosophy on the beach and in little cafes, fully living the 'bohemian' life that I was sure all great writing needed as nourishment.  Strangely, my second novel is more truly 'Indian,' set for most part in a village that is much like the ones that my ancestors built generations ago. It seemed as if I could summon up India better once I was removed from its quotidian pressures and realities.  And yet something had changed: I no longer wrote at night, or at least, not late at night. Instead, I worked in the afternoons, took a break for socialising over tapas and wine, then returned before midnight to write till about three in the morning.

This time when I finished the novel, I was prepared for the familiar depression. Or rather I recognised the inevitable moment of complete devastation for what it was: overwhelming grief for the end of a project that had occupied my mind for years. A friend explains that the process of finishing a book is much like getting a divorce, or ending a relationship, with the same complexity of emotions. After all, a writer lives with a book more completely while it is in progress than most humans do with each other. Sometimes, I think that perhaps the sadness many writers feel at birthing a novel is not dissimilar from post-partum depression: one is expected to celebrate and rejoice but the exhaustion, loss of control, and fear are often more overwhelming. 

I had also been careful to not isolate myself from people during my second novel so the return to society was not nearly as disorienting as before. However, it did made me realise that my judgement about people is completely shot while I am writing: my own decisions about likes and dislikes are so over-ridden by characters in my head that I found myself wondering how I had ended up befriending people with whom I had little in common. "You just test out your characters on people" my siblings insisted, rather unfeelingly and despite my protests. Sadly I have grown to realise that they are right. It doesn't just stop there: my tastes in music and reading, hobbies, even the style of dressing changes with my characters, making me appear either fragmented or just attention deficit. And this is before I begin to have entire conversations about my characters who are - in the moment of writing - more real to me than people I know and see. Sentimental, nostalgic pronouncements on the lines "X would so love this wine/dessert/exhibition," where X is completely fictional are something my closest friends have grown inured to. 

At least, I have learned that I either have great survival skills or am madly lucky as I also acquire a lot of friends during the writing process who can cope with my dysfunctional behaviour. Indeed, some of my best friends have been made while I was deep in throes of the creative process, a testimony perhaps to their generosity or foolhardiness (or more likely, both).

Fortunately, experience had taught me skills needed to face the post-novel depression. Within months of finishing of my second novel, I moved countries (again) and began a PhD, throwing myself into research about things I knew nothing about.  Once again, the nonfiction worked to clear my head, this time more consciously. But more importantly, juggling a full time job and PhD ensured that my writing discipline got more focussed, perhaps even ascetic.  Writing late into the night was no longer possible. Neither were erratic hours and other bits of bohemia.  So instead I began writing when I could: holidays, days off, weekends, even on the tube as I commuted back and forth from work.  The thesis took up so much time that I could not think of novel-universes, so instead small miniature worlds were born in my mind, taking shape as short stories, forcing me hone my craft. From the large canvases and Pollock-like frenzy, I was forced to take up a the tiny frame and single hair brush of Indian miniatures.  I struggled, splashing like an over-sized fish caught in a tiny bathtub, but slowly I adapted, began to control my abilities, learning new skills, polishing my fiction with the obsessive precision only miniatures can provide. 

And once again, even as I finished my phd, the idea for a new novel had taken hold, germinating, growing silently as I referenced, cross-referenced, and indexed. As I defended my thesis, my mind was already full of a new world, of characters drawn as finely as in a miniature but inhabiting a world as complex and full as a large canvas. Writing short stories has made my writing sparser, more restrained, and that changed my novel, making it equally restrained. For the first time in all my years of writing, I felt that I had some control over my craft.  Moreover, for the first time I wrote as a professional, with a clear knowledge of the end result and full awareness of the discipline.  My writing time now begins early in the morning, followed by a swim, and then work. For the duration of the writing the novel, I felt more like a marathon runner than the bohemian, pushing myself to draw on all my experience, skill, stamina, and strength. 

I was ready for the downer that finishing my novel would inevitably bring although I had prepared for it mentally. But this time it didn't happen! Don't get me wrong, I am still struggling with words - this blog post is intended to force myself to write something, anything. I have again realised that I have been living in a creative haze - albeit far more controlled - and many new acquaintances are baffled by the changed persona.  It is invigorating to see art, read books, hear music for myself and not from within the skin of my characters. And once again, I have another project - a non-fiction book that will require vast amounts of research, and shall cleanse my mind for more fiction. More importantly, I don't feel the need to move countries just to find excitement to help overcome my post-writing depression.

It has been a long journey to this space, to where I feel like I have some (although not nearly enough) control of my craft and much awareness of my creative process. I no longer have to fear that I will run out of words or ideas, just because I have finished a major project. I have an endurance athlete's discipline in terms of writing and have increasingly realised that I need to be physically as healthy as my mind if I am to ensure that I keep writing for many years to come. This has sadly meant the demise of my 'bohemian' fantasies but perhaps that is not necessarily bad.  Finally, I am grateful that I have enough people in my life who not only acknowledge but support my forays into the creative universe even when they don't quite understand them.  All of these are, I have only now learned, essential for the writer's toolkit.