LADIES SPECIAL & A PYRAMID OF WOMEN

LADIES SPECIAL: English, Hindi and Marathi with subtitles, 28 mins, 2003
Directed by Nidhi Tuli
Produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust
English, 23 mins, 2003
Directed by Cheryl Kanekar
Produced by Comet Media Foundation

Two recent films explore the supportive and assertive spaces that women carve out for themselves in the metropolis of Mumbai

Screened as part of Vikalp: Films for Freedomorganised by OPEN SPACE in Pune, July 31 - August 29, 2004

Bombay remains India ’s most diverse and vibrant city, the city of dreams, the one paved with gold, the one that never sleeps, where almost anyone has the chance to change his or her life for the better.

One of the many things that keeps the city paved with gold and awake all night is the enormously efficient commuter train service that ferries more than 3 million people a day to and from their workplace. Tuli’s Ladies Special travels with working women on a Western Railway train reserved for them and, for a brief time, the camera and crew become part of the spontaneous community that this train has engendered.

The film and its makers join in the fun as religious ceremonies and birthdays are celebrated by women commuters who have been traveling companions for years. It would appear that each compartment has its own (sub)community, the women careful about boarding the same bogey each day. Lives are shared, gossip is exchanged, vegetables are chopped, manicures are had and clothes are bought as the 50km distance between Virar and Victoria Terminus becomes a space suspended, unto itself, while the outside world with its cares and duties exists only beyond the railway platform.

Like other more traditional women’s spaces that are carved out of social roles and obligations, this one too remains impervious to penetration and criticism. While this space has been radical and unexpected in its formation, it warmly and generously replicates traditional spaces, as when ceremonies are performed and women sing and dance together. The additional bonus is that the space is mercurial as it shifts easily from kitchen to beauty parlour, shopping arcade to counseling session.

The film implies that such an empowering and protective world could only have been created by women, that men in a similar situation would have become card-playing buddies, rather than a fully developed support system. Many of the women speak of the commute as a precious time, when they can be themselves, instead of wives and mothers, office workers and housewives. They also speak of the train as a place where they feel “safe,” surrounded by friends and sisters, companeras and comrades. The Ladies Special is a slice of their lives, a slice that has butter and jam on it.

And, in another story of companeras in Bombay, the city where anything is possible, Cheryl Kanekar takes us to watch as an all-women’s team prepares to assault another traditional male bastion, the human (or more accurately, the male) pyramid that forms to break the Janamashtami pots in August every year, to celebrate the birth of Krishna, child prankster and eternal young lover.

In yet another heart-warming example of how the city re-makes us and then accommodates us, these young women live in Gorakhnath Chawl that already has a culture of competitive sports and exercise. Many of them are part of the Gorakhnath Association’s competitive kabaddi team, athletes who speak passionately about the urge to build the human pyramid and compete with male teams in the city. Their coach, Bandu Kamle, is male, but they have a woman doctor with them and another older woman resident who acts as an advisor. Practices are late in the evening, after school and work and household chores, and sometimes children, have been dealt with. The chawl has more than one pyramid team since teams are created according to the height of the pot that they will have to reach. Women are graded by height, weight and endurance and trained according to the positions they will occupy in the pyramid

Most of the families in the Gorakhnath chawl have been impoverished by the textile mill closures in central Bombay over the past 20 years and struggle to make ends meet. But the financial circumstances of their lives have not been allowed to effect a marginalisation in local competitive sport. On the contrary, it is almost as if the women’s pyramid is an aggressive assertion of the refusal to be completely marginalised by those who already carry the disadvantages of gender, education and economics.

The team has been in existence for a number of years, and is now invited to various locations (inside and outside the city) to compete in the pot-breaking. The current team includes a young boy at the apex of the pyramid (since there is no suitable young woman available in terms of height and weight) and that seems to bother no one at all – the important thing is to win. And that has begun to be a habit rather than a dream with this women’s team.

For more information on Ladies Special contact nidhi_tuli@rediffmail.com
For more information on Pyramid of Women contact comet_media@vsnl.com

InfoChange News and Features, August 2004