In Konkana Sen Sharma’s short The Mirror from Netflix’s Lust Stories 2, a migraine forces Ishita (a brilliant Tillotama Shome) to return home from work one afternoon, where to her horror she finds her domestic worker Seema (a terrific Amruta Subhash) having sex on her bed. Ishita runs out of her house embarrassed and grossed out, not only to have walked in on her ‘maid’ having sex but in her own house and on her own bed. Disgusted, she calls her friend Sameera, who demands that she fire Seema immediately, but Ishita doesn’t have the energy to deal with losing help. Later, she changes the bedsheet only to try masturbating that night fantasising about what she saw earlier but breaks into tears. Ishita clearly has some trauma when it comes to intimacy.
The Mirror aptly uses the mirror as a device both metaphorically and symbolically; it becomes a place of being, a place of nakedness. Mind you it’s not nudity, it’s nakedness that is the spectacle in the film, voyeurism that transforms into a place of ownership, a place of seeing ourselves as we desire to see ourselves. This act of seeing is so honest, visceral, and truthful that it dissolves the moulds that we have seen of women before. The Mirror reminds us that if we peeled away the layers of women’s sexuality, a spectrum of desire would open.
As spectators of cinema, women have been especially disappointed with the representation of their kind on the silver screen. We have been bored to death seeing women play one-dimensional characters for ages, a second fiddle to the man, a vessel of honour in the family, a caretaker, homemaker, a lover dancing around trees or men for no particular reason, or their bodies seen as a site of sexuality, titillation and violence. Rarely do you come across something so poignant and experiential that it hits your primal instinct and reminds you that you are a human first and that art has the capacity to communicate the most crucial standpoints of gaze, class, space, lust, and desire.
In The Mirror, you see Ishita coming home at 3 pm exactly for the next few days and weeks to watch Seema having sex. Something shifts in Ishita too. She feels aroused and the mirror becomes a place of desire because she pleasures herself too. This turns into routine until one day Ishita comes home earlier than 3 pm and prepares herself to watch from her spot behind the tree, when Seema catches sight of her. She calls her husband to warn him but anyway readies herself to confront Ishita only to be shocked to see that her boss was herself readying for another steamy afternoon.
The theory of who is looking and who is being looked at manifests as Seema walks into the bedroom aware that her boss was at home and watching her. This time Seema is aware and she plays the spectacle that Ishita is expecting. Seema owns it and how. And that is her power.
The cinematography by Anand Bansal is delightful and reveals only what needs to be shown. There is a lot of sex in the film but it doesn’t titillate you, just informs you of the rhythm of the film and makes you get used to that appetite of desire and pleasure just as you are used to every other thing like sleep, food, air, wind, water, etc. It reminded me of our capacity to feel things and that nothing is sexier than ownership, that spectatorship is such a personal and private experience.
The Mirror shows that there are several permutations and combinations of power, it really depends on how you access that power. Both Seema and Ishita tell us something about our own nature and the equation between power and shame. The mirror is grey and yet the most truthful space where pleasure sees no demarcation of class. The spectacle in the film is the act of looking, this inner voyeur that we all have. Looking is such a personal and intimate act, where all ethics and boundaries dissolve because we are curious beings. We want to know.
Behind the facade of telling a story, we often forget as storytellers that a story has a purpose in the grand scheme of things and that purpose is the pedagogy that it creates in popular culture and The Mirror has created a pedagogy of the female gaze. An assertive, nuanced female gaze and layers that Konkana weaves empathetically – questions of consent, access, class, power, voyeurism, empathy, desire, gaze/female gaze, loneliness, guilt, repression, sexuality, and desire. Everybody wants pleasure, everybody wants to experience some kind of pleasure, but everybody doesn’t have access to pleasure. For Seema, space is an issue; for Ishita, it is urban loneliness. The writing by Konkana and Pooja Tolani is really powerful.
The Mirror is the story of two empowered women; the marginalisations are intersectional and also not. It’s the question of who uses their power that is more attractive to me.
Confronting Seema, Ishita attacks her with some vile words. “What nasty thing were you doing on my bed?”
But Seema stands up for herself. “What nasty thing? I was having sex with my husband. At least I’m not a voyeur like you.”
Ishita yells back, “But on my bed?”
Pleasure soon transforms into shame. The grey soon turns into black and white, dissected into the good and the bad woman. Who is untouchable and who is touchable comes into play.
“You’re disgusted with me but I do everything for you, I even wash your undies!” screams Seema.
“I pay you, it’s not like you’re working for free,” retorts Ishita.
Seema throws down the house keys. “I don’t need this job, I’ll get something else.”
Ishita ups the fight. “No one in the building will employ you!”
Seema is equal to it. “Why not? I’ll tell them what an indecent woman you are.”
Ishita challenges her, “And who’s going to listen to you?”
So, Seema makes sure that she is heard loud and clear. This wasn’t a question of boundary, it was a question of owning her truth. People start gossiping about Ishita. In fact, her friend Sameera confronts her directly and asks if she used to watch her and her boyfriend Rohan when she was her roommate.
As a society, we are still not comfortable talking about sex or desire. Women especially are not expected to have desire, as if we are good only for procreation. Women’s bodies have mostly been sites of male gaze, perversion, titillation, and violence. So to see Ishita and Seema in this film as women who desire, who want to enjoy their sexuality, and would do anything to experience pleasure is refreshing but human as well.
Towards the climax when Seema and Ishita make amends and Ishita apologises to Seema for watching her without their knowledge, Seema also confesses that she was aware that she was being watched. A very tricky but intimate moment opens. A moment of female friendship. A moment of owning your truth that has more integrity and power than any currency can buy. To be seen for who you are and not be shamed and judged for it.
Ishita asks Seema, “Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Seema is vulnerable but she accepts, “Because I enjoyed it too.”
The fact that we all are constantly watching and there is an internal gaze that’s your own and then there is this all pervasive patriarchal gaze that is thrust in front of us brings you the concept of male gaze and representation of women in cinema. Mirror opens a Female Gaze, a gaze that is primal and real. It also reminds us how acceptance of truth can be the most awakening and healing experience for human beings.
On another spectrum is the Amazon Prime Video web series Dahaad, created by directors Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar, in which Sub-Inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha) investigates a series of murders of women. It aptly starts with a Dalit man trying to find his sister, who has apparently eloped with someone. The deaths first appear to be suicides, but as the investigation progresses Bhaati realises that there’s a pattern and that perhaps there’s a serial killer on the loose. What’s amazing about this show is the filmmakers’ clinical understanding of the issue of caste and how they connect caste and sexual violence through the character of the classic psychopath (an exceptional Vijay Varma). The layers of this character are phenomenal and there are clear set-ups and payoffs throughout the series.
I also found the assertive Anjali endearing. It’s her lived experience as a Dalit in the country that informs her how caste is connected in solving the serial murders. She is enraged when Parghi alleges that she is unnecessarily turning the series of 27 deaths into an issue of caste. She confronts him to his face, reminding him, “I don’t see any upper caste women here. If there was, it would have been a big deal. The victims are all from lower castes, nobody cares if they are alive or dead. On top of that, a woman is a burden on poor families that don’t have enough means to put together a dowry to get her married. Poor things, even their families don’t care about them. Perfect modus operandi.”
To see a character like Anjali is a relief. She is young, modern, and has power. The power of her education and that of the Constitution that she thrusts in front of Devi Singh, her senior officer, when Thakur closes his door on her. She says, “Sir, a lot of such doors have been shut on our faces. I don’t care. That hasn’t shut me up.”
What’s also interesting is that she is constantly chided as Lady Singham or Boss Lady while at home, her mother is concerned about her marriage prospects. Kudos to both Reema and Zoya for creating a representation of a marginalised woman with such an assertive gaze. And yes, seeing a woman police officer like Anjali gives me joy and is proof that respect and scientific nuance can come from anywhere if the methodology to look at Bahujans is empathetic. This agency is more sensitive, nuanced, and clinical than any male filmmaker has created minus the show of violence and sensationalism on Bahujan bodies as a victim gaze in cinema. Tragic as it is, marginalised bodies are still sites of violence because of systemic issues of caste. Rajasthan, where Dahaad is set, recorded the second highest number of cases of atrocities against Dalits (7,524) in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
On the other hand, Reema and Zoya have also aptly conveyed that women are the biggest vehicles of patriarchy, whether it is the mothers of the murdered women or Devi Singh’s wife.
Untouchability has been symbolically explored. A police constable is seen constantly lighting an incense stick as if to clear the pollution caused by the presence of Anjali, who is a senior officer. That’s what I meant before, that people think of power in very twisted ways.
We see characters with vulnerability. I like how Parghi is shown as vulnerable and not ready to be a father. Devi Singh is an honest and progressive man who acts on his ethics. He stands up for Anjali when Thakur checks him on the practice of the code and conduct of a hierarchical Hindu system and reminds him that he could be put behind bars on discrimination charges. Devi is equally progressive about his daughter’s future unlike his wife, who is entrenched in patriarchy.
Reema and Zoya’s gaze on the subject of caste violence is devoid of any tokenism that is usually present in cinema. This gaze is devoid of any heterosexual stereotyping and branding as well. We must appreciate the team for sensitively exploring caste violence with rational and scientific temper and congratulate them for the empathy they have shown. All in all an engaging affair.
Jyoti Nisha is a Mumbai-based academic, writer, screenwriter, and filmmaker with a focus on cinema, gaze, caste, gender, and media, and has 13 years of experience in print, radio, and TV. She worked as a director’s assistant to Neeraj Ghaywan for his short Geeli Pucchi, a part of Netflix’s Ajeeb Daastaans anthology. Nisha directed, produced, and crowdfunded her upcoming feature-length documentary film, Dr. Ambedkar: Now and Then, in collaboration with Pa Ranjith’s Neelam Productions which is set to release soon.
Views expressed are the author’s own.