Geeli Pucchi : An Account of the Inheritance of Trauma and the Desire of an Untouchable: A Critical Film Review

Abstract

The piece is a critical review of a part of a contemporary anthology. The film is written and directed by a contemporary Dalit filmmaker. The author discusses the portrayal of caste in the film while deconstructing the identity of both the protagonist and the antagonist, discusses their traumas and caste locations. The author further discusses how being Dalit, a woman and bearing an identity other than that of being heterosexual is a lethal combination in both rural and urban India even today. The author brings focus on caste and the power structures prevalent today and how they change the experience of love, intimacy and sexuality, how the bodies of Dalit folks are undesirable and continue to remain untouchable.

Geeli Pucchi is a clear and concise commentary on caste in present-day India. Unlike many other films that discuss caste in a coded language, Geeli Pucchi is loud and clear about its narrative and discussion of caste and the politics surrounding it in urban India. The two main characters, Bharti Mandal and Priya Sharma, come in with their multiple identities. Neeraj Ghaywan, the writer and director, illustrates innumerable instances of their vulnerabilities as Dalit and queer folks through his courageous writing.

Bharti is a Dalit, queer woman whose identity is out in the open; surname, color of her skin, her clothes, her smell, her appearance and her ancestral occupation are enough evidences for one to assess her caste location. Ghaywan has covered all these aspects thus commenting on how marginalization is systemic and organized, strongly refuting the present-day popular misconception that caste is outdated. In the context of the workplace, she is the only woman who is employed at the factory, an outcaste in the male-dominated factory set-up. Her queerness is confused in the narrative. Although much less about her gender identity is spoken of, it looks like sexuality and gender are blended and the writer makes the mistake of using them interchangeably. Internalized heteronormativity finds its way in the narrative with Bharti, an openly queer woman’s rather lazy character sketch. Bharti is portrayed as a stereotypical butch person, conveyed through her body language and choice of clothes. Though Bharti’s character is seen from a heteronormative gaze, we also learn in the plot how she gets blended in the factory with the other workers who are all cisgender heterosexual men.

Although Ghaywan fails to portray the nuances of a queer identity, he does make a sincere attempt at discussing caste and patriarchy. The plot makes it clear that the factory has only one toilet. It is only after Priya’s arrival that the manager instructs for a separate toilet to be built for women. Until now just like Bharti’s identity, her sanitary needs were also invisiblized. This is a social commentary on the systemic invisiblization of sanitation for Dalit women. In India today discussing caste is more important than discussing gender. An oppressor caste woman still has a higher social status and thus power over a Dalit man.

Within the first five minutes of the film, Ghaywan establishes the caste-based injustice at workplace that the plot revolves around. Bharti comes from a family of midwives, having acquired education, and the ability to work in a factory is itself breaking a dozen shackles of caste, while Priya hails from a Brahmin family and has acquired the position of a data operator in the same factory because she can read palms. The same position that Bharti has been struggling to achieve and is denied despite being aptly qualified. The manager of the factory is seen manipulating Bharti by telling her that while all the other men working in the factory are ‘Kamgaar’ meaning workers, she is a ‘Kaarigar’ craftsperson. While this argument may be perceived as good natured by many, due to the manager’s rather frail attempt at communicating to Bharti that her work is valued, it is nothing but appropriation of caste. This is nothing but a systematic attempt at binding a Dalit folk to inherit, maintain and pass on the status assigned to them by Manu. The two main vehicles of the caste system are occupation and endogamy. Dalits for eons have been bound and segregated by limiting them to a set of occupations that are inherited across generations. Endogamy is a way of maintaining caste, further asserting the purity–pollution complex, a sick measure that the caste system functions on. Later in the plot, the manager is seen handing over these responsibilities to Bharti on Priya’s insistence when she goes on a maternity leave. The intersectionality of caste and patriarchy is portrayed clearly in this scene. While women are oppressed by men, Dalit women are further oppressed by Savarna women due to the status that their dominant caste membership awards them. The Savarna woman plays the role of either a perpetrator or a rescuer in the lives of Dalit women, all the while reserving power and status quo. Ghaywan has tried to tell the realities thus keeping the characters grey, rather than using a black and white narrative. A lot has been spoken in the silences.

In an interview with Scroll, Ghaywan shares how he was conscious about allowing the characters to live their multiple identities in the most realistic ways possible. He speaks of how he did not want to put the onus of righteousness on the hero and villainize the antagonist (Jhunjhunwala, 2021). This limits a narrative and gives the viewer a chance to cling onto the exaggerations and deny the existence of social realities. Ghaywan’s grey characters are authentic, opportunistic, political and tactful. The power struggle of the characters leaves the viewer no other choice but to introspect.

While coming out as a queer person has its own complexities, coming out as a Dalit person is portrayed as even more devastating. The film travels through the dualities of caste and sexuality of the characters; while Bharti is seen as someone who struggles to live with dignity while performing her authentic identity from her caste location and sexuality, Priya plays being naive and childlike to fulfill her desires. She consumes all that she wishes from the companion and is seen sharing a fantasy of a secret world with her. While she is in conflict with herself, feelings of guilt, dissatisfaction, self-doubt and often reminiscing a lost lover, she builds a thick silence and often engages in a non-committal playful flirting with Bharti. This sexual tension and play dissipate soon after Bharti decides to come out to her as Dalit. Priya’s silenced casteism comes to surface and Bharti becomes untouchable.

A clear caste-based division and assertion of power is seen when Bharti is asked to serve sweets to the staff and later distribute amongst the workers what is left, although it is not her job to do so. While this power assertion is humiliating for Bharti, Priya’s silence is agonizing. Power structures are the vehicle for oppression, and power structures in India are built systemically in a way that favours the oppressor caste. The oppressor has the power to humiliate. While this humiliation causes agony to the recipient, it becomes a trauma response, and subordination is learnt, taught and inherited as a coping mechanism, a survival skill across generations.

Another powerful subplot arises when Bharti is seen providing her home as a space for Priya and her spouse to have sex when they plan to have a child. This is a reflection into the mutilated self of a marginalized person who tries to give in too much in the form of kindness, favour, etc. in a hope to be accepted. An untouchable knows the longing for being touched. This longing of the self is what can makes one them a subject of exploitation in society. The Dalit self is left feeling chewed and spat out, consumed, spent.

The film ends with an interplay of victimization and oppression. As a psychotherapist, I find myself drawn to studying the impact of these roles, the victim and the oppressor. While all women are victims of patriarchy, caste reserves a special place for women of dominant caste, giving them some power to oppress Dalit women. Is the Savarna, the oppressor, dependent on their victim to experience this sense of power? Whether through playing the role of the perpetrator or rescuer. How is the caste system complementary to the oppressor? What motivates them to let it carry on? What does it serve the oppressors’ self?

All that we inherit from our ancestors, the social and cultural capital, personality traits, genes, defence mechanisms, survival tactics and trauma is at the centre of who we are and who we can become. While dominant castes have a social and cultural capital and special reservations, Dalits must build their own discourse of development due to decades of systemic deprivation and the inheritance of trauma. This inherited trauma sits in the subconscious heavily and a core belief system is built. Our core belief system is built during the formative years through the stories we hear from our parents and grand parents. While their tales of survival and resilience create a narrative for us, often for Dalit children this narrative is one that either dissociates them from their identity in order to hide their caste location and live in fear of being “exposed” and ostracized, or a shame associated with the self, or harden them to prepare to be a world that is unjust, cruel and bound to fail them. In either case, a Dalit child grows up with a sense of alienation with the self and the world, the child may often learn subordination as a survival skill and a feeling longing for intimacy from their peers. The wounded, deprived child within us governs us even as adults. One has to go through reprogramming, revise their core belief system. While certain coping mechanisms may have been important to survive as a child, as an adult one needs to revisit them, reassess their place in life as it is now and reparent themselves to be more rational. I believe that is the only way to liberation.

Stakeholders who engage with people personally and professionally must remain cognizant of their own biases and internalized casteism in order to propagate social justice and an anti-caste sentiment. Anti-caste does not mean keeping oneself away from it and denying its existence. An anti-caste sentiment comes from a school of thought of social justice and liberation for all, a basic human right.

Whether at a classroom, workplace, films, arts, books, journalism or therapy, stakeholders are responsible to remain consciously aware of this history to be able to do justice to their work. We are in dire need for Dalit affirmative psychotherapists who understand the struggles of Dalit and Adivasi folks and the nuances of internalized casteism. As a therapist, one plays an integral role when working with clients, treating their wounds in an open and non-judgemental space, and non-judgementality does not sprout from unawareness. It in fact comes from a scientific and experiential understanding. I am reminded of what a very eminent teacher once told me, ‘Everything that is personal is political and everything that is political is personal’.