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Sex, Songs and the Desi Feminist Noir1

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Sex, Songs and the Desi Feminist Noir1 NCJCF 12 (1+2) pp. 97–111 Intellect Limited 2014 New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film Volume 12 Numbers 1 & 2 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ncin.12.1-2.97_1 Krupa shandilya Amherst College The long smouldering night: sex, songs and the desi feminist noir1 absTracT Keywords This article argues that the films Ishqiya/Romance (Chaubey, 2010) and Dedh film noir Ishqiya/Romance 1.5 (Chaubey, 2014) by Abhishek Chaubey, represent a new genre feminism of films, namely the ‘desi feminist noir’, which is characterized by all the elements of Ishqiya film noir, such as the murky distinction between good and evil, the lawlessness of the Dedh Ishqiya streets and the femme fatale. However, in these films the figure of the femme fatale is Bollywood used to forward explicitly feminist trajectories of love, romance and sex. I give a brief queer desire history of romantic coupling in Hindi cinema, and analyse the films’ departure from these articulations of romance. Next, I focus on a song sequence from each of the films to explicate the desi feminist femme fatale’s subversion of the romantic conven- tions of the Hindi film song and her inauguration of a new aesthetic of romance. In conclusion, I consider the implications of this new genre for Bollywood cinema. This article argues that the films Ishqiya/Romance (Chaubey, 2010) and Dedh 1. Many thanks to Crystal Parikh, Naomi Schiller, Ishqiya/Romance 1.5 (Chaubey, 2014) represent a new genre of films, namely Jini Kim Watson and the ‘desi feminist noir’. The ‘desi feminist noir’ is characterized by all the Joseph Keith for their elements of film noir, such as the murky distinction between good and evil, invaluable comments on an early draft of the lawlessness of the streets and the femme fatale. However, in these films this article. the figure of the femme fatale is used to forward explicitly feminist trajectories 97 NC_12.1&2_Shandilya_97-111.indd 97 2/11/15 3:56:44 PM Krupa Shandilya of love, romance and sex. I give a brief history of romantic coupling in Hindi cinema, and analyse the films’ departure from these articulations of romance. Next, I focus on a song sequence from each of the films to explicate the desi feminist femme fatale’s subversion of the romantic conventions of the Hindi film song and her inauguration of a new aesthetic of romance. In conclusion, I consider the implications of this new genre for Bollywood cinema. The film Ishqiya opens with a dark screen and the humming of a woman’s voice. As the frame lightens, we see a woman, Krishna, lying on her side and singing: Ab mujhe koi intezaar kahan Woh jo behthe thhe … abshaar kahan/ I don’t wait any longer Those tears that flowed (from my eyes) Flow no more As the camera comes closer we see she displays all the signs of married Hindu femininity: bangles on her wrists, a red sari, and most prominently, the vermilion in her hair. The song ends as a pendant of the Taj Mahal, the tomb emperor Shah Jahan built for his wife Mumtaz, dangles before her. Krishna holds the pendant in her hand and turns. The camera zooms out and we see a man, Vidhyadhar, lying beside her. She turns to him and says, ‘Jahapaana, makabaraan tou banwaa hee laye ho, ab dafna bhi do humein’/‘Your highness has prepared the tomb, now bury me in it’. The mise-en-scène of the rumpled bed sheets, the half-naked Vidhyadhar, and Krishna’s own heaving bosom implies that we are in the middle of a scene between two lovers. In this context, the song suggests that Krishna’s lover is here and hence the stream of her tears is finally stalled. The dialogue that follows is not a death wish, but rather a request for sexual pleasure and its culmination, an orgasm. This veiled request is both unexpected and subver- sive, for it foregrounds female sexuality, hitherto repressed in Bollywood cinema. The purposeful double meaning of the opening sentence of this film – both death and desire – sets the tone for the rest of the film and for its sequel, Dedh Ishqiya, both of which portray the unbridled sexual desires of their female protagonists and the dangerous games they play to fulfil these desires. Ishqiya is the story of two small-time crooks – Khalujaan and Babban, on the run from their boss, Mushtaq, who seek refuge with and are seduced by the newly widowed Krishna. Once she has secured their affections, Krishna manipulates them into a carefully orchestrated kidnapping, designed to exact revenge on her husband, Vidhyadhar, whom she believes is still alive. The plot is successful and Vidhyadhar is forced to return to Krishna who confronts him about his staged death and his attempt to kill her. When Vidhyadhar turns violent, Khalujaan and Babban return to rescue Krishna, who abandons her dying husband and walks away with the two men. Dedh Ishqiya is not so much a sequel as an extension of the themes of Ishqiya, namely lust, romance and guns in contemporary small-town India. Once again we meet Babban and Khalujaan on the run from Mushtaq, this time seeking shelter in Mahmudabad where Khalujaan poses as a Nawab/ prince as he attempts to woo Begum Para, the wealthy, beautiful widow of the late Nawab of Mahmudabad. While Khalujaan falls in love with Begum Para, Babban, posing as his servant, falls in love with Begum Para’s companion, Muniya. The two women manipulate the men into an elaborate kidnapping 98 NC_12.1&2_Shandilya_97-111.indd 98 2/10/15 1:24:29 PM The long smouldering night plot, to which the men readily acquiesce. In the course of events, the men 2. The word desi means South Asian, discover that the two women are lovers and have used them to escape the and here I use it confines of the palace. The film ends with the two men in jail and the two adjectivally to connote women living together with the money they extracted from the men. South Asian-ness. This article argues that Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya inaugurate a new genre 3. Film critic Anupama of films namely the ‘desi feminist noir’,2 to expand on the term ‘desi noir’ Chopra describes 3 Ishqiya as a ‘desi noir … that film critic Anupama Chopra uses to describe Ishqiya. In keeping with so feverish, it makes the conventions of noir, the noir films of Bollywood cinema such as Satya/ everything else look Truth (Varma, 1998), No Smoking (Kashyap, 2007) and Company (Varma, 2002) anemic in comparison’ (Chopra 2010, original among others are largely set in the urban metropolis, (Bombay, Dubai) and emphasis). Although as Ranjani Mazumdar argues, the films use ‘the crime narrative to invoke a she coins the term to describe this particular cynical worldview and an entirely different perceptual entry into the city. We film, this article argues see a complete absence of tradition and a gradual destruction or absence of that the term can be romance’ (2010: 152). Unlike these films, Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya, set in the used to describe a new cinematic oeuvre. small-town rather than the urban metropolis, invoke older Indian art forms in their cinematic and aural aesthetic. Most significantly, the crime narrative is 4. As Elizabeth Bronfen argues, the femme interwoven with an unconventional romantic plot driven by a feminist femme fatale of film noir is fatale. A particularly While the traditional femme fatale is a proto-feminist figure who rejects resilient the heteronormative conventions of patriarchal society only to be punished for contemporary her transgressions,4 the desi feminist fatale who drives this genre is rewarded example of tragic sensibility …. rather than punished for her infractions of the patriarchal order. This femme [S]he functions fatale is feminist because she rejects the institution of marriage in favour of both as the screen for fantasies of sex and erotic playfulness, and in doing so inaugurates a feminist narrative omnipotence and trajectory of romance characterized by unconventional romantic liaisons. She as the agent who, is desi because she rejects the linkage between sexual autonomy and western- by ultimately facing the ization, and seduces men through the affective registers of romance specific to consequences of Hindi film songs of the 1950s and 1960s to articulate an alternative paradigm her noir actions, of femininity and sexuality. comes to reveal the fragility not only of any sense of omnipotence Forbidden Kisses: a brieF hisTory oF The bollywood that transgression of the law affords, Film song but, indeed, of Romantic love and marriage have been the primary preoccupation of Hindi what it means to be human. films from their inception. The injunctions of the Indian censor board against (2004: 105 original depictions of sexual relations on-screen prompted film-makers to deploy emphasis) innovative techniques to depict romantic coupling in Hindi cinema from 5. See especially Madhava the 1950s to the 1980s.5 In visual terms, scenes from nature – a bee kissing a Prasad’s Ideology of the flower, two sunflowers nodding in the sunlight, a field of flowers bobbing in Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (1998). the wind – became the simulacra for the on-screen kiss. Songs whose lyrics elaborated and expanded on these tropes usually accompanied these visuals. For instance, in the film Silsila/Continuance (Chopra, 1981), the protagonist Amit sings to his lost beloved, Chandni: yeh raat hai, ya tumhaari zulfein khuli hui hai/hai chandni ya tumhari nazrein se meri raatein dhuli hui hai/yeh chand hai ya tumhara kangan/ sitaarein hai ya tumhara aanchal/Is this the night or are your locks in disar- ray/Is this moonlight or are my nights awash with your gaze/Is this the moon or your bangle/Are these stars or your sari draped on your body Penned by the famous Urdu poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, it is little wonder that the tropes utilized in this song are drawn from a vast array of Urdu poetry, 99 NC_12.1&2_Shandilya_97-111.indd 99 2/10/15 1:24:29 PM Krupa Shandilya 6.
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