MY TAKE

BREAKING BARRIERS, ONE MOVIE AT A TIME

Tillotama Shome in Sir.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

I watched the movie Sir on Amazon Prime recently. The movie, mainly in Hindi with some dialogue in English and Marathi, premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2018, followed by theatrical release in European countries.

Scheduled to release in India in March 2019, it was pushed back due to the pandemic, finally seeing light of day last November.

But while it waited in the wings, the quiet little movie made some noise, gathering accolades and acclaim. It won the Gan Foundation Award at Cannes and picked up Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Tillotama Shome at the 2021 Filmfare Awards.

It is described as a romantic drama. Google it and you will read this: An optimistic and determined young woman from a remote village starts her new job as a live-in maid for the cynical son of a wealthy family. They eventually fall in love, but find their relationship forbidden.

Movies in that genre, in which two people from vastly different backgrounds come together are plenty. Think Gadar (where a girl from a privileged background falls in love with a truck driver) or the much older Jab Jab Phool Khile in which another girl from a privileged background falls in love with a man who operates a shikara for tourists. Painted in very broad strokes and garish colours – the good were saintly, the bad were pure evil – many of these movies had no room for subtlety and often made you cringe.

But Sir is not your run-of-the-mill Bollywood blockbuster with a few song and dance sequences (though there’s a delightful scene in which Ratna, played by Shome, breaks into a dance at a celebration in the apartment building where she works), a good fight (or two) thrown in and love-triumphs-against-all-odds ending.

Instead, it treads softly into rarely explored territory. It makes one uncomfortable watching parts where the maid is treated like a part of the furniture (when not being snapped at by guests) at a party. In an interview promoting the movie, Shome said it made her aware of the many prejudices she herself carries within her.

plays Ashwin in Sir.

This movie is beautifully nuanced. Ratna has dreams and aspirations. She carves out time from a busy schedule to take tailoring lessons. But when Ashwin (played by Vivek Gomber), the young man she works for, asks if she wants to be a darji (tailor), she says, firmly, “No, fashion designer”. And then asks, “Kyon? Nahin ban sakti?” (Why? Can’t someone like me become a designer?). He apologizes and gifts her a sewing machine.

They are attracted to each other, but when Ashwin tells Ratna he loves her, and that he doesn’t care what others might think, she tells him she does. That it matters to her. She packs her bags and moves out.

I know many families in India who claim to treat their cooks, maids, cleaners and drivers like family. Some do, others, not so much. But even those who are super sweet, who pay for the education of a maid’s child or encourage a driver to apprentice as a mechanic in his free time, I wonder how they would react were they to be faced with the situation in the movie. Their son in love with the maid? How would they ever live that down?

Ashwin’s father tells him it’s a good thing he’s thinking of moving back to the US. Take the problem off my plate, you almost hear him think.

The movie doesn’t have the hero breaking down doors to carry his lady love away. The young couple doesn’t leap off cliffs in grand defiance of societal norms.

Instead, she finds an opening as an assistant to a fashion designer – with some behind-the-scenes help from him.

So she’s moving up, while he moves back to the US. Will they be able to bridge the gap?

Her tentative “Ashwin?” when he calls her gave me hope. She only ever called him Sir up until this moment.

This is a young couple I found myself rooting for. Yes, I know, only a movie, but this is one of the ways change happens. One movie at a time.