Existence Is Resistance: How AXONE breaks barriers for Northeast representation in Bollywood
In a film industry filled with mainstream Indian stereotypes—Hindi speaking, upper-class, ‘mainland’ Indians, that eat Butter Chicken—the pungent-smelling entrance of Axone about a community of Northeasteners in New Delhi feels like a true act of resistance.
One of the most popular reactions I’ve come across when meeting foreigners about the idea of India is, “Yum… Butter Chicken!” Certain dishes are almost synonymous in India. Bollywood, too, is often parallel to the idea of India—our films are our repository of culture, music, fashion and food. Our film industry is often a mirror to the mainstream culture: it shapes it, and is shaped by it.
In an industry where Butter Chicken and Biryani, with the occasional Idli, Dosa, Dhokla and Fish Curry, are representative of India’s food culture, the pungent-smelling Axone’s entrance into mainstream cinema—now showing on Netflix—feels like an act of resistance.
The first I heard of Axone was when a friend from Nagaland described the delicacy that the 2019 film is named after: ‘You know, it’s a fermented soybean dish, really good but smells like crazy!’ Axone is the centerpiece of director Nicholas Kharkongor’s second full-length feature. A group of 20-somethings in Delhi from the ‘Northeast’ try to cook the traditional dish for a friend’s wedding. The wedding day is an obstacle course, featuring a loud, interfering land lady (Dolly Ahluwalia), various racist neighbours, and quirky characters that take them on a tilt-a-whirl ride, bouncing across homes and terraces, community halls, and little hideaway restaurants looking for a ‘safe space’.
‘Northeast’ is a term used in the larger parts of India to collectively identify (and sometimes, misidentify) millions of people living in diverse communities from Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim, Tripura, and sometimes, even those from Nepal and Tibet. The term erases not only tribal and ethnic identities of the communities, but also the national identity, and in doing so, creates an amorphous ‘other’ to ‘mainland India’. This particular ‘other’ has been caricaturised in India by mongoloid features, objectification of their women as ‘loose’, eating strange foods and having acoustic guitar skills. Axone provides commentary all of these caricatures—and more.
This film needed to be made. In an industry where the idea of India represents little else than upper caste and upper-class Hindi speakers from Mumbai and Delhi, where even Manipur’s boxing legend Mary Kom was portrayed by Priyanka Chopra, Axone is a foot in the door to open up some space for representation.
One does not envy the barrage of brickbats that the director will likely Khargonkar will receive, often from the ‘Northeast’ community itself, for oversimplifying stereotypes and using cultural tropes like the ‘odd’ wedding rituals, or a particularly preachy scene with Chanbi (Lin Laishram) and Bendang (Lanuakum Ao) where she gives him the usual spiel of ‘how he only makes friends from Northeast’ and ‘not all Indians are bad’.
The film presents its characters within the framework of the ‘Indian gaze’, and in this way, it seems to be an appeasement to Bollywood: they’re ‘different’, but just familiar enough to be accepted by mainland cinema. However, here is where a more nuanced appreciation of this film is required, especially in an entertainment industry that constantly sets the bar lower and lower with each Dabangg-esque release.
This film needed to be made. In an industry where the idea of India represents little else than upper caste and upper-class Hindi speakers from Mumbai and Delhi, where even Manipur’s boxing legend Mary Kom was portrayed by Priyanka Chopra, Axone is a foot in the door to open up some space for representation. The last mainstream films I remember which had representation from the region were Dil Se and Tango Charlie—both which cemented the violent, separatist images that Indians have of the Northeast.
Axone is refreshingly unapologetic. It does not spoon-feed information about its characters ethnicities. It leaves it to the viewer to figure out what language Zorem (Tenzing Dalha) is speaking, or which region Hayna (Milo Sunka) is from. The knowledge gap is ours—and not of the film.
In one of the Axone’s strongest scenes, a group of neighbours gather at Chanbi’s doorstep and start berating her for cooking. When she even attempts to explain, a rowdy Delhi muscle man steps right up to her face and starts screaming to shut her up. As a viewer, my body froze at this moment, and my heart skipped a beat at the tone and volume of his voice. That scene is not an altercation; it is an attack. One can feel the helplessness that Chanbi feels—fight or flight? Well, almost every girl in India who has lived away from family can attest to being at the mercy of their neighbours and landlords who monitor their every move. Chanbi couldn’t fight, neither could she flee, and her reaction is one I have seen several times in the fifteen-odd years of living in girls’ hostels, PG’s and shared rented apartments across the country.
The film covers macro and micro issues in some simple lines. In another scene, a friend asks the ‘Northeast’ group, “You don’t think of yourselves as Indian or what?” The line highlights a malaise of Indians who want to fight to occupy Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, who want the citizens of these areas to think of themselves as Indians, and yet, who discriminate against those citizens for not being ‘proper Indian’. This same question of fractured identity is raised when Sayani Gupta’s character Upasana is constantly reminded even by her own friends that she is not ‘proper’ Northeast, because she is from Nepal. Gupta is the only lead actor in the film who is not a Northeasterner.
The applied label of ‘Northeast’ has taken up by some to use as armour, a survival technique of belonging to a family in a country that denies belonging to the land. This conflation of identities beyond borders is superbly shown when the entire friends-circle of different ethnicities rally on the phone, each speaking their unique languages to try and find an alternate location for the axone. They all belong together by unbelonging. It is reminiscent of how South Asian students abroad—whether from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, or Bangladesh—can feel united in meeting someone ‘from home’.
This same idea of diversity within the clique is presented in the end of Axone, when the group steps out in their wedding finery, each in their unique ethnic wear. The panache, the causal walk, the confidence and—oh, the shoes, the shoes! In a society where ethnic wear is defined by a kurta and palazzos, the only other time rest of mainstream India is privy to such an ethnic display is during the annual Republic Day Parade where the inevitable floats from Assam have Bihu dancers. The glamour of this wedding scene offers a refreshing gaze where this fashion choice is not looked upon but looked at—with awe! It breaks out of the standard colonial images of ethnicity to something out of a scene from Sex and the City.
Axone is a tad pulled in too many directions. One can easily see this as having been a more focused food film, or music film, given both the beauty of the cooking shots and the original score. One can also critique it for superficially presenting the plight of the migrant students without going into neo-colonialism, enforced inequality, and identity politics that are the cause of resistance movements in the Northeast. However, it is unfair to place the weight of addressing the myriad facets of structural racism faced by an entire region on the shoulders of Kharkongor alone.
What Axone has done is create a space for, simply, being. Sometimes just being is resistance. Cooking and eating your own food are no longer routine, but a form of resistance. That the film exists is resistance.
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Shayoni Mehta is freelance writer and photographer. An Erasmus Mundus Fellow, she has taught Sociology at University of Pune and Symbiosis (Liberal Arts and Law). Her writing and photography has appeared in PARI, Indian Express, Telegraph and DNA. She teaches sociology online to fund her initiative The Social Lockdown, which helps distribute rations to the lockdown victims. You can follow her on Instagram @shayo_ni and on Twitter: @inoyash.
