Opinion Maja Ma: A queer tale starring the Dhak Dhak girl

Her subservience is pivotal to the plot. It’s what makes her queerness stick out like a sore thumb; the only anomaly in an otherwise squeaky-clean life.

Through the vehicle of the family unit, the political stressors of a Hindu, upper-caste woman in the heart of the Hindi belt are laid bare. Her identity as a lesbian is a conversation that her environment makes impossible to have. This is because her identity as a person, first, remains unrealised. She is a wife, a mother, a family woman — never an independent human being with agency and personal identity. Her husband doesn’t know what food she likes, she is constantly talked over, her children – as well-meaning as they may be – are selfish (“Bacche bohot selfish hote hai”, Patel’s son, Tejas says at a watershed moment in the film).

The treatment of the subject matter, namely queerness, is carried out rather tastefully and with nuance, for the most part. Motivations behind why a character is dealing with her sexuality the way they are make sense and capture different biases. For her husband, the insecurity arises from the doubts this creates about his own masculinity. More than that, though, it is the real grief of finding out that he has been living in an unreciprocated relationship his whole marriage. Patel’s NRI to-be in-laws are capitalists funding Donald Trump back home and see Patel’s misstep as a disaster for their political image. They also represent the BJP-supporting crop of NRIs who see Indian culture as Hindu culture and Hindu culture as a sacrosanct institution in which concepts like homosexuality are simply unacceptable – “unnatural” as the NRI wife puts it. Despite the love of Pallavi’s life being inches away from her, any moves to seek out her own happiness are eclipsed by the fear of potential harm to her family. She tells Kanchan, her childhood sweetheart, “Apne swarth ke liye, mai doosro ki zindagi barbaad nahi karna chahti thi” (“I did not want to ruin everyone’s life because of my own selfish reasons”). Kanchan’s heartbreak and the grief of being betrayed by the one she loves — “Doosro ke liye mujhe tod diya tune?” – are guttural and all-too-familiar.

There are visibly trans characters in the story (though it is not nearly enough, it is strides ahead in comparison to the movies within the Hindi commercial scene today); the movie has important conversations layered into the narrative – and through it, valuable insight of the queer experience. Pallavi’s conversation with the head of a queer and trans organisation, a moment in which she is afforded some dignity, finally – comes as a breath of relief for a scared and violated Pallavi and as a moment of comprehension of the struggle for the audience. Concepts like safe spaces and community living and the need for them are also brought to the fore. The absurdity of the prospect of “coming out” within the context that Pallavi lives in comes through quite distinctly.

The very fact that Madhuri Dixit — the epitome of the male fantasy; the “Choli ke peeche kya hai” girl — has been cast in the role of a lesbian marks the progress Maja Ma makes for queer stories in India. It is a movie made for Bollywood — it has the typical themes of dance, song and family. It follows a story so far untold in this context and goes a step further in its choice to cast a legend from the industry. Through the casting choice, the movie legitimises itself and the subject matter at hand as part of the mainstream. That in itself is a big step forward.

Another commendable aspect of the story is the conversation it has around agency. Pallavi’s sexuality is revealed to her daughter in a moment of invasive interrogation on the latter’s part and to the rest of the world, through a similar transgression by a local society member looking to win an election. Her lack of agency is critical to how the movie unfolds. At no point is she given the choice – to come out or to stay in the closet. The scene in which Tara, Patel’s daughter, shoves her mother out of the closet is literal and effective. Pallavi is backed up against a closet – she is folding laundry, naturally – in the moment of the reveal, and as soon as the reality of what she has said sets in, she shrinks in shame and falls back into the closet, devastated and terrified. Tara’s aggressive “woke” posturing is intrusive and unkind. It also stands at the opposite end of her brother’s resolution to this reveal – a conversion camp. Both represent positions that have absolutely nothing to do with helping Pallavi and everything to do with the children’s obsession with “appearing moral”, at one end or the other.

To have a conversation around agency and boundaries in an enmeshed Indian household notorious for struggling with the very idea of agency is a bold choice. The fact that it comes up in the conversation around sexuality makes it even richer.

Maja Ma, however, is a movie geared toward a specific audience – for better or for worse. What makes Pallavi Patel the ideal woman? Why is Patel’s story the one to tell? Why is her lesbianism a fall from “grace”? Pallavi Patel had to be an upper-caste Hindu; she had to be subservient to the structures that ultimately suffocate her. The power structures highlighted throughout the movie, intentional or not, are ones that define the political and cultural moment India is in. The movie seeks to normalise the existence of queerness within the fold of identities that already hold social sanction and respect for audiences that form the majority today.

The film fails to address the structures of caste and gender (although, gender is somewhat integrated) that hold the three critical aspects of this movie together – the state, marriage (an exercise born out of practices of endogamy and misogyny) and the woman. The reasons Pallavi stays in the closet for years are plenty. But the fear of losing social sanction is front and centre. Uma Chakravarti, in her book, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens, says, “The compliance of women, or the consent they extend to structures that are oppressive is ‘invisibilised’ under the seemingly more neutral notion of upholding ‘tradition’, or the specific ‘cultures’ of families, or of communities, then moving outwards to the Hindu ‘nation’ whose cultural repository somehow resides specifically in women. Women are regarded as upholding the traditions by conforming to them.” This is what becomes Pallavi’s Kryptonite. What makes the movie relatable as a queer tale to the targeted audiences is also what limits liberation for both women and queer persons, then.

As a queer person, the movie gave me multiple moments of connection. The watershed interactions Pallavi has with her husband, daughter and son as she finally comes into her own are genuinely sobering and invoke introspection. The resolution overall, however, is cut short by the framework it exists in; one it is too afraid to step out of. Ultimately, Maja Ma is an important work because of what it talks about, but it is also critical in what it doesn’t talk about. As viewers, it might give us – again, intentionally or not – an opportunity to introspect.

sukhmani.malik@expressindia.com