Thirsting for change

Nonika Singh

Parched is not an easy film to stomach. As no film that brings to the fore women’s repressed sexuality and desires ever is. Coming soon after Pink which showcased urban reality vis- a-vis women here is a tale of rural women, though cast in a very different mould and tenor.

Set in Rajasthan, as the title suggests it’s about the dry loveless lives of these three women in particular. One Lajjo (Radhika Apte) is barren, the other is a young widow Rani (Tannishtha Chatterjee) with an oversexed son and guess what they are friends with a sex worker Bijli (Surveen Chawla). Only expected the three letter word hangs heavy in their lives …in Bijli’s lives for excess of it and in Rani’s the sheer absence of it. And can a childless woman ever hope to receive love? 

Indeed, at one level the film doesn’t tell you what you already don’t know or haven’t seen before. Barren women are battered, widows can never hope to find love and a prostitute can at best hope to remain just that, though there is serious threat and competition to her position as the queen of lasciviousness and lusciousness who makes men salivate. What is different is the treatment. Yes their lives suck.

Even the seemingly wanton and sparkling act of Bijli is not without its wretchedness. Yet, the director, Leena, doesn’t wallow in their misery. Instead, she focuses on their yearning and deep seated desires to break free. How they become an instrument for each other’s freedom is what the film is all about. En route their journey of liberation the narrative becomes a trifle too brazen. Sex and sexual talks are uninhibited, not mere innuendoes. The film is peppered liberally with nude scenes too though under the watchful eye of the censors frontal nudity is fuzzed.

Indeed, Parched is a film that goes where few films dare to right into the erogenous zones of women, yet it ends rather simplistically, even predictably. Take the final scene involving Rani and her young daughter- in-law who too is a victim of misogyny, well you can almost see it coming from a mile. 

Actually with all its principal characters finding a solution to their parched state, if not quite quenching their thirst, the all is well climax leaves you thirsting for more. Too much wishful thinking, perhaps.

However, where the film truly scores is in its visual language (Russell Carpenter’s cinematography) and soars unequivocally with its performances. Radhika Apte has proved her mettle time and again and once more her mobile face mirrors the subtlest nuances. Surveen Chawla may not get the Rajasthani dialect right each time but her uninhibited act as Bijli is nailed remarkably well.

Tannishtha Chatterjee is superlative as the woman who can’t quite bury her passions beneath her black shroud. Adil Hussain in a bit part (is he a mirage or for real) can’t quite do much. But this is essentially and intrinsically a woman’s film where men are mere appendages that women are better off without. Can they then find love sans them is a ticklish query that the woman director doesn’t quite answer. 

Still her rural-scape where forces of tradition and winds of modernity are colliding, where patriarchal mindset is facing resistance from women has its moments. Some that may make the puritans go red in the ear, but many that will make you smile. Indeed, this is that rare feminist film that shows women laughing and having fun against all odds. But then urban India or rural, women are the forbearers of social change even if the change could be as small as getting a television set into the village. And for that thought alone the movie that has done the festival circuit with laurels in tow is worth seeing. A bit discomfiting but not one bit dreary.