Shakti, or the female potential

Some time ago I went to see Naalu Pennungal (Four Women), four short films stitched together to encompass the range of the female experience in 1940s Kerala. The movie was directed by the eminent Adoor Gopalakrishnan, recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest for achievement in film. Adoor's heyday was in the early 1980s, at which time, a struggling generation yearning for escape found no respite in his gritty arty cinema. My father once reminisced amusedly how his movies included 5-minute long hand-washing sequences! With a recommendation like that I steeled myself for what could possibly be two very long hours in a small cramped theatre. I couldn't have been proven more wrong. The short films bear elemental titles: The Prostitute, The Virgin, The Housewife, The Spinster, and are based on short stories written by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai.

The Prostitute opens with the title character spurning for the nth time a humble laborer's offer of marriage and companionship. Convinced by her friend that this would be her only means of escape from the underground world they inhabit, she acquiesces, in the process growing rather fond of her new husband, and takes up hard honest work as a commitment to her new life. However, her reputation precedes her, and her erstwhile clients continue to harangue her for favors. Her husband teaches one of these drunkards a lesson, as a consequence of which they are framed for illicit public fornication (they share a mat on the roadside). The judge and attorneys are elitist anglophiles, and mock the couple as the street trash they believe they are, refusing to acknowledge the validity of their marriage without documents to prove it. They are sentenced to jail in spite of the their constantly repeated, and only, defence, "we are husband and wife".

The Virgin begins with the arranged marriage of a beautiful virtuous maiden to a shopkeeper from a neighboring town. She is constantly reminded that he turned down many proposals before her, and regaled with stories of his stinginess and odd habits with doting affection by her mother-in-law. The doltish husband goes right back to work after the wedding, returning late at night and avoiding any contact with his new bride. The couple return for a visit to her hometown, where the husband displays an absurdly enormous appetite and corresponding lack of shame at the various homes they are invited to. The mortified bride is spurned by him nightly on pretext of his being too full. He abandons her at her ancestral home, spurring the village to cast aspersions on her character as the only possible reason. Unaware that his daughter is nearby, her hurt father reprimands the marriage broker and demands the dowry in return if a divorce is desired. The bride walks up in just anger and asks why such a big deal is being made when they are not even husband and wife. Her confused parents ask what she means by such a declaration. She reiterates "we are not husband and wife".

The Housewife is the story of a childless married woman, who is visited by her paramour of years ago. She confides in him that they have tried everything to have children but in vain, and he concludes with obvious ulterior motives that the fault is not hers. Stirred up by these thoughts, the woman complains to her husband about his excessive working later that night, and brings up her need to have children; he walks away in frustration at her odd behavior. The ex-lover makes it a point to mention the next day that he has sired eight and can give her the child she always dreamed of having. She is momentarily swayed, but they are interrupted by the visit of an elderly uncle. Later that evening her husband returns uncustomarily early, and surprises her in an amorous mood. The next day she turns away her lover in disgust at herself, and swears loyalty to her husband. Years later, we hear her voice as if just having recounted a story, one that concludes 'and that's how I almost had a child. But I know I did the right thing'.

The Spinster is the stark tale of an unmarried woman. We open with her latest go-see ceremony from a prospective groom, who decides he wants the sister 5 years junior to her. Her mother, concerned at her age, and unwilling to lose an eligible match for her second daughter begs her not to oppose, and she willingly sacrifices her happiness. Her sister is married as she watches, growing quietly desperate, and she finds herself soon after relegated in status, while her sister, as a married woman, is given more of a say in important household decisions. The sister is pregnant in quick succession, and a few years later we are at the wedding of their youngest sister. Her desperate mother begs her elder brother to find someone for her soon (she's past 30 at this point), and while he reassures her it is a priority, he instead finds a bride for himself. Some years later, the ailing mother on her deathbed begs of her children to show mercy to her eldest. The matronly middle sister assures her they will look after her, and she is taken to their home after the death. While living there she forms an attachment to her two nieces, and clings on to them in vicarious parenthood. Soon the heavily pregnant middle sister grows jealous and suspicious, claiming that the villagers are spreading rumors about the 'threesome'-like living arrangement with her elder sister and her husband. The elder sister is sent away to her now desolate ancestral house. There her youngest sister offers to take her away, but she insists she is comfortable with her lot in life and promises not to bring shame upon the family. Some time one night we hear a man knock upon her door and call out her name, and she quickly answers in ashamed fear and entreats him to go away. She tells him her mind was swayed momentarily by weakness and desperation and led her to accept his proposition, but that she 'is not that kind of woman', and would he please spare her for the sake of God. Her entreaty ends on a note of strength: "after all, it should not be impossible that a woman can live without a man".

What I find amazing about each of these stories is that in spite of the setting (poor to lower middle class families in 1940s Kerala), each of them resonated with me as a non-resident Malayalee in the 21st century. In Kerala, a traditionally matrilineal, nay almost matriarchal, family structure is but theory these days. The only remnant of our proudly feminist past is that women sometimes carry their family name as a middle name (which I insist is only a reflection of elitist traditionalism, and not one of liberation), and inherit property. Expectations of women in Kerala changed irrevocably following British colonization, and to this day we subjugate our needs, desires and personalities to those of our men. Sure, to the untrained eye, it can seem that Kerala women are very liberated, which holds partly true considering the extreme misogyny that characterizes other parts of India. Malayalee women are the most educated in India, and Kerala boasts an opposite trend in the sex ratio of females:males compared to almost every other state in India. Another somewhat more dubious sign of progress is the highest divorce rate in India. Many Malayalee women hold high positions in government, corporations, and healthcare. My own grandmother went to college for her bachelor's in chemistry at a time when other parts of India burned young widows alive. My mother, a surgeon-professor, gave birth to two girls, both of whom she always egged on to be the best they could be whatever it was they chose to do.

On some level, much of this progress is superficial. As an unmarried Indian woman in her late 20s, I find the burden of expectations has shifted from my career and achievements, to the task my parents have set themselves of ending my existence in single womanhood. Having had to think about marriage for a while now, I find myself increasingly analyzing societal expectations and their place in modern life. What struck me about the movie is that I could just as easily restate my first sentence as 'encompass the range of the female experience, period'. Society has not reached a stage where complexity is attributed to women or their thoughts. Elemental role definitions (virgin, spinster) still are applied to us readily. A woman’s place in the world is still defined in large part by her sexuality, nay perceptions of her sexuality, and her marital status. Note that the titles of the four short films stand in almost direct opposition to each other, i.e. a woman is either a prostitute or a virgin, housewife or spinster. There is no middle ground. No shades of gray. Unidimensionality is an underlying assumption of modern womanhood. Mankind finds comfort in this fact.

While I cannot condemn the concept of generalizations since they are implicitly Darwinistic, essential to our primordial survival instincts, I do call upon my sistren to fulfil their responsibilities to themselves, to their 'being'. I wish for you that…

you would not let your current societal obligations limit what you or your daughters may be

you do not brand as ‘failure’ one in your global sisterhood that stands up to the system, abandoning the conventional trappings of womanhood many of us were saddled with at birth

you abandon the language of implicit angry misogyny that characterizes much human experience (‘whore’, ‘wifebeater’, ‘cuckold’, and the like)

you recognize yourself as a whole human being, and never let yourself be summed up in one word

Now inasmuch as it may appear to the naked eye as such, I am not really a misandrist. I have known some wonderful men that have respected the Tolkien-like complexity of my personality and contributed in no small measure to development of the same. The concept of complementarity is one that appeals very fundamentally to my eastern worldview, one that encompasses the Yin and Yang, the Ardhanareeshwara, the very Balance in the Cosmos. I am very lucky to be female in this timeless equation with the universe, embracing my traditional role as receptacle for all that is good and ungood.

It is poignant in no small measure that the most fleshed out portraits of the joys and trials of being a woman that I have encountered recently in film was brought to life in the sensitive adroit hands of one Mr. Adoor Gopalakrishnan.