{"id":716,"date":"2016-07-30T17:27:52","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T17:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=716"},"modified":"2016-07-30T17:27:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T17:27:52","slug":"haraamkhor-dibakar-banerjee-anurag-kashyap-sudhir-mishra-tigmanshu-dhulia-masaan-haasil-khosla-ka-ghosla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=716","title":{"rendered":"Haraamkhor and Other Tales from Small-Town India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">L<\/span><\/p><\/div><p>ast weekend Shlok Sharma\u2019s <em>Haraamkhor<\/em> finally released after a protracted battle with the Central Board of Film Certification. The movie, which won the Silver Gateway Award at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in 2015, was stuck with the board because of its provocative theme: The \u201clove story\u201d of Sandhya, a 15-year-old girl, and Shyam, her 35-year-old school teacher, set in a small industrial town in Madhya Pradesh. The CBFC\u2019s major objection was that <em>Haraamkhor<\/em> portrayed its titular character, the teacher played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in a poor light.\n\nYet, the teacher-student relationship is only a loose backdrop for an incision into small-town India. The duo\u2019s relationship is reflected in several other odd pairings: In the friendship between Mintu and Kamal, Sandhya\u2019s tuition mates; in her father\u2019s affair with a nurse he wants to marry; in the marriage between Shyam and Sunita, also his former student.\n\n<em>Haraamkhor<\/em> goes on to address statutory rape, teenage pregnancy, parental alienation, and love, taking the context out of our overexposed metros. Its most convincing vignettes are set at the open drinking water station in a sarkari school, against the fading distempered walls of the schoolteacher\u2019s quarters, on unpaved roads where the protagonists are forced to ride a dated Luna, and in the dusty, flat plains where windmills churn on.\n\nIt\u2019s a small film with a short story told on a large canvas. It\u2019s also a heartening reminder of how far we\u2019ve come in witnessing a kind of film that, during the \u201980s, could not even have been classified as \u201cparallel cinema\u201d. These are films helmed by producers and directors convinced that their actors, their script, and their firm grip on their contexts \u2013 not their budgets or their stars \u2013 are enough to pull in an audience.\n\n<em>Haraamkhor<\/em> is a part of a conversation started a decade and a half ago by <em>Gulaal<\/em>, by <em>Haasil<\/em>, by <em>Dor<\/em>, by<em> Khosla Ka Ghosla<\/em>. It is possible to make and release a film like <em>Haraamkhor<\/em> today because it has predecessors like <em>Manorama Six Feet Under<\/em>, <em>Peepli Live<\/em>, and <em>Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi<\/em>. This mainstreaming of the small Hindi indie has been possible because of directors like Anurag Kashyap, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, and Dibakar Banerjee.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>But this isn\u2019t a class-mass divide anymore as much as a toss-up between whether one wants to escape that weekend or whether one wants to think. <\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nIn a freewheeling chat with Arr\u00e9 last year, Banerjee spoke about two kinds of films (and two kinds of audiences) that exist in India, drawing a parallel with two movies that stood on opposite ends of 2015\u2019s filmic spectrum. The one, Bollywood, has one purpose alone: to entertain, to provide an escape, \u201clike <em>Bajrangi Bhaijaan<\/em> does.\u201d \u201cThe other, which we may call anything ranging from indie to art cinema, makes us think,\u201d he said. \u201c<em>Masaan<\/em> is an example. I\u2019d go watch both films \u2013 <em>Masaan<\/em> because I\u2019d like to be engaged with it and <em>Bajrangi Bhaijaan<\/em>, out of a sense of curiosity.\u201d Banerjee noted that a large number of people, mostly the urban elite, within the small audience for <em>Masaan<\/em> will also watch <em>Bajrangi Bhaijaan<\/em>. But only a minuscule portion from the huge audience for <em>Bajrangi Bhaijaan<\/em> would go in the reverse direction to seek out <em>Masaan<\/em>.\n\nBut this isn\u2019t a class-mass divide anymore as much as a toss-up between whether one wants to escape that weekend or whether one wants to think. As Banerjee pointed out, he never thought his films would find favour in smaller towns. \u201cI found bigger fans of a political film like <em>Shanghai<\/em> among business people,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we have fully tapped the depth and breadth of the potential of our market.\u201d\n\nHe went on to discuss why Bollywood has so special a place in our minds. \u201cIts religiosity is bigger than Hollywood,\u201d he said. \u201cAbroad they have weekend activities: they go fishing or take up adventure sports. And we? We have cinema. It\u2019s everything perhaps because we are a poor country. Our escape is often an image.\u201d Escapist fare usually offers the comfort of familiarity and easy ingestion, said Banerjee. Earlier, Bollywood\u2019s tropes were family, patriarchy, and a woman\u2019s chastity. \u201cNow, the new tropes are teenage love \u2013 never mind that a 40-year-old actor will still play that teenager,\u201d he said.\n\nBut there are silver linings even to such a reticulated star system. Aamir Khan, said Banerjee, has at least attempted to explore a range of films and directors. \u201cHe was in <em>Raakh<\/em>, for Christ\u2019s sake. He was also in <em>Dhobi Ghat<\/em>,\u201d said Banerjee. \u201cBollywood has a number of intelligent stars who are willing to experiment. But often, their experimentation is limited by the talent and ingenuity of the directors that they find and the ability of the audience to accept new, provocative, challenging, and exciting cinema.\u201d\n\nThat might be changing, with <em>Haraamkhor<\/em>\u2019s acceptance. Banerjee remains sanguine about the future. \u201cOne of the best statements to come out of Bollywood is what Adi Chopra told me one day,\u201d he recalled. \u201cHe said that he fervently believed that \u2018what is niche today will be mainstream tomorrow.\u2019 And that is my hope for Bollywood.\u201d\n\n<em>With inputs from Shaikh Ayaz<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Haraamkhor is a small film with a short story told on a large canvas. It is part of a conversation started a decade and a half ago by Gulaal, by Haasil, by Khosla Ka Ghosla.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[1287,1288,1289,1290,1291,1292,1293,1294,1295,148,1296,1297,1298],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-anurag-kashyap","tag-bajrangee-bhaijaan","tag-dhobi-ghat","tag-dibakar-banerjee","tag-gulaal","tag-haasil","tag-haraamkhor","tag-khosla-ka-ghosla","tag-manorama-six-feet-under","tag-masaan","tag-peepli-live","tag-sudhir-mishra","tag-tigmanshu-dhulia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Haraamkhor and Other Tales from Small-Town India<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Haraamkhor is a small film with a short story told on a large canvas. 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