A gust of freedom: Water, Gender, and Caste in HELLARO
A still from Hellaro - via YouTube
Abhishek Shah’s Hellaro (2019) dives deep into the intersectionality of gender, caste, and environmental issues in a drought-hit village. Saachi D’Souza reviews this thought-provoking Gujarati film.
There is a scene in Abhishek Shah's debut Gujarati film, Hellaro (2019), where the women of the village are on their daily journey to fetch water, and one of them exclaims just how suffocating and exhaustive this job is. They speak about how their roles as women are bound to the act of collecting water. The burden of the ongoing drought falls upon them—the women—while their husbands are allowed to dance to their Goddess—and to enforce motherhood upon their wives.
The exchange between the women serves to be especially symbolic for the narrative of the story: the only time that they can interact with each other is when they all set out to fetch water, every day.
Hellaro is set in Kutch, Gujarat, during the Emergency of 1975. The village exists secluded from politics and mainstream society, and has been suffering a three-year drought. The community here is your typical patriarchal set-up, with gender-specific traditions. Men of the village perform the garba for the Mother Goddess to pray for rain, while the women spend their days on a pilgrimage to fetch water.
[Hellaro asks] its viewer to engage with different parts of a woman, to perhaps understand the multifaceted complexity of womanhood, that one's identity is in constant negotiation with the self, gender, and sexuality. What marriage and its borders can do to a body is manifested in the character of Kesar, and it is Manjhri who recognises this anxiety… She explains that, when a woman is caged for so long, she could only feel overwhelmed by the sky.
Women are not allowed to leave their homes when the men are outside; their role is dictated by a history of women preceding them, who sought spaces to exercise their agency within the confines of their marriages, but ultimately failed.
In a flashback scene, the eldest woman in the village narrates an incident of a young widow whose passion was embroidery, and who immersed herself in this art form. Embroidery became for her the beginning of a clandestine relationship with herself, and it helped fill for her a home that was overcome with grief. A man who used to travel outside the village to gather information about the modern world caught a glimpse of her clothes and helped her sell them in secret. When she was caught, she ran away with the man. Both were killed brutally by the men of the village. Since then, women have been banned from textiles or art of any kind (which, if you knew anything about Kutch, is a tragedy).
When a new bride, Manjhri (Shradda Dangar)—coming from a life less caged—is brought to the village, there is a shift in the association with domesticity; of the relationships these women share not just with each other but with their homes.
Caste and gender are central themes of the film, and the writing and direction have handled them both with sensitivity and consciousness. A notable symbol in the film, however, was that of water, especially in the intersections with the central themes that the direction has so poignantly experimented with. The relationship that women have shared with water is not new, with the longstanding role of those who fetch water by traversing through harsh weather and long journeys.
When the women meet a dhol player for the first time, he begs them for water. Despite judgement from the group, Manjhri offers him some. It is that simple act of kindness, saving a man’s life from the same water that is the product of their labour, which develops into trust between the dhol player and the women.
Dhol players here usually belong to a lower-caste and suffer from social isolation dictated by the practice of untouchability. When Manjhri asks the dhol-player if he'll play for them so she can dance, he only does so after turning his back to her. She dances the garba, and slowly, all the women join, turning their monotonous daily chore into a cherished and anticipated exercise.
Social isolation that exists on account of gender and caste is vast and complex in how it is practiced and enforced. Among the group of wives, there exists the silent attendance of a widow, Kesar (Brinda Trivedi), who steps out of her home for the first time after a year and a half in the film. Hellaro showcases the stigma against widows in a powerful scene where Kesar states, with a kind of sadness that is almost aggressive: “A woman neither belongs to a village nor a city, she only belongs to her husband.”
Kesar appears and all the other women look away, causing her smile to fall, and she is forced to walk ahead, alone. This particular scene is asking its viewer to engage with different parts of a woman, to perhaps understand the multifaceted complexity of womanhood, that one's identity is in constant negotiation with the self, gender, and sexuality. What marriage and its borders can do to a body is manifested in the character of Kesar, and it is Manjhri who recognises this anxiety and defends her when the other women think that Kesar is losing her mind. She explains that, when a woman is caged for so long, she could only feel overwhelmed by the sky.
When the dhol player is dying of thirst, the group first disallows Manjhri to offer him water. It is Kesar who speaks up to say, “I am a widow. Everyone is waiting eagerly to point fingers at my character. If I was blessed like you, I would have given him water.” This becomes a commentary on the complex negotiation between an untouchable body and social exchanges. Manjhri frees herself from the grip of one of the women to offer water to the man. The scene is slow, careful, and beautiful in this expression of solidarity.
The dhol player is Mulji (Jayesh More), who enters scene from a past of grief and isolation as well. Upper castes will generally not interact with lower castes like the dhol player. Men like him may be provided a home and offered grains in return for the music, even if their homes and families have to live a distance away from the villagers. Lower castes and women are both excluded from any festivities that the villagers themselves enjoy. In a heartbreaking scene, when Mulji’s daughter and wife begin to dance to his dhol music, they are caught by the men of the village, who set fire to them and their home. Mulji is left homeless, lost, and with grief that develops into post-traumatic-stress-disorder.
The water-carrying women, however, dance together to Mulji’s dhol, to a Gujarati song that captures the freedom of movement for everyone involved in that scene:
A drum reverberates and rolls
In the empty desert of my mind
Oh, it has broadened
The horizon of my caged mind has broadened a bit
The aesthetic/cinematographic choices made in this scene are particularly intelligent and demonstrate an aspiration for joy and mobility. There is a vibrance in the choreography and intimacy in the solidarity shared among all, but there is also the freedom of desire and the freedom to desire. Garba is traditionally a dance-form meant for a community; as a performance, it encapsulates pleasure, longing, love, and desire that comes with sexuality. A scene with a group of women—who, otherwise, have an identity that is static and bound—releasing the aspiration to express and feel, through the space of movement, is a fantastic way to respond to the social structure that stifles them. But it is the same social structure and culture that is incorporated in the dance, and it brings them together. It tells you that intimacy can be found in isolation.
A still from Hellaro - via YouTube
The space of emotion that garba evokes is significant for the dhol player, Mulji, as well. He begins to feel the presence of his wife and daughter in the company of these women. Playing the dhol for them in the mornings becomes a way to channel his grief and anger.
Coming back to water. The relationship these women share with their daily pilgrimage allows for fluidity in their days, much like the nature of water itself. It is transformational and dynamic, but it is also a space that becomes political and exploited. As the village in the film suffers from a drought, the men respond through prayer and dance; the women through their own unique interaction with water. It gives them a space of protest, identity, and reflection. After a painful night when one of the women undergoes a miscarriage and shares her experiences, a mother—with bruises on her cheeks—wakes up her daughter the next morning and says, “Let's go. To fetch water. We won't die of thirst anymore.”
There is a lot more to be said about this film. The script and dialogues are written from a place of historical context, and every emotion is captured with depth and complexity. Given all the symbolism around water, identity, and protest, there is no better way this film could have ended.
As the village in the film suffers from a drought, the men respond through prayer and dance; the women through their own unique interaction with water. It gives them a space of protest, identity, and reflection.
Spoilers ahead!
Mulji is caught by the villagers, the women are brutally beaten by their husbands. Mulji is about to be sacrificed when it is decided that he be given one last wish. He asks that he be allowed to play the dhol one last time. “I will play till the leather tears off. Once it tears, burn me.” he says.
Immediately, doors around the village open up, and one by one, the women step out, despite their husbands telling them to go back inside. They have scars all over their bodies, pain and anguish painted across their faces, and upon their moment of defiance, it finally begins to rain. Nobody moves; the men are consumed by shock. “The Goddess has made her presence felt today,” one of the men says.
The women begin dancing. But this time, they never stop.
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Saachi D’Souza is a freelance writer and research intern in Ahmedabad. You can follow her at @saachidsouza
