It is incredibly hard to slot Geeli Puchhi, because Neeraj Ghaywan’s short in Ajeeb Dastaans is gloriously messy, much like reality.
Caste, class, gender, sexuality our identity is often a melting pot of these aspects. However, we rarely see narratives that explore intersectionality in such impressive detail, let alone make for an effective commentary on social power and its hierarchy, Geeli Puchhi is a love story. There’s the androgynous, dark-skinned, Dalit, Bharti Mondal (Konkona Sen Sharma).
On the other hand, there’s the feminine, fairskinned, brahmin Priya Sharma (Aditi Rao Hydari). Ghaywan takes these two female archetypes and coops them together as the only women in a factory.
Bharti works on the manufacturing floor and is closer to the ‘tomboy’, while Priya has a data entry job and is closer to the ‘manic pixie girl’.
It is beautiful to see how these archetypes are fleshed out to represent real women, and by extension, become subversions of the stereotypes.
Bharti might not think twice before throwing in a punch, but she is also comfortable with her tears and vulnerability. Priya is equally complex. She may be the textbook femme, but she plays by the rules of patriarchy and caste. She even makes the first move on Bharti.
Not only is Priya blind to her privilege, she also doesn’t realise her role in propagating discriminatory practices she is the prey as well as the predator. It takes two great actors to bring out the layers and Konkona and Aditi turn in such fine performances.
With these realistically complex characters, Ghaywan successfully questions the binary understanding of femininity (which is really a spectrum).
Respect is a word that is often used in this film and a woman often finds ‘respect’ in a man’s eyes when she is ‘attractive’. And what constitutes attractive? Tall, thin, and fair. This behaviour is often seen in our films where the hero waxes eloquent to woo the heroine but has no regard or respect for her female friends.
Even in the current scenario, with so much conversat ion around beauty ideals and objectification, duskier women are picked for ‘bold campaigns’ and do not constitute the normal narrative.
Despite having Bharti in their payroll, the upper caste manager commissions a toilet for women only after Priya is hired. Caste is Geeli Puchhi’s dominant and most obvious concern.
The film really brings out the emotional manipulation that has been done for centuries: the discrimination is sly, and is most often accompanied with a smile and a word of meaningless, empty appreciation. All to ensure the heinous fences stay right in place.
The manager tells Bharti that she isn’t just a workman, but a craftsman when she questions him why she couldn’t have a desk job the same job that Priya gets by reading palms.
Priya’s family talks about how Bharti has helped the family so much, and yet do not blink an eye when they serve her chai in a steel cup.
It makes for a terrific end that Bharti uses their rules against them, to achieve what she wants. Ghaywan admits to being a bit expository with the dalit exchanges, for the fear the subtext could be lost.
Nevertheless, Geeli Puchhi is revelatory in the intersectional spaces of caste and gender, and their ramifications on social behaviour.
Narratives around women friendships tend to be single note — films show a glossy brochure variety of female solidarity.
This is generally a response to another stereotype, where women are their worst enemies. However, reality is much messier and doesn’t conform to either one-note assumption. Geeli Puchhi’s contribution here is admirable as well.
While marriage and family significantly change things for both genders socially, women tend to bear the emotional and logistical heft of managing a family, leaving them little to no time to nurture and sustain friendships.
Not only does it represent this, but it also shows real conversations about identity, contextualizing it with social politics. And this is a space that we need more representation in. We rarely see women interact beyond their r socio-political background, have political conversations and address their ideological differences. And Geeli Puchhi is a good first step in this direction.