Maa Behen scrutinizes what Bandar doesn’t bother to examine: Inherent bias against women

It’s an interesting week at the movies, particularly when viewed through the lens of gender politics. The two most striking of the lot are Suresh Triveni’s Netflix comedy Maa Behen and Anurag Kashyap’s crime thriller Bandar. While the former exhibits the patriarchal gaze on women — only to turn it on its head by the end — the latter leaves you longing and hoping for one final swing, which will make its women as three-dimensional and evocative as its men.

Maa Behen revolves around Rekha (Madhuri Dixit), a widow, and her daughters Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), harbouring troubled relationships because they hold each other accountable for the increasing burden of patriarchy placed on their shoulders — particularly the peeping bare-skinned shoulders of the mothership, who refuses to conform to sleeved blouses because “humein garmi lagta hai.”

It’s no surprise that adman Suresh Triveni borrows the names of his central characters from the popular Nirma advertisement, which showcases its women and their bleached saris to be as spotlessly clear and dew-like pristine as Kavita Krishnamurthy’s lyrical serenade. Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma don’t mind taking on the mudslinging, including from their very own — their romantic partners and even each other.

But the three women, who cover the three generations of boomer, millennial, and Gen-Z, aren’t outright rebels either. Rekha doesn’t mind wearing the sindoor and the mangalsutra when she enters the ironically titled Adarsh Colony as a new bahu. But she doesn’t even the least flutter as much of even an eyelid when the ghunghat-clad elderly woman of her locality turn into rudali at the sight of her sleeveless blouse.

Similarly, Jaya spends a good part of her evening dishing out hot chapatis for her monosyllabic brothers-in-law (all they parrot is “Bhabhi, roti!”), while all she gets to chew on is her father-in-law’s sardonic barbs and her own suspicion of her husband cheating on her with her sister. Sushma may or may not be indulging in that conspiracy cooking in her sister’s head, but her viral Instagram Reels with him may suggest otherwise.

To some extent, all three women conform. Because like the men and women around them, including the audience, they’ve also been programmed to believe that women are born to conform. The sisters haven’t been educated by their mother to do otherwise. How would she? She’s busy luring lecherous men of her society — only to allegedly bury them under a bed of flowers she waters rather slyly.

That’s the background established by the unreliable (?) narrator of a television news anchor who weaponises the inherent conditioning against women to aid his channel’s TRPs. The surround sound is so loud and in sync with the voices in their own heads that Jaya and Sushma realise very late what their mother had been trying to do all along — asking her daughters to be their own women. She did so not by sitting them down, wagging her finger, and spelling it out explicitly, but by setting an example and demonstrating the life a woman should lead, irrespective of her age, status, and environment.

Story continues below this ad

The dead body lying in her house is not just that of the lurking neighbour Gupta Ji (Ravi Kishan), but of patriarchy at large. When Rekha fights back the overbearing patriarchy and ends up seemingly killing it, she feels guilty. Despite it being a consequence of her self-defense, the death of a man would always point fingers at the woman with sleeveless blouse already infamous for honey-trapping. It’s no different from how in the seemingly far more progressive world of Netflix’s Office Romance, a top boss (Jennifer Lopez) is assumed to have cracked a profitable deal by sleeping with a client. So much so that she has to conceal her relationship with another colleague (Brett Goldstein) to not add more fuel to the fire of her by-default morally corrupt existence.

The dead body in Maa Behen is that of patriarchy.

When patriarchy rises from the dead in Maa Behen, the three women are more horrified than when they first assumed it was dead — because now, it’ll bounce back and get them. Tying and gagging can only delay the inevitable. So, when her daughters blame her for their misfortunes and try to chicken out, she points a knife at them and warns them that they’re in this tug-of-war with patriarchy together.

It’s interesting then how they get back at patriarchy and register a minor victory point. Even after they catch him red-handed on camera enjoying a massage with the three women and threaten to leak it on social media, Gupta Ji dares them to do so, because along with him, it’s also their reputation at stake. Reputation? That invokes a spell of endless laughter, reeking as much of self-pity as of power — the power of nothing to lose.

Unlike how that pulpy news anchor would like to paint it, Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma don’t weaponise their bodies to win Gupta Ji over. Instead, they stop blaming themselves like the rest of the world, join forces, and weaponise that very inherent bias to come out on top. When Jaya concedes and builds a narrative that it was she who molested Gupta Ji, which led to his death, it’s evident that her expressions betray her words. For irrespective of how many hours of sensationalist television news you consume, who would believe that in a rape-murder case, the woman is the perpetrator and the man a mere victim?

Story continues below this ad

Bandar — Is it really the man who’s in a cage?

But Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar starts boldly where Maa Behen takes a baby step towards. It assumes that the world at large — police, media, judiciary — are wired to believe a woman’s narrative on face value. When Samar Mehra (Bobby Deol) is arrested on charges of raping a date (Sapna Pabbi), he keeps repeating he’s innocent and she, a stalker. The police, instead of believing the has-been star, harass him in the hopes of securing a fat bribe. The media also cashes in on the clickbait his name would induce, and begins to announce the verdict against him in public trials.

Later in the film, the judge refuses to grant him bail and tells his lawyer in private that his client is a social parasite because he belongs to the film industry. Given the public shaming Bollywood has endured since the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, including on primetime news, it’s not far-fetched to assume that such narratives may somewhere blind even the judiciary. But to tell that story at the cost of negating the prima-facie trust in the grievances of sexual assault voiced by countless women is a gross disservice to the MeToo movement, which has already failed to pick steam in India.

Yes, Bandar doesn’t explicitly pick sides between MeToo and MenToo. Yes, it’s co-directed by Sakshi Mehta, an assistant director on Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Pink (2016), one of the most definite Hindi films on consent in the past 10 years. Yes, it’s also helmed by Anurag Kashyap, and co-written by Sudip Sharma, men with the reputation of being abiding feminists. But its timing and intent remain questionable.

Bandar releases in the same week when a female television actor is being shamed publicly for admitting her sexual assault case against a producer was false. It also comes around the same time as Richa Chaddha being schooled by an elderly woman to save men from crimes by women. Of course, MeToo is a social movement instead of a legal one — and there are bound to be women taking undue advantage by levelling false allegations — but to tell the cautionary tale of a man falsely implicated in a rape case feels rather tone-deaf and far removed from the reality of women, as depicted accurately in Maa Behen.

Story continues below this ad

Sure, Bandar doesn’t hinge on the battle of sexes as much as Richa’s 2019 courtroom drama Section 375 did. Its dismal depiction of an undertrial’s prison time could also discourage some men from even ghosting or bread-crumbing their dates. One also empathises with Samar that his kinky sexual tendencies and flawed dating ethic don’t merit a jail term or even a trial, even though everyone, including his sister and his lawyer, constantly caution him to be more prudent.

Bobby Deol’s character in Bandar insists he’s the victim.

But to reduce the complainant to a psychotic, vengeful stalker — without spelling out her backstory that led to those character flaws — seems rather half-baked and convenient. Sure, the story is from Samar’s point of view, and he does go on a self-reflective journey of his own. But when Sapna’s character is just shown screaming, crying, threatening to cut her nerves, and mocking the accused with her glinting eyes after giving her testimony, she’s made to cater to the stereotype of the woman who would use the law against the man only to get back for a date gone wrong.

To defend it as an important, isolated case instead of a representation of a larger stereotype is no different from the small mercies David Dhawan has awarded to the women of his new comedy, Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai. After years of treating women as second-class citizens, the veteran filmmaker allowed them to say no to reuniting with their cheating partner “jo dil ka bahut achha hai.” But unlike Kashyap, Dhawan set the tone right at the start, leaving no hopes for a possible surprise at the end. The progressive wife (Mrunal Thakur) tells the judge that she’s a career woman, hence wishes to not honour her husband’s wish for unprotected sex. The husband (Varun Dhawan) defends marital rape by claiming he’s just a desperate to-be father.

Varun Dhawan admitted in a recent interview that he’s a “red flag” in this “progressive” film. No prize for reaching that conclusion, given he gets abandoned by both his partners and their kids for two-timing, only for him to find love elsewhere. Who’s going to tell him that being a father goes far beyond biologically becoming one? Who’s going to tell him that red flags don’t get rewarded by walking away with Kriti Sanon at the end? I’d have hoped for the Kashyaps and the Sharmas of the world to do that, but I see they’re too busy saving the men. In that case, will a Triveni please step forward?