In the last few years, there has been a steady stream of films focussed on female sexuality: Margarita With A Straw (2014), Masaan (2015), Parched (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) and more recently Lust Stories and Veere Di Wedding – two mainstream, big-ticket productions featuring top names.
However, the Hindi cinema landscape today is vastly different than the Eighties, a notoriously unimaginative period in Bollywood history. At a time when mindless action flicks with sexist storylines ruled the roost, filmmaker Aruna Raje made Rihaee — subversive piece of cinema addressing women’s choice, sexual frustration and, most importantly, the female gaze. The film starred Hema Malini and Vinod Khanna along with parallel cinema prominents like Naseeruddin Shah, Pallavi Joshi, Neena Gupta, Mohan Agashe and Reema Lagoo.
As far as the leading lady is concerned, Bollywood has vociferously propped up a certain image – virginal and pious. She is the object of desire, never the one with desires. Over the years, films like Earth (1996), Astitva (2000), Water (2005) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014) have pushed the envelope in the portrayal of sexual desire in women. Even today as multiple analyses and opinion pieces are dedicated to Veere‘s masturbation scene, imagining Raje’s work in its time seems truly groundbreaking. In fact, in her book, Freedom: My Story the filmmaker has writes about the ordeals she faced during and after the making of the film, which strangely resonate with the theme of the movie.
One can only marvel at Raje’s audacious move to employ the female gaze in an era when the discourse around it was largely unheard of. An engaged girl, besotted with a married man and greatly fascinated by his masculine physique, watches him bathe risking her reputation in the neighbourhood. She doesn’t mind losing her virginity to him, as she feels incredible physical attraction to him, as opposed to her fiancé. A group of rural women take delight in discussing a new man in their village and flirt unabashedly with him. Few filmmakers have been able to portray female sexuality unapologetically and in a realistic and relatable fashion. Raje does exactly that and is perhaps the first one at it.
Rihaee is set in a village in Gujarat where the men have moved to the cities for employment and the women are left behind to work the fields and look after their families. During their time away from home, the men have no qualms about committing adultery. In fact, they believe their need for physical gratification is only natural and their hard work entitles them to these dalliances. The same rule, of course, doesn’t apply to their wives. The film explores physical pleasure, adultery and gendered hypocrisy from the female point of view.
The story begins with the arrival of the flamboyant Mansukh (Shah) to the village. Many women flirt with him and are seduced, but he is rebuffed by Taku (Hema), who is devoted to her husband, Amarji (Khanna), a carpenter in the city. The long absence of men in their lives coupled with Mansukh’s charming ways create rivalry among the women for the visitor’s affections. Mansukh, however, has set his sights on Taku who finally gives in and soon discovers she is pregnant. When Amarji returns, Taku confesses to the affair, but refuses an abortion. Sensing the dangerous precedent Taku’s assertion would set, the village panchayat is called upon to discipline her. Tables are turned at the meeting when the women rally together and show the self-serving, hypocritical men the mirror.
Rihaee portrays a woman’s sex drive for what it is – a completely natural and human need. Taku, for example, shares a loving and respectful relationship with Amarji, but prolonged loneliness and lack of physical intimacy breaks her resolve. She is, not for once, guilty of the choices she made and that’s refreshing.
The film makes a hard-hitting comment on the consequences of migration on marriages, especially the wives. Raje creates a poignant interplay of two traumatic experiences – of a woman losing her child and having to conduct the funeral without her husband, and another who undergoes an abortion – to establish just how alone are the women in this despite their marital status. There is no moral judgement on adultery – it only asks a simple question is a woman’s desire any less important than a man’s?
Be it a middle-class unmarried girl acting on her sexual impulse, a married rural woman looking for an escapade or an older woman looking back at her lost youth, Rihaee‘s pièce de résistance is humanising a natural urge without the shock factor and the hullabaloo.
An edited version of the article was first published in The Hindu on August 12, 2018.
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