In the annals of the dates and events that changed India, September 21, 1995 may not have as much of a recall as, say, the Emergency, or the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, the unlocking of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi complex in 1986 and the subsequent destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the foisting of the Mandal Commission report and L.K. Advani’s Rathyatra in 1989, or the Gujarat riots of 2002. But it’s an important marker.
It was the first time we were witness to the kind of mass hysteria, fuelled by misinformation and rumour, that has become par for the course with the rise of social media. It was the day when Indians all over the country, particularly those in urban pockets, and across the world woke up to the news of Lord Ganesha drinking milk.
This was an era before the mobile phone became ubiquitous. Before WhatsApp became a university of its own. Before social media replaced a responsible media and breaking news took over news. Rumour has always been part of society and politics since times immemorial, and indeed the many localised riots that plagued India for decades grew out of these rumours. But ‘Ganesha drinking milk’ demonstrated the power of the rumour and the ability of communication networks to give it wings beyond local pockets.
Interestingly, both films operate at a level of heightened emotions
I was reminded of the miracle of the milk-drinking god and the miraculous ability that rumours have to transcend the educated, rational and logical mind while watching two very different films revolving around gossip-mongering — Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story and Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah. It is a sign of the times that these two films are being talked and written about in the same breath, in the same sentence. One, a film that has at its origins the kind of distortion and fabrication of facts that now passes off as, well, facts. The other, a film that addresses how such falsehoods seep into and become a part of our lives and the deleterious effects of the majoritarian stamp of approval they get.
Interestingly, both operate at a level of heightened emotions. While Afwaah goes the over-the-top black comedy route to address issues that have made headlines in the last few years — love jihad, lynching, WhatsApp forwards, IT cells, viral posts — The Kerala Story does more or less the same, with a significant difference: with none of the artistic merits or responsibility of Afwaah; it is so over the top that the drama becomes unintentionally comic and scary in the same vein.
Close to 35 years later, it’s an image I have not forgotten. A young man humming ‘Hazaron khwaishein aisi’. It is as much the solitary figure sprawled on the terrace as the haunting tune that evokes a time and mood in stark contrast to the broad contours of a political thriller the film is. We have just heard a livelier version of the song rendered by the film’s three elderly protagonists. It’s been the hallmark of the director ever since in his best films — the ability to create these quieter, reflective moments in the middle of the chaos surrounding the larger narrative. The film: Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin (1986). The director: Sudhir Mishra. Appraisals of the filmmaker, which tend to focus more on Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin and Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, do a great disservice to his debut film.
I am not sure why the film, which I watched on Doordarshan in 1988, and this sequence in particular resonates as much even today. Maybe it evokes memories of a less sceptical time, maybe for a lost generation like mine, devoid of all political leanings and any ideology, the film offered a vicarious involvement. Maybe I have always loved the understated.
Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah goes for the jugular
Afwaah is the very antithesis of Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin. If the latter is elegiac, the former wields a sledgehammer. Afwaah is as in your face as the filmmaker’s debut was understated. Right from the get-go as you watch a scion of a political family engineer a riot, and as a henchman pins down a man pleading with folded hands for his life (a hat-tip to Arko Datta’s photograph of Qutubuddin Ansari during the Gujarat violence), Afwaah goes for the jugular.
The filmmaker has himself, on social media, addressed what many have called the absence of nuance in Afwaah, citing the instance of one character, Chandan (Sharib Hashmi), who is both perpetrator and victim. However, I feel it is the film’s very lack of nuance that works for it. That makes it one for the era. After all, where is the nuance in anything around us? When everything is Breaking News screamed at poisonous decibels, what price understatement?
How do you address something as ludicrous as love jihad and lynching related to cow slaughter any other way? How else do you communicate the surreal irony and ultimate tragedy of a caste Hindu being lynched by a mob that mistakenly believes he is a Muslim trafficking cows?
Is there any other way to lampoon the literati and their self-absorbed snobbery and elitism than how the writers do in the climactic build-up to a literature festival, even as a hunted man seeks and is refused asylum in the walled precincts of the festival, with authors and cultural impresarios and ‘intellectuals’ applauding a man dying on stage in the mistaken belief that that too is part of the musical act playing out. Our ‘intelligentsia’ has abdicated all moral responsibility – they are too scared and too mindful of protecting their own interests and cosying up to bigotry of the worst kind if it suits their interests. The indictment of our ‘liberal’ authors, lit fest organisers, editors and the cultural elite could not have been more on the nose. And it works precisely because of that.
And that final shot. A posse of dumb donkeys being led every which way by anyone with the gift of the gab – truth, facts, nuance be damned. It is satire in broad strokes, but when you look at the farce that is our political and social life, is there any other way?
In fact, watching Afwaah I wondered how it went past the censors in an environment where the minutest deviation from the regime’s line is a strict no-no. I guess it could because of its tone. It reminded me of the basic conceit at the heart of Godard’s Contempt where the producer, who wants a ‘Hercules’-style interpretation of The Odyssey, is taken for a ride by the filmmaker, who wants to make an art film, and never realises that he is being had. I could be wrong, but I have a sneaking feeling that the mandarins in our censor board never realised the import of Afwaah, its insidious messaging and indictment of the establishment, camouflaged as it is in the ‘tone’ it opts for. Or maybe they were sure of its futility given the other film gearing up for release the same day (The Kerala Story) and the complicit silence of those who otherwise champion the cause of the issues Afwaah highlights.
(This is the first part of a two-part article. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer)
