A very young very pained girl's face is being painted, prepared for something not very pleasant. She is grimacing and to add to her pain a firm hand holds her face, stuffs her mouth with a cloth and pierces her nose with something as sharp as the dialogues of this film. As she bleeds the blood mingles with her cheap makeup.
This opening sequence is like a piercing scream in the dark that sets the mood for a film that defies analysis. How do we describe what Sanjay Leela Bhansali has done with his Gangubai? And where are the words to reify the illimitable pain that Alia Bhatt’s eyes convey? She smiles, she laughs, she dances, she bullies her enemies and berates her friends…but her eyes remain ceaselessly swathed in sorrow.
I have never witnessed a performance more heroic than Alia Bhatt’s, at least not in Indian cinema. She is in almost every frame of this masterpiece, lording order the lewd lads who infest the strikingly designed length and breadth of the redlight area in the 1950s. So before much ado, hats off to Ms Bhatt for being what she is. Also hats off to cinematographer Sudeep Chatterjee, art director Pallab Chanda and production designers Subrata Chakraborty and Amit Ray for bringing alive the redlight area of Mumbai in the 1950s without the flamboyance associated with the brothel culture in Indian cinema.
The camera loves Gangubai. It won’t let her be. Such is Gangubai’s persuasive trigger-happy charms that she even makes the dreaded ganglord Karim Lala (Ajay Devgan, as strong and magnetic as only he can be) putty in her hands.
Yes, there is something about Gangubai. She is feisty and fearless. And like that legendary woman in politics who was famously described as the only man in her cabinet, Gangubai makes the men around her look like puppets on a string. Most of the male species in this crowded but never chaotic world of sex workers are in awe of Gangubai, though all of them may not show their heroine-worshipping impulses as openly as the likeable Jim Sarbh does as a journalist.
Director Bhansali is clearly in awe of his protagonist. He celebrates her life like no other heroine in Hindi cinema. In Alia, Bhansali has a dependable ally. Giving what is unarguably the best performance by a female actor in a Sanjay Bhansali film, Alia tears through Gangubai’s skin to touch her spirit.
Alia’s Gangubai is brash and beautiful, heartbreaking and devastating. An exceptional never-seen-before performance by Alia guides us not too gently into the other vital qualities of this unquestionable masterpiece. There is almost nothing that can be faulted in the symphony of nihilism that Bhansali and his co-writers (Utkarshini Vashishtha and Prakash Kapadia) have played out at the highest pitch possible, without getting shrill.
This is the magic of Sanjay Bhansali: he touches the highest notes and yet remains lucid and articulate. Every episode in Gangubai is exquisitely crafted and punctuated by an exclamation mark. Every emotion is italicised. The revved-up energy of the storytelling never compromises the protagonist’s inherent gumption and a sense of self-worth that makes her a natural-born leader among the sex workers of Kamathipura.
It is hard to gauge how much of Bhansali’s original concept of Gangubai’s gumption Alia has actually excavated and executed from the brilliantly-written screenplay. What we see and hear are astounding in their luminosity. At the tale end Alia’s Gangu meets Jawaharlal Nehru, pleads for prostitution to be legalised , throws Sahir Ludhianvi’s Pyaasa line, ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hai?’ at the discernibly smitten PM, and gets rewarded with the legendary rose from his lapel.
Gangubai’s tryst with destiny is a gorgeous metaphor on the ‘Fallen Woman’, a favourite prototype of Hindi cinema since Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa. Except that Gangubai refuses to fall. Her ‘Fallen Woman’ stands tall, wins a municipal election and emerges a trueblue hero in her locality. It is not what most ‘Fallen Women’ get in life. But a beautiful notion to fall for. As Ghalib (whom Gangu, is seen reading) said Humko maloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat lekin dil ko kush rakhne ko Ghalib yeh khayaal achcha hai.
Not all sex workers are Gangubai. But then not every filmmaker is Sanjay Leela Bhansali. In his tenth film, he continues to be by far the finest contemporary filmmaker of the country. This time the colour palette is completely different. The orange in Devdas, the blue in Saawariya, the yellow in Ram Leela, the ebony in Bajirao Mastani here make way for a curiously compelling colourlessness.
It is the colour of despair. In Bhansali’s hands, the poetry of poverty is never ironical. These bustling spirited women in Gangubai’s kotha are visualised in shades of grey and sandy-yellow, the palette of vivaciousness that Shyam Benegal and Shakti Samanta earlier used in their brothel sagas Mandi and Amar Prem. But none could see the texture of suffering in such dazzling light.
Bhansali’s magic has never been more opera-like. But it’s not the opulent opera of Devdas or the stagey opera of Saawariya. The opera in Gangubai Kathiawadi is staged in the thick of a crowded redlight area in the 1950s. Here is where Gangubai meets her match, a young callow tailor’s apprentice Afsaan (Shantanu Maheshwari, charming) who gives Gangubai the kind of male attention she had only dreamt of. Their brief romance, replete with a bathing scene that will steal your heart, accompanied by some exquisite songs (composed by Bhansali) creates the kind of dreamy diaspora in the kingdom of grime that is just so magnificent. So Sanjay Leela Bhansali. And yet so unlike him this time.
This is a film that will be talked about for a very long time. It’s a work of many splendours. It is also proof, again, that there is no one like Bhansali. Or Alia Bhatt. The film’s closing line, ‘Gangubai came to Bombay to be a heroine. She became a movie,’ reverberates far beyond the last frame. Yes, the real Gangubai couldn’t have dreamt of a better homage.
While Gangubai Kathiawadi fills the dark desperate spaces in the lives of sex workers with sunshine on the other end of the sex spectrum was Nagesh Kukunoor’s Laksmi. Here, Brothels are NOT pleasure dens. As we watch in horrified disbelief, Nagesh Kukunoor's 14-year old protagonist being bruised, bartered, violated and battered by men of all shapes and sizes, what emerges is a deep-rooted societal bias where the girl child is often treated as a liability.
The picture that emerges in this deeply disturbing film is that of absolutely insensitive brutality towards the weak and the poor.
This ain't no sanitised brothel seen in our beautifully laid-our courtesan's courtyard in highly romanticised portrayals of the Fallen Woman in films like Pakeezah, Amar Prem. Even Sudhir Mishra's Chameli seems like a visit to the beauty parlour as compared with the bestial brutality of Kukunoor's brothel. You can almost smell the stench of stale sweat and semen in this stifling world of sexual deprivation. Standing ovation to the film's cinematographer Chirantan Das and editor Sanjib Dutta for making Kukunoor's murky world look so real.
This is no place for an innocent 14-year old girl (she could be the same girl that we see in the opening shot of Gangubai Kathiawadi). But then have we as the collective conscience keepers of the nation been able to foster a society where children, girls and women can feel safe? Lakshmi's exploitation begins early....too early. Sold off by her own father to a female corporator, Lakshmi soon finds herself in the clutches of a vicious sleazy pimp, played with stupefying gusto by the director Nagesh Kukunoor.
The tightly-wound narrative's ingrained energy-level owes a lot of its momentum to the dynamics of the exploiter and the exploited as the shared bond between Monali Thakur's Lakshmi and Kukunoor's Chinna propels the plot to a point of no return. The archetypal victim and the exploiter, Monali and Nagesh bring to the story a kind of compelling doom that dares you to flinch away in disgust and disbelief.
Lakshmi affords us no relief of escape or escapism. The brutality in the brothel is relentless. As the 14-year heroine (a true hero in every sense) is ravaged repeatedly, sometime by 6-7 men within hours, the female sexual organ becomes just a hole.
"Mujhe toh bas ek chhed chahiye," a blase customer at the brothel tells Madame Jyoti (Shefali Shah, brilliantly ambivalent in her thankless role). Don't wince. This is not the occasion to get squeamish. Kukunoor takes us through the badnaam gallis of Hyderabad.
Till mid-point, there is no respite from the relentless assault on the protagonist's body and soul...Suddenly the narrative does a volte-face and we are face-to-face with an unexpected saga of vindication. Suddenly it's payback time for Lakshmi's tormentors as a kindly social worker and an out-of-work lawyer (Ram Kapoor, playing what we've seen Sunny Deol play in Damini) come together to get justice for the ravaged girl.
And you wonder if such good Samaritans really exist anywhere outside the movies. If they did, would the horrific saga of Lakshmi's brutal exploitation ever happen? Still, the passage into compassion is excusable, even welcome. You want the better side of life to show up in Lakshmi's life. When it does, the girl embraces the spot of sunshine with heartbreaking gratitude.
There is this shared moment at the end between Lakshmi and her lawyer where she struggles to hide her tears with makeup as the media waits outside for her triumph over her tormentors. It's a moment in the narrative that confronts the complexities of exploited gender with unexpected tenderness.
Yes, there is hope for the wretched and the exploited. Lakshmi is a powerfully-told inspirational tale that doesn't brush the brutal reality of sexual exploitation under the rug. It pulls out uncomfortable home truths. There are portions of the narrative in the brothel involving Kukunoor and Shefali Shah as the pimp and the Madame that get unbearably violent and gruesome. Both come up with superlative fearless performances. Satish Kaushik as a nauseating paedophile makes your skin crawl. He is THAT convincing.
But the film belongs to singer-turned-actress Monali Thakur. As the child forced into premature womanhood Monali's portrait of ravaged innocence will haunt you forever. The folk songs in the background about treating the girl child with tender care mock Monali's numbing pain and grief as she repeatedly tried to wash off the sticky blood of lust from her wounded private parts. It's the most soul-baring performance I've seen since Seema Biswas in Shekhar Kapoor's Bandit Queen. Lakshmi is not a film for the weak-hearted and the squeamish.
The third Mandi-inspired message-in-Brothel film that I recall now is Srijit Mukherjee’s Begum Jaan in 2017. This is no Mandi. Damn, it is not even anywhere near the raw guttural emotionalism of Madhur Bhandarkar's Chandni Bar. But Begum Jaan holds together very ably to the end, thanks to writer-director Srijit Mukherji's confident hold over his characters' doomed destiny as they journey from deflowering to destruction with a raging fire in their whorish hearts.
These are women whom time or the tides of men cannot defeat. They are strong and they use their sexuality to survive. Srijit has cast sensibly for each of the sex workers in this 'period' drama (Vidya Balan drawls about menstruation with a kind of medieval glee that actress Nadira expressed in Mud mud keh na dekh in Shree 420). I am not sure if these actresses match up to their memorable peers in the Bengali version Rajkahini. In fact, this is as good a place as any to mention that Rituparna Sengupta's central performance in Rajkahini as the Madame of the endangered brothel was far more jolting than Vidya Balan. Balan fakes it from the word go. From the hookah that she insists on snorting to her periodic outbursts of anger and laughter, it's all a 'come-watch-me-do-a-National-Award' act. Her diction, a delight in other circumstances, is here an embarrassing reminder of Vidya's urbane personality being superimposed on a character who survives by her intuitive cunningness.
Barring Pitobash Tripathy's gentle pimp act (he will remind you of Naseeruddin Shah in Mandi), the male species in Begum Jaan are slippery, treacherous and self-important -- none more so than Chunky Pandey as a cold-blooded killer. As a man who kills without creed or conscience, Chunky plays one of the most despicable villains seen in our cinema. If you've seen Jisshu Sengupta in the Bengali original, you would find Chunky's performance lagging and lacking. If not, you will be chilled to your bones watching this funnyman do a flipflop.
Vivek Mushran (remember him?) does an image volte-face as a treacherous teacher whose facade of idealism crumbles in the face of self-serving greed, while Naseeruddin Shah as a royalty who likes kinky cruel sex with girls old enough to be his daughters and cold enough to be his slaughter, seems very little interested in the sex that his character enjoys.
The sexual tension between Naseeruddin and Vidya was far more interesting in Ishqiya. Here, it crumbles under the weight of carrying too much history on its shoulders. Begum Jaan is a film supported by some remarkable writing. But the political proceedings in the background are never allowed to be forgotten.
And now there is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi, a web series about happy whores in a kotha in Lahore, coming up later this year. Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan and Pyaasa are never too far away from our cinema.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He's been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
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