This is something I wrote the other day as an assignment. But I loved the movie 'Gandha' too much, to let this piece of writing get lost on Professor X's desk. In this, I have written about the first and the third movement in the film. Consciously I have avoided writing about the second part since it convinced me that Milind Suman should just stick to condom ads and quit trying to act. I don't want to add about its horrifyingly jarring background music and about a hysteric Sonali Kulkarni. Now that is enough. I will stop talking about what I did not like about the film. Read on.
For all those who left
For all those who left their smell behind
For all those who did not come back…
… Because they left their smell behind
The film ‘Gandha’ by Sachin Kundalkar begins with this particular epigraph which bears an uncanny resemblance with Pedro Almodovar’s epigraph at the end of Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All about my Mother)-
"To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother."
Hence, from the very onset of the film, the director establishes a connection with the legendary film maker Pedro Almodovar. He also declares that this film is his tribute to Pedro Almodovar and Won Kar Wai, whom he calls ‘the masters of new world cinema’. We also catch glimpses from Almodovar’s All About My Mother and Won Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love during the second movement of the film. The film therefore makes a conscious reference to the two most credited authors of New Age cinema and follows their preoccupation with seeing the male and the female figures in a rather new light.
The film ‘Gandha’ is divided into three very loose narratives connected through a sense of smell. One of the interesting questions to ask is about the symbolic value of smell in this film other than that of a sutradhar (a connecting link). The other question that we may ask is about the symbolic value of smell within the family, as portrayed in literature or films. When I saw the film, the first thing that struck me was that the concept is unusual, rather unique. Smell being the least sanctified perception of all, especially when compared to the rational/truth value linked with the sense of sight and hearing; we are left to wonder why the filmmaker chose to deal with such a sense. When pondering over my experience with the realm of smell in films/ literature, I could not come up with any direct reference other than probably that of the novel ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ by Patrick Suskind, later made into a film in 2006 by the same name. However, the way Sachin Kundalkar deals with the sense of smell is entirely different.
The realm of smell differs from the realms of sight and hearing in its lack of association with a kind of rationality or truth value. Say for instance, we say ‘I saw it with my own eyes’ or ‘I heard it with my own ear’. Sight or hearing is necessarily the proof of truth. It is deeply connected with the world of rationality, logic and intellect--- the world of the male order. In the film, the director deals largely with women or at least the feminine order. The traditional attributes awarded to a woman’s expression of desire (sexual or otherwise) for a man are either irrational or immoral or both. Hence the agency of a woman in a relationship is very difficult to be expressed in a film which deals with the rational masculine order (in turn the realm of sight or hearing). By choosing smell as the pivot, the dues ex machina of the film, the filmmaker is very consciously choosing something that is conventionally feminine. He is engaging in a feminist project which celebrates the feminine world of sense, sensuality, sensitivity and sensibility. The political point behind focusing on something like smell is a way of representing the reality of the family--- not through intellect--- but through the physicality, sensuality and the day-to-day materiality of life.
The film is therefore realist in nature like those of Almodovar or Won Kar Wai. It is not the stark visual effects of Italian neo-realism that the director uses. Instead, like the other two masters of new age cinema, he tries to smudge the boundary between fantasy and reality, and in the process follows a new-realism genre. For instance, the first story of a girl falling in love with the smell of a man and the fulfillment of her desire might apparently be an absurd narrative, but the very sense of a family, as captured in this segment, through the sensual nature of smell, is extremely real. The reality of the film is nothing extraneous. The film creates a realism of itself.
Like all aspects of feminine nature, smell also has two aspects: the sacred and the profane. A lot of Indian films refer to the sense of smell, mostly ‘good’ smell, but in almost all cases, the bearer of the smell is the woman and the pursuer/desirer of the smell is the man. Here Sachin Kundalkar differs in his treatment. In the first segment of his film ‘Gandha’, called ‘A Bride to be’, the filmmaker inverts the traditional concept and gives a certain agency to the woman. This kind of agency, in the conventional language of signs and symbols, may be attributed to a kind of urban upper-class woman. ‘A Bride to be’ manages to evade the stereotype by first, bringing in the evocation of smell, most importantly good smell, in the male order and secondly by inscribing this agency to the woman within a neo-traditional version of the age-old Krishna-Radha love story. The female protagonist, Veena is portrayed in two different spaces within the film: the space of the family and the space of the outside world. When the girl from the traditional family steps out into the outer world, she is awarded with the agency of smell. It is the sense of smell that enables her to fulfill her dream of having a lover and being able to proudly announce it to her parents. The film shows that even within the neo-traditional figure of a religious Hindu family, there is a possibility of the existence of a separate independent feminine agency without the complete breakdown of the values of the familial structure. What is truly subversive about the film is that the man uses all the familiar lures that a heroine applies in a conventional Indian film to trap the girl (e.g. dropping the handkerchief, leaving the book behind, allowing the girl to follow him on the bus, to his house, finally to his workshop and the ultimate acceptance of love at the end of the film etc.) However, in spite of this, the film does not seem radical because it is well-subsumed within the traditional love story of Radha-Krishna (Radha chasing Krishna to win his love) --- sanctified of its lewd innuendos. In a sense, the film is quite similar to most general main-stream boy-meets-girl love stories. However, what becomes unique to this seemingly traditional narrative is how the outside world of a woman is shown positively as a world perceived through a different sense organ- not the eye or the ear but the nose. As if there is a completely different yet quite logical perception of the world that is only available to the figure of the heroine. The smell becomes most important in the scene where the girl discovers the man working night-shift in the agarbatti workshop. At once, the sacredness of the smell and the goodness of the man are juxtaposed in the narrative through the portrayal of the industrious nature of the man. The catharsis of this gentle comedy is also the catharsis of tradition and modernity in a typical Indian sense. The film tells us how the demand of a feminine/feminist agency can still be fulfilled without affecting the traditional Hindu religious patriarchy. It is important here to note the introduction of the boy that the girl provides to family- “I have been proposed by an extremely religious groom”. What is laudable in this film is therefore the realist creation of a distinctly feminine perception of the world without falling into the trap of logical/illogical, sensible/intelligible etc.
The same theme of the feminine perception becomes more acute and more ideologically unproblematic in the third movement of the film--- ‘A Woman Sitting Aside’. This segment does not have any sense of comedy, theatricality or even a sense of catharsis unlike the first segment. The figure of the almost pre-menopausal woman begins as an oppressed figure and remains so. She is also a figure of modernity. She is the only woman within the family who reads the newspaper. She is also the only woman who reminds her family to use a new blade for child-birth. She is the woman who laments not being able to study further in her life. The story line is a typical narrative of the oppression of the woman within a traditional patriarchy where the only way a woman can become valuable is through reproduction. However, beyond the skeletal narrative, the main engagement of the film is with a radically different perceptive world of the female figure: full of household smells—acute, intimate and intricate in its details. There is no message of true emancipation in this segment. There is only the celebration of femininity that cannot be reduced to a passive/traditional sense. So, what is redeeming for this film is the atmospheric build up of a feminine perception that defies all the dictums, stereotypes and logic of traditional Indian patriarchal family. The music adds tremendously to this build up. The camera work is fantastic, especially the framings. The use of smoke in the room where the child is born at once serves two purposes. First it reinstates the sacred nature of child birth. Second it creates an almost mystified impenetrable world for Janaki, which she cannot see but can only smell. The ambiance is so real that one can almost slice through those layers of smoke. There is a balanced amount of interplay of illusion and reality in the film which helps to highlight the stark nakedness of the oppression she suffers. As Janaki sits in the room upstairs with the little boy, they guess the ingredients of the food being made downstairs--- curry leaves, butter, sweet semolina, milk and vermicelli--- all comprehended through her agency of smell. When she reads out the poem from the book, she smells the pages of the book. It is as if she sees, hears, tastes and touches the world outside her isolated cell through the sense of smell alone. The film ends with the end of her days of isolation- her days of sitting aside. She picks up the baby and smells him. Her bonding with her sister-in law is remarkably close and strong. This is very similar to the way Almodovar depicts an extremely feminine and yet distinctly agentive world of fraternity among women who share something very fundamental between themselves.
To sum it up, ‘Gandha’ images the family from the other way round in the other manner with the help of other perceptions that patriarchy does not take account of.
For all those who left
For all those who left their smell behind
For all those who did not come back…
… Because they left their smell behind
The film ‘Gandha’ by Sachin Kundalkar begins with this particular epigraph which bears an uncanny resemblance with Pedro Almodovar’s epigraph at the end of Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All about my Mother)-
"To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother."
Hence, from the very onset of the film, the director establishes a connection with the legendary film maker Pedro Almodovar. He also declares that this film is his tribute to Pedro Almodovar and Won Kar Wai, whom he calls ‘the masters of new world cinema’. We also catch glimpses from Almodovar’s All About My Mother and Won Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love during the second movement of the film. The film therefore makes a conscious reference to the two most credited authors of New Age cinema and follows their preoccupation with seeing the male and the female figures in a rather new light.
The film ‘Gandha’ is divided into three very loose narratives connected through a sense of smell. One of the interesting questions to ask is about the symbolic value of smell in this film other than that of a sutradhar (a connecting link). The other question that we may ask is about the symbolic value of smell within the family, as portrayed in literature or films. When I saw the film, the first thing that struck me was that the concept is unusual, rather unique. Smell being the least sanctified perception of all, especially when compared to the rational/truth value linked with the sense of sight and hearing; we are left to wonder why the filmmaker chose to deal with such a sense. When pondering over my experience with the realm of smell in films/ literature, I could not come up with any direct reference other than probably that of the novel ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ by Patrick Suskind, later made into a film in 2006 by the same name. However, the way Sachin Kundalkar deals with the sense of smell is entirely different.
The realm of smell differs from the realms of sight and hearing in its lack of association with a kind of rationality or truth value. Say for instance, we say ‘I saw it with my own eyes’ or ‘I heard it with my own ear’. Sight or hearing is necessarily the proof of truth. It is deeply connected with the world of rationality, logic and intellect--- the world of the male order. In the film, the director deals largely with women or at least the feminine order. The traditional attributes awarded to a woman’s expression of desire (sexual or otherwise) for a man are either irrational or immoral or both. Hence the agency of a woman in a relationship is very difficult to be expressed in a film which deals with the rational masculine order (in turn the realm of sight or hearing). By choosing smell as the pivot, the dues ex machina of the film, the filmmaker is very consciously choosing something that is conventionally feminine. He is engaging in a feminist project which celebrates the feminine world of sense, sensuality, sensitivity and sensibility. The political point behind focusing on something like smell is a way of representing the reality of the family--- not through intellect--- but through the physicality, sensuality and the day-to-day materiality of life.
The film is therefore realist in nature like those of Almodovar or Won Kar Wai. It is not the stark visual effects of Italian neo-realism that the director uses. Instead, like the other two masters of new age cinema, he tries to smudge the boundary between fantasy and reality, and in the process follows a new-realism genre. For instance, the first story of a girl falling in love with the smell of a man and the fulfillment of her desire might apparently be an absurd narrative, but the very sense of a family, as captured in this segment, through the sensual nature of smell, is extremely real. The reality of the film is nothing extraneous. The film creates a realism of itself.
Like all aspects of feminine nature, smell also has two aspects: the sacred and the profane. A lot of Indian films refer to the sense of smell, mostly ‘good’ smell, but in almost all cases, the bearer of the smell is the woman and the pursuer/desirer of the smell is the man. Here Sachin Kundalkar differs in his treatment. In the first segment of his film ‘Gandha’, called ‘A Bride to be’, the filmmaker inverts the traditional concept and gives a certain agency to the woman. This kind of agency, in the conventional language of signs and symbols, may be attributed to a kind of urban upper-class woman. ‘A Bride to be’ manages to evade the stereotype by first, bringing in the evocation of smell, most importantly good smell, in the male order and secondly by inscribing this agency to the woman within a neo-traditional version of the age-old Krishna-Radha love story. The female protagonist, Veena is portrayed in two different spaces within the film: the space of the family and the space of the outside world. When the girl from the traditional family steps out into the outer world, she is awarded with the agency of smell. It is the sense of smell that enables her to fulfill her dream of having a lover and being able to proudly announce it to her parents. The film shows that even within the neo-traditional figure of a religious Hindu family, there is a possibility of the existence of a separate independent feminine agency without the complete breakdown of the values of the familial structure. What is truly subversive about the film is that the man uses all the familiar lures that a heroine applies in a conventional Indian film to trap the girl (e.g. dropping the handkerchief, leaving the book behind, allowing the girl to follow him on the bus, to his house, finally to his workshop and the ultimate acceptance of love at the end of the film etc.) However, in spite of this, the film does not seem radical because it is well-subsumed within the traditional love story of Radha-Krishna (Radha chasing Krishna to win his love) --- sanctified of its lewd innuendos. In a sense, the film is quite similar to most general main-stream boy-meets-girl love stories. However, what becomes unique to this seemingly traditional narrative is how the outside world of a woman is shown positively as a world perceived through a different sense organ- not the eye or the ear but the nose. As if there is a completely different yet quite logical perception of the world that is only available to the figure of the heroine. The smell becomes most important in the scene where the girl discovers the man working night-shift in the agarbatti workshop. At once, the sacredness of the smell and the goodness of the man are juxtaposed in the narrative through the portrayal of the industrious nature of the man. The catharsis of this gentle comedy is also the catharsis of tradition and modernity in a typical Indian sense. The film tells us how the demand of a feminine/feminist agency can still be fulfilled without affecting the traditional Hindu religious patriarchy. It is important here to note the introduction of the boy that the girl provides to family- “I have been proposed by an extremely religious groom”. What is laudable in this film is therefore the realist creation of a distinctly feminine perception of the world without falling into the trap of logical/illogical, sensible/intelligible etc.
The same theme of the feminine perception becomes more acute and more ideologically unproblematic in the third movement of the film--- ‘A Woman Sitting Aside’. This segment does not have any sense of comedy, theatricality or even a sense of catharsis unlike the first segment. The figure of the almost pre-menopausal woman begins as an oppressed figure and remains so. She is also a figure of modernity. She is the only woman within the family who reads the newspaper. She is also the only woman who reminds her family to use a new blade for child-birth. She is the woman who laments not being able to study further in her life. The story line is a typical narrative of the oppression of the woman within a traditional patriarchy where the only way a woman can become valuable is through reproduction. However, beyond the skeletal narrative, the main engagement of the film is with a radically different perceptive world of the female figure: full of household smells—acute, intimate and intricate in its details. There is no message of true emancipation in this segment. There is only the celebration of femininity that cannot be reduced to a passive/traditional sense. So, what is redeeming for this film is the atmospheric build up of a feminine perception that defies all the dictums, stereotypes and logic of traditional Indian patriarchal family. The music adds tremendously to this build up. The camera work is fantastic, especially the framings. The use of smoke in the room where the child is born at once serves two purposes. First it reinstates the sacred nature of child birth. Second it creates an almost mystified impenetrable world for Janaki, which she cannot see but can only smell. The ambiance is so real that one can almost slice through those layers of smoke. There is a balanced amount of interplay of illusion and reality in the film which helps to highlight the stark nakedness of the oppression she suffers. As Janaki sits in the room upstairs with the little boy, they guess the ingredients of the food being made downstairs--- curry leaves, butter, sweet semolina, milk and vermicelli--- all comprehended through her agency of smell. When she reads out the poem from the book, she smells the pages of the book. It is as if she sees, hears, tastes and touches the world outside her isolated cell through the sense of smell alone. The film ends with the end of her days of isolation- her days of sitting aside. She picks up the baby and smells him. Her bonding with her sister-in law is remarkably close and strong. This is very similar to the way Almodovar depicts an extremely feminine and yet distinctly agentive world of fraternity among women who share something very fundamental between themselves.
To sum it up, ‘Gandha’ images the family from the other way round in the other manner with the help of other perceptions that patriarchy does not take account of.
