The Good Fight
Ravi Jadhav has been making Marathi films with unusual subjects—including the powerful Natrang (2009) about a man who plays the nachya (eunuch) in a traditional lavni troupe and Nude (2018) about a woman who strips to model for art students. He has worked with gender identity and the myriad problems attached,, so he seemed like a natural fit to direct Taali, a biopic of transgender activist Shreegauri Sawant.
Sawant and Laxmi Tripathi are best known trans activists in India, and both present that hyper-feminine picture of women—bright and painted—as if to flaunt their womanhood. In Hindi cinema, transgenders have been portrayed as comic or slightly intimidating hijras, the kind who used to appear at weddings and births to demand money; more recently at traffic signals and local trains.The myths surrounding hijras are such—their cults, arcane rituals and ancient laws, that the superstitious are actually scared of them. It would, however, come as a revelation just how deep the discrimination against the community was– till 2014, eunuchs could not marry, adopt, own property, vote, drive or get any government benefits, as a lawyer explains to Shreegauri (Sushmita Sen) when she wants answers. She and other activists petitioned the Supreme Court, and got the third gender recognized, due to which all official forms now have the ‘other’ option after male and female.
Taali is Shreegauri’s story, so one has to accept as true her experiences, and her overwhelming desire to be a mother, but the depiction of transgenders on screen invariably focus on men who find themselves trapped in women’s bodies, perhaps because it is easier to portray feminine body language. When a young Ganesh (Krutika Deo) dances the lavni at a village function, with all the suggestive moves and expressions, it is a cultural expression typical of Maharashtra. All transgenders are not feminine in a exhibitionist way, very few can afford to transition fully; and nobody wants to look into the incidence of female-to-male transgenders. There is a range of complexity to the non-binary experience, that is only slowly being revealed as society learns to be more accepting.
Ganesh’s father, a cop (Nandu Madhav) forces his son to go through the usual charlatans, before the kid decides to run away to Mumbai. After seven years of existing on the street, Ganesh starts working with an NGO, and is attracted to the community of hijras—all of those he encounters are into begging or sex work, for lack of education or employment opportunities. The difficulties of survival in Mumbai are glossed over—in fact over the six-part series (created by Arjun Singgh Baran and Kartik D Nishandar, written by Kshitij Patwardhan), several things that could have made the character more vivid are overlooked.
It is never clear how Shreegauri acquired her power, before the Supreme Court petition, but she seems to have the cops the media and a politician or two on speed dial, and at one point threatens to strip to get a man to listen to her demand—the kind of aggressive behavior that actually gives eunuchs a bad reputation.
There are a few harrowing scenes of her post her sex change surgery, but crucial segments happen off screen. She is invited to speak at a conference in the US, but what that exposure to a different culture means to her growth is left out—she just tells her coterie that in American transgenders do not beg or clap, to which one of them says, “But it is our parampara.”
Shreegauri travels to Delhi on the day of the verdict, with a white journalist (Maya Rachel Mcmanus) in tow, to whom she narrates her story, in a series of flashbacks, but the struggle to reach that point is strangely left out. Jadhav structures the story with enough overdramatic scenes, that give Sushmita Sen (the make-up gives her a faint five o’ clock shadow) a chance to spew fire or speak in slogans (taali bajaoongi nahin, bajwaoongi), but the actress delivers better in the few low key and sensitive scenes that humanize the character.
The film like Taali is important to dispel misconceptions that surround the community, but to wipe out memories of films like Laxmi Bomb (2020), the sinister Maharani in Sadak (1991), the echoes of tat raucous hijra anthem from Bollywood, Saj rahi gali meri ma (Kunwara Baap—1974), a much more nuanced film was needed. Some of these, like Njan Marykutty (2018) and Super Deluxe (2019) have emerged from Southern cinema. Hindi cinema did come up with a mature Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, but still has some catching up to do.
(An edited version of this piece appeared in scroll.in)