Three men in white hazmat suits stand facing a dead body placed on a bier, discussing who of the three would be the one to perform the last rites. Meanwhile, two women in a remote village are confined to a hut that they cannot leave until their menstrual cycle concludes. In Yudhajit Basu’s 23-minute Marathi short Nehemich, an evocative exploration of life and death is showcased through a parallel drawn between two different forms of isolation; one has been ushered by humans and has been existing for centuries while the other that is recent but unforgettable that rendered humans worthless.
The film was officially shortlisted for competition at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in the La Cinef section—it features a selection of films presented by film schools from all over the world—of the festival. This year, 14 works of fiction and two animation films were shortlisted from 2,000 films submitted by students from across the world, Nehemich—co-written by Basu (pictured above) with Prithvijoy Ganguly—being one of them.
The Short is a highly layered piece of work that collocates the unceasing stigma around menstruation with a force that was beyond human control. In its essence, the premise of Nehemich (translates to “every time” or “forever” in English) is dystopian—both figuratively and factually—wherein an experience of a marginalized population is juxtaposed with that of the majority.
Menstruation is taboo across societies, transcending geographical boundaries. Stigma exists in rural and urban areas alike, except the former has more extreme ways of turning a blind eye to this natural process. Nehemich is set in a village of Maharashtra and delves into one such ritual called ‘Gaonkar Pratha’ that is prevalent in various parts of rural Maharashtra as well as some parts of Nepal—where it is referred to as ‘Chhaupadi.’ As per this ritual, “women are banished in isolated, inhospitable huts that are often far away from their houses because menstruation is considered a taboo,” explains Basu, who chanced upon a newspaper article about a death of a girl in Gadchiroli—a city in Maharashtra—owing to this ritual.
The shocking revelation made Basu curious. He decided to read more about the ritual and its impact on women until the pandemic hit. “During the pandemic, we were all isolated. It was a unique yet horrible experience. It was something that had never happened in recent history. I realized what we as a human race went through during this time was regular for these women,” adds the alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. In villages where people practice this pratha, women do not use the term menstruation or periods or a regional translation for any of these words. However, this time of the month is cryptically referred to as ‘kaorali sheela,’ which means ‘touched by a crow.’
The ritual finds a central space in Nehemich wherein two young girls (played by Sakshi Dighe and Bhakti Makarand Athawale) are banished to a hut. One of them looks forward to eloping with her lover the following morning. Her elopement would also mean an escape from the conservative practices of her village. It would mean a new life. Very carefully, Basu juxtaposes this incident with ‘bird shattering,’ a term used to explain the collision of birds with windmill turbines—which breaks the turbines and may cause the death of the bird. “While I was traveling to various parts of Maharashtra, I also went to a few windmill farms mainly for the purpose of shooting mages. There, I met the guards and learned about this term. In my head, there was this oblique association of a woman hit by a crow, causing her life to be halted just like the turbines getting stopped because of the bird flying through the turbine,” explains Basu. Will the woman meet her lover while the world grapples with COVID is what the film unravels? In a way, Nehemich digs into the Oscar Wilde-esque oxymoron of the beauty of death.
The film’s visual language and cinematography by Rachit Pandey are striking. Basu sticks to close-ups. His frames show less and tell more, as they should. The controlled lighting in the first few scenes adds to the misery of the women as in the first half. “I had a lot of wide shots in my previous films. Primarily, I wanted to do something different and do something with the human face, which, I believe, is very difficult. We wanted to be close to the characters, and after a test shoot, we decided to stick to the normal lens and not a wide lens. These were very instinctive decisions.” says Basu.
Limited space is given to the male characters; either you see them in a distance or only hear their voice. Nehemich is a woman’s stage. One of the finest scenes in the film is about three minutes long but doesn’t feel like it. In the scene, the subject, a windmill guard, is seen through a glass. One half of the frame reflects the inside of the room, while the other shows the outside, creating an illusion of being trapped somewhere in between. “It was improvised,” exclaims Basu, who doesn’t believe in heavy storyboarding. “I think it takes away the fun.” “From a cinematic point of view, I like these kinds of long takes where you have all the magnifications in the short. It starts with a wide shot, it comes in a mid-profile and then a close-up in one single take,” Basu adds.
Basu’s last film, Kalsubai, was an ethnographic documentary about the legend of the goddess Kalsu, whose story is still alive in the consciousness of the women of the tribe. Having dealt with the lives and identity of rural and tribal women, I ask Basu what he thinks about the male gaze. “The male gaze will always be there. I was very much bothered about it while making the film…”. For Nehemich, Basu credits her director’s assistant, Anjali Mulge, for helping him understand the psychology of his female characters—she also helped Basu with translation. “I was fortunate that my DA was a female and also Marathi. While writing the dialogues, I would discuss them with my DA and the actors if they felt they resonated with what I had written. They were also acquainted with the rural dialect and the practices so this wasn’t something that was alien to them.” Despite dealing with a sensitive issue, Nehemich doesn’t become a film with a hardcore social message, for Basu made it clear at the beginning of our conversation “I don’t think films can provide a solution. They can only make people more aware of the issues around them.”
Basu is now working on his next with Ganguly. The project, tentatively titled ‘Kaktarua,’ is a Bengali film about a young girl who goes on a journey to her ancestral village to find the wedding ring of her mother.
Article by Anjani Chadha
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