Applause broke every few minutes when the Macedonian film God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, was screened at an open-air auditorium in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram. The film has been welcomed in the state, for though its story is based in Macedonia -- a small country in Europe -- what happens on screen bears strong resemblance to what had happened in Kerala a year ago after the Supreme Court verdict allowing entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple.
In the Macedonian film, screened in the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala, a woman – strong and unusual in her ways – jumps into the water to get a holy cross, thrown in as part of a ritual by the church priest. So far, only men, freezing in their shorts, had dived for the cross. The one who retrieved it would have been the winner.
Petrunya, the heroine, a 32-year-old unemployed historian who had just had a humiliating experience at a job interview, does not think before jumping into the water. When the male divers snatch the cross from her to claim that one of them is the winner, the priest comes down, and everyone else gathers around. In the confusion, Petrunya grabs the cross and disappears.
You already have a picture of Petrunya by then – daring, questioning, unafraid to speak her mind.
Like it happened in Sabarimala, immediate murmurs of protest are raised – how can a woman touch the holy cross? In the film, a media person who is present at the event asks the priest why not. It’s just been the practice, the priest says. “But if you stick to tradition, there shall be no progress,” says the journalist, a woman, who stands her ground even as others begin to leave the spot. The audience applauds.
As a viewer in Kerala, you start noticing the similarities right away. A large section in Kerala was enraged by the Sabarimala verdict, and when there was news of women in the previously restricted age group attempting to climb the temple, on top of a hill. They were blocked, attacked, sent away, the police unable to protect them, until two women did manage to make it in the wee hours of the morning.
Those two women – Bindhu Ammini and Kanaka Durga – have since been subjected to a lot of abuse, the latter was even evicted from her home. In the film, Petrunya’s mother is also deeply troubled when she sees the cross. She curses her daughter and tries to walk away with it, but Petrunya fights to get it back. At that point, you don’t feel it is about the cross anymore for her. Petrunya is a smart woman who has been belittled or humiliated quite often for her looks, even by her mother who doesn’t seem proud of her achievements. The cross becomes something she has to hold on to, even if she has to fight the rest of the world, to make a point. She had jumped into the water for it, found it, and therefore the cross is hers, her right.
Petrunya is taken to the police station where the church priest has come too. She is calm, very clear on what her stand is. “Am I under arrest?” she keeps asking. No, but she has to be interrogated. When the priest tries to talk to her into giving up the cross, she asks simply, “Am I to talk to the police or is this a church?”
One of the policemen is quite uncouth, covering up the camera in the room before directing abusive curses at her. If it were his daughter, he would break every bone of his body, he says – it reminds one of some policemen in Kerala who'd felt trapped when asked to protect women attempting to enter Sabarimala, when they’d rather not.
Later in the film, there is yet another eerie resemblance to the outrage in Kerala and the violent reactions of some people towards the women who broke ‘tradition’. When Petrunya is finally allowed to leave the police station – because she’s broken no laws – there is an angry mob waiting to pounce on her. They throw water on her, push her around, till one of the policemen protects her and brings her back to the station.
During the Sabarimala protests, every time a woman even went to Pamba -- the point up to which women had previously been allowed even before the verdict -- there were angry men shouting abuses, surrounding them, and sometimes even assaulting them.
Like the Kerala government did at that time, several of the abusers and attackers were arrested. In Kerala, hundreds of men were put behind bars for disrupting peace. In the film, when no amount of cajoling works to disperse them, the police arrest the men. One of them sits next to Petrunya, keeps verbally abusing her, and then spits on her face.
Petrunya is not provoked, she neither talks back to these men nor replies to abuses. But when there is a logical conversation, she has her spontaneous and straightforward replies, the ones that elicited those short bursts of applause from the audience. She even gives it back to a policeman who tells her that the police are wasting their time with this. “I agree,” she says with that smug face that you come to adore.