In god’s service
VIKHAR AHMED SAYEED
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Ritesh Sharma’s film Holy Wives tells the sordid tale of devadasis in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
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I am making the film for the aam aadmi
Photo: Murali Kumar K.
BIG NET Sharma links the film to the larger theme of trafficking of women for prostitution
What you take back from Ritesh Sharma’s film “The Holy Wives” are ‘faces’, almost all of grim and joyless women. It is unfair though to complain that there are no happy faces in the montage that makes up Sharma’s f
ilm because his visual journey will take the viewer on a sordid road where moments of happiness, if there are, must be as rare as a rainbow. The misty eyed faces that viewers will remember have stories to tell, one after the other, squalid sagas of joyless lives, of lives lived in a dismal penury where hope and happiness and any other emotion that gives meaning to life are hard to find. Well, a film that blatantly tries to show the lives of women who have been prostituted away in the name of religion and culture, could not have been a laugh riot, could it?
Sharma is also a serious young man of 26 years and rarely smiles; perhaps an interview dwelling solely on his recently made film was a bad idea, especially when I caught him after one of his final editing sessions when he could hardly think of anything but his film.
Sharma sauntered in coolly, dressed in a black shirt and a scraggly beard. Sharma exudes a lazy, but a bold filmic activist air about him and this is no contradiction as he takes his documentary film making very seriously: he considers it an extension of his ‘activist’ life (he does not really like the word ‘activist’ finding its implications restricting). “I’m a very emotional person and that is why I’m a film maker,” he said on being asked why he makes films.
Sharma’s film premiered in Bangalore at a Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore, screening on Sunday. The film shows the lives of “The Holy Wives”, a reference to the lives of women who come from devadasi families in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and women from the bedia tribe in Madhya Pradesh. (The irony in the catchy title is hard to miss). Unlike many documentary films, Sharma chooses not to have a voice over at all; even an interviewer’s voice is absent. He chooses, instead, to assault you with the ugly and distressing tales of the women’s lives in their own voices. The film dwells intensely on these testimonies as Sharma tries to juxtapose the experiences of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (states which have a law against the devadasi system but there is no implementation) and Madhya Pradesh (where women from the bedia community have historically been accepted as dancers and prostitutes and there is no law to protect them). Close tight shots of women’s faces dominates the film that hardly has any long shots or makes any effort at aesthetically exploring its subject. Using these local testimonies, Sharma links the film to the larger theme of trafficking of women for prostitution which he claims is an “organised crime second only to terrorism in the world”.
“I did not want any voice to mediate between the experience of the women and the viewer. It is not important for me to explain but it is important for me to show,” said Sharma, thumping the table emphatically, as he responded to my question of how the film seemed to lack a certain contextualisation of the scale of the problem: “I am making the film for the aam aadmi and if I can bring even the slightest awareness I think the purpose of the film is served.” He occasionally lapses into Hindi as he tries to make an important point which is not surprising since he grew up in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Love for theatre and a burning desire to ‘engage with political issues’ brought him to Delhi for his undergraduate education where he has been battling for a variety of causes that includes protesting against the construction of the Tehri dam, performing a play on the Gujarat riots, working with street theatre – fulfilling the rite de passage for a life of full time activism. Increasingly, moving towards the issue of child trafficking (which eventually brought him to the issue of trafficking of women for prostitution and ritual sex slavery) he started an organisation called Ahwaan in Delhi to bring about awareness about the problem. Realising the pervasive reach of cinema he decided to make films after doing a course in direction and has made films on the Right to Information Act earlier.
“The Holy Wives” was a result of two years of research and several months of shooting. For copies of the film please contact Uvraaj at Pedestrian Pictures on 94483 71389.
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