Habib Faisal’s Daawat-e-Ishq (2014) opens with a series of meetings in which a middle-class Hyderabadi father (Anupam Kher) gets increasingly frustrated with the outlandish dowry demands by families for the rishta of his daughter (Parineeti Chopra). These images of casual entitlement are meant to trigger the transformation of the girl into a disgruntled ‘fake’ bride determined to trap the next greedy family under the anti-dowry law (Section 498a). The “film,” however, takes center-stage when she truly falls for her Lucknowi fiancé, a noble son to villainous parents.
Faisal ends up trivialising an epidemic by romanticising it: girl-power, love conquers accountability.
Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj’s documentary Martyrs of Marriage, now streaming on Netflix, opens with a series of happy images of Syed Makhdoom Ahmed. The young man’s sister recalls the time he found a partner on shaadi.com. Within days, his wife tells him that this is her fifth marriage and fourth identity in seven years. The music goes from cheery to grim. Bollywood directors make entire movies – rom-cons , as it were – out of this moment.
The long con
Yet, he soldiers on and has a baby with her. We are conditioned to think she came clean because perhaps his companionship altered the scheming core of her personality. Ahmed’s sister then reveals that the wife soon slapped a dowry-harassment case against her unsuspecting husband. This is followed by grainy cellphone footage of Ahmed: his final message before committing suicide.
This is when it becomes clear that searching for a narrative in a culture that decorates various shades of victimhood under the guise of circumstantial heroism is not only counterproductive but also irresponsible. Mainstream cinema traditionalises the emotional complexities of a ‘con’ in the same way IPC 498a was hastily drafted in 1983 as an urgent reaction to the nation’s mood. Both thrive on decent intentions, but end up as flimsy entities prone to appropriation and popular sentiment rather than technical efficiency.
Slipping through the cracks
In socially conscious stories, screenwriters equip their female protagonists with a sassy conscience that enables the films to make redemptive ‘heroes’ out of them. She invariably cons men who deserve to be conned, with a flamboyance that suggests she were avenging a lifetime of atrocities on womankind. One can’t help but imagine how the likes of Ahmed’s wife might have derived their skewed idea of feminism from these movies only to realise there is no three-act structure to cushion the consequences of their actions. In a recorded phone conversation, you can even sense an air of filmy defiance in a lady’s voice as she boasts to her brother about her lawyer-tutored threats.
Over 90 minutes, Bhardwaj presents several male victims – some dead, others dead within – through the eyes of their exploited families; they describe the “legal terrorism” executed by remorseless female hustlers intent on subverting the coy-bahu stereotype. In between, she offers a one-sided view of the history surrounding the Indian Penal Code’s most abused law. Lawyers, retired judges, detectives and politicians weigh in on the issue; their opinions are organised to highlight the archaic nature of a rule that failed to evolve with time.
Not one of them, though, mentions the word – love. Owing to the transactional nature of arranged marriages, the stricken families bear the look of people who have been deceived in a business arrangement. Only, the cost is more mental than monetary. There is a different, more relevant film in how the commerce of the arranged-marriage system begets the ruthlessly commercial nature of these scams. Given that the concept of life is routinely equated to that of a public enterprise in most parts of India, it comes as no surprise that millions exploit life clauses to turn their hearts into enforcers of trade opportunities.
Rough cuts
But Bhardwaj eschews this angle of socio-cultural commentary – as well as the mention of the new Supreme Court guidelines – to explore the fundamental compassion of her subject. Bhardwaj’s storytelling is biased, the craft unsophisticated, but there is a sense of unfiltered activism in the way she earns the trust of a wide range of voices. When the grieving sister reads out Ahmed’s hand-written verses from his last note, the words look a little smudged – his tears might have soiled the piece of paper, lending a lyrical jitteriness to his final thoughts.
Similarly, the documentary doesn’t shy away from exhibiting its own untidy stand, its form smudged by the impassioned tears of its filmmaker. Unlike its shiny fictitious counterparts, Martyrs of Marriage counts solely on the imperfect humanity – and not diminished masculinity – of these cries, in an era defined by loud gender politics.
