Last December, Shanker Raman thought it was quite fitting to have his debut film Gurgaon premiere at the first International Film Festival and Awards in Macao. He could see the likeness between the two worlds—the one portrayed in his film and the place where it was playing to audiences for the first time. The lavish real estate and gleaming construction all around Macao seemed to correspond well with the aggressive, cut-throat world of builders that Raman’s Gurgaon is set in.
In the moody, atmospheric noire that releases in the country early August, the nouveau riche builder family of Kehri Singh emerges as a site of conflict. There are battles over legacies and inheritances. It’s about sibling rivalry and jealousies, deceits and deceptions. It’s about a remorseless chase for power, one crime leading to another, the cycle of violence, burden of guilt and ghosts of the past that have a tragic bearing on the present. The amoral, corrupt ecosystem often identified with the city of Gurgaon (now Gurugram) gets embodied in a complex manner in the unscrupulous ways of the family.
During a chat in Macao, Raman claimed Gurgaon didn’t begin with the place itself but as a story, a thriller that could have played out anywhere in the world. It got contextualised in Gurugram in the process of writing. All because of Raman having grown up in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR).
Shaky ground
The themes of modernity, comfort and stability and a concomitant sense of alienation and isolation, integral to the film, get perfectly personified in the city. The film builds on the prevalent notion about the place—the original promise that it was built on and the eventual belying of it. “You lay a foundation, build on top of it. You realise there are these faultlines. In order to hide them, you further build on top of them. So you have a whole edifice that is shaky but you can’t fix it. If you try to do that, it will collapse,” says Raman of Gurugram; something that holds true for the Kehri Singh family too. But there is a non-judgemental, forthright manner in which Raman looks at both the place and its people, how they live by their own rules.
Gurgaon is not the only film strongly rooted in the milieu and sub-culture of the Haryana side of NCR. Mumbai, Delhi and Punjab have for long been the favourite backdrops for Hindi cinema—from the Gateway of India and India Gate to Punjab’s mustard fields for the hero and heroine to cavort in. In the past few years, as Hindi cinema has started to explore varied terrains—from Uttar Pradesh to Gujarat via Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh—Haryana seems to be emerging as the favourite on-screen dystopia. It’s the heart of darkness, a bit like Bihar in films such as Shool ( 1999) , Gangajal (2003) and Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).
Haryana might be Bollywood’s new Bihar but instead of politics, filmmakers’ gaze is focused on socio-economic issues. At one level, Haryana is the quintessential underbelly of crime—big and small. So Syed Ahmad Afzal’s Laal Rang (2016) looks at the blood bank scam, profiteering from the illegal sale of stolen blood. Vishal Bhardwaj’s anarchic Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola (2013) was about the illegal acquisition of agricultural land and the attempt to turn green fields into SEZs. The same year, Atul Sabharwal made Aurangzeb in which a family of cops is out to get a real estate biggie and land shark.
There is an obvious urban-rural divide. Here a modern, liberal and liberated Bharat rubs shoulders with a conservative, old-fashioned India on whose farmlands the symbols of development—malls, multiplexes, offices, condominiums, expressways and gated communities—have sprung up. City slickers live alongside their rural brethren, the fears and anxieties of the former playing off against the aspirations of the latter. Laal Rang brings alive the male bonding, the restlessness, the aspiration for mofussil cool and takes us closer to a hedonistic subculture, all grounded in earthy, rough humour, crude innuendoes.
In Gurgaon ,the younger son of Kehri Singh loves Bon Jovi and wants to attend a rock concert but is denied entry. The emerging clash of cultures manifests as fights in clubs and shootouts at toll booths. Most Haryana films make a strong statement on these socio-cultural flashpoints. Perhaps the best expression of it comes in Navdeep Singh’s NH 10 where Gurgaon is spoken of as a growing child: “ Badhta bachcha hai, kood lagayega (It’s a growing child, it will leap and bound).”
If it’s Haryana, can the portrayal of patriarchy and a deep-rooted male entitlement be far behind? Here men can themselves be victims of the ideals of masculinity that they are forced to live up to. A grown-up son gets thrashed by an alcoholic father in Gurgaon , his pent-up rage forever unresolved.
The women, just as in real life, are placed in the most complicated zone. They are pawns, good luck charms and victims of khaps and honour killings. On the one hand, their destinies seem to be in the control of men. The daughter, Preeto, in Gurgaon is sucked into the family business but her father’s love comes with conditions attached, and is eventually about assuaging his own guilt. Yet, there is also a strong sense of agency in the women. For Raman, Preeto is the hero: “She has her own fears, insecurities, the burden of someone having done her a favour, yet she deals with it and wants to make a difference.”
Graphic reality
G Kutta Se gets graphic in its depiction of male entitlement, machismo and fierce rage—how women are the easy targets and objects of day-to-day exploitation. What disturbs the most is the participation of women themselves in their own oppression. Yet, you also have a woman on the run from her uncaring husband in the company of the driver she is in love with.
Last, but certainly not the least, are the blockbuster, populist representations of Haryana in Dangal (2016) and Sultan (2016). In the latter, the PM’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padao Yojana plays out in the backdrop of female foeticide and a lopsided sex ratio with posters plastered on the walls of village homes proclaiming: “ Yahi vachan hai sabse achcha, rahe surakshit jachha bachha (The best vow is that mother and newborn should both remain safe)” or “ Ghar mein shauchalaya banwayein, bahu beti baahar na jaayein (Build toilets at home so that women don’t have to venture out)”.
In Dangal , there is the obsession with having a male child but then coming to realise that girls are no less than boys. In both films, you have women go beyond domesticity and early marriages. But are the choices and decision-making truly in their hands or do they eventually rest with the men? The jury is still out on that.
