ESSAY: Chetna And The Awakening That Wasn't

A TALE OF TWO B.R.’S

The poster of B.R. Ishara’s Chetna (1970) advertised the filmmaker’s intent upfront. Debutant Anil Dhawan, standing at a distance was framed between Rehana Sultan’s bare legs. The director was enticing audiences but also being cheeky about the Adult certification granted to his breakthrough film. Interestingly, another B.R.—the more conventional Chopra—made Insaaf Ka Tarazu exactly a decade later in which a rape victim (Zeenat Aman) was shown grovelling between the perpetrator’s (Raj Babbar) legs.

The contrasting imagery tells its own story. And makes you wonder why Ishara earned notoriety as a ‘bold’ director while Chopra’s position as one of the ‘pillars’ of establishment was never shaken. Is it only because this was perhaps Ishara’s best and Insaaf Ka Tarazu, although a huge hit, was clearly Chopra’s nadir? Or was it also the discomfort of Chetna’s brazen challenge to conventional morality and IKT’s hypocrisy in employing titillation to maintain status quo?

A question that gains significance in light of the fact that although the Censor Board had passed Chetna with minor cuts, members of the film industry apparently petitioned it to intervene and review the film when it was already running to packed houses. Nothing in the film is likely to shock contemporary audiences, but dishearteningly, its worldview seems modern to this day, suggesting that we haven’t made much progress in terms of reviewing old dogmas where it comes to the representation of women on screen.

The film opens with shots of a trendily dressed woman, Seema (Sultan), offering prayers at a temple, church and dargah—suggesting her open-mindedness and also that all gods are equal and all are equal before god. Next she’s at a photo shoot for a saree ad in which the dimwit cameraman asks her to strike Ajanta-Ellora-type poses. The juxtaposition is deliberate—the director doesn't wish to stereotype her.

She’s a confident woman who knows how to carry herself and deal with the world, as is evident from her brusque dismissal of a salesman who tries to act familiar. Later, in a chance meeting with the hero, Anil (Dhawan)—he helps out when her car breaks down—she refuses to engage with him for a moment longer than necessary. He, on the other hand, has fallen in love at first sight and from Seema’s expression we know that she’s aware of it.

The sarees she’s bought are for her younger sister who seems too self-absorbed to care for her beyond the things she can provide. She then checks on her father and coaxes him to take his medicines, signalling her devotion to family. Meanwhile, Anil’s friend Ramesh (Shatrughan Sinha in a special appearance) visits Bombay and we’re told about their undying friendship—in filmi style by a characteristically declamatory Sinha—which started when Anil saved Ramesh’s life. Like Seema, he too is a do-gooder, but far more naïve and idealistic.

Seema continues to spurn Anil’s advances and he gets very depressed. Ramesh decides to ‘cure’ him by hiring the services of an experienced prostitute, who, as we’ve already guessed, is none other than Seema. This is one of three crucial scenes in the film. Both Seema and Anil are shocked to see each other—he adopts a gloomy expression, she betrays her astonishment for but a moment before going back to being her no-nonsense self. But there’s no recrimination on his side or guilt on hers. She presumes this is what he really craved in the first place and offers herself up—“Yahan tak aane ke baad sabhi mard ek jaise ho jaate hain,” she chides him as he continues to stand bewildered by the door.

Anil’s character is that of an over-grown adolescent clearly ill-equipped to deal with such a strong woman. For most part of the scene he keeps his face turned away from her as she lectures him about how love is the biggest con of the times and sooner or later, out of boredom or heartbreak, pusillanimous men like him end up with women like her. In saying so, Ishara puts the problem of women’s exploitation squarely in the men’s corner rather than holding women accountable for their ‘choices’.

Seema goes as far as to state that she’s seen so many men in the buff that she detests the sight of their feigned respectability—suggesting the duplicity of a moralistic society which speaks of women’s ‘izzat’ in the same breath as it denudes them.

Later in the film, when she’s telling him the story of her life, she recalls how when she first went to college she saw rich girls wearing tight clothes and fancy jewellery with men ogling them while being from an impoverished family, she went unnoticed. She admits to getting lured by easy money; but the filmmaker doesn't judge her, instead questioning the culture in which women have to preen to get noticed and men are born with a license to be voyeuristic.

After a heavy-handed epiphany involving a dhobi’s suggestion of dyeing stained clothes in a different colour to revive them, Anil charges off to Seema’s house and proposes marriage. This is the second key scene, in which he clarifies, "Jo kuchh bhi aap hain, jaisi bhi aap hain, aapke baare mein pavitrata ki koi pratima nahin banaayi maine jiske toot jaane ka dar ho," before asserting that he wants to marry her out of love and not pity or the desire to ‘uplift’ her.

Seema’s reaction is even more interesting. After asking him if he’s out of his mind or merely trying to humiliate her, she nonchalantly turns around, lights a cigarette and tells him, not only has she slept with several men in the line of work, she's also habituated to drinking and smoking and these are expensive vices. If he wishes to marry her, he’d have to provide for her lifestyle; to which the servile Anil readily agrees.

Now this is an interesting conversation on several counts. Firstly, knowing what she does for a living, Anil hasn’t changed the way he perceives her in the manner of self-righteous heroes who lecture women about tehzeeb/sharm etc. He continues to speak with humility and addresses her as ‘aap’. Seema’s scepticism about this proposal is totally justified. She doesn’t melt with gratitude or burn of guilt because he’s offering her ‘respectability’ through marriage. In fact she tells him she’ll need to think about it and he agrees to wait.

She seeks the counsel of Nirmala (Nadira in an excellent cameo), a senior in her profession and a woman she looks up to. They start off the conversation with a peg each of Vat 69, in broad daylight, on the lawns of Nirmala's bungalow. Their vices aren't advertised for sensational effect, but are acknowledged matter-of-factly—which makes Anil the writer-director's alter ego, since he takes a similar stance while judging Seema. By casting a maverick but respected actress as Nirmala, Ishara lends weight to her words; wise and dignified in her assessment of the world and the fate of women like herself. "Tum mera beeta hua kal ho," she tells Seema as she picks up her glass with shaking hands, "aur main tumhara aane wala kal hoon."

Seema wants to know if Anil may have an ulterior motive in wooing her. Nirmala suggest she take a chance because if she doesn't, surely a bleak future awaits her. "Aur agar usne tumhe dhokha diya, toh use talaaq de dena," she says. Remember, the year was 1970.

After the wedding Seema requests Anil to sleep in another room till she's emotionally ready and he agrees. But she doesn't change her ways in accordance with her newfound 'purity'. Anil keeps to his word and buys her liquor and cigarettes, though eventually she gives up the habits on her own. Clever thinking on the husband's part you'd say, almost shaming her into submission, but Anil doesn't display that level of complexity.

In fact, a quibble with the film is this ideal man played by the limp if cute-looking Dhawan—the antithesis of the popular perception of manhood—whose ego never surfaces all the way to the tragic end. Perhaps that's why they can't live happily ever after. Seema is a real woman while Anil is an unattainable fantasy. She may want to become a better person but is bound to trip over his sickening goodness at some point and hence their relationship would always remain unequal.

Yet Chetna is a radical film which allows the heroine to live on her own terms without a compelling sob story or an iota of regret. In popular cinema you barely get flashes of such women even today. Not long after Chetna, Parveen Babi (whom Ishara launched in Charitra three years later) plays a character of similar mettle in Yash Chopra's Deewar. But when she falls in love with the protagonist (Amitabh Bachchan) and finds herself pregnant, he decides to make an honest woman of her by getting married. You know their love is doomed; that she is killed in full wedding finery is a way of granting her an 'honourable' death.

As for Insaaf Ka Tarazu, the dice are loaded against Bharati from start to finish—because she's beautiful, independent and works as a model—and her rape by the lecherous Ramesh is Chopra's warning to women who're too modern for their own good. Hence she feels defiled and inadequate for her fiancé (Deepak Parashar) and he behaves like a martyr by still wanting to marry her—but also saying things like "shaadi ke baad tum kaam nahin karogi", thereby asserting his right over her.

Bharati, who kills Ramesh after he's been acquitted in her case and goes on to prey upon her sister, must plead for justice and explain her reasons in a court of law, presided over by the same man who let Ramesh go in the first place. It's as if she's begging for validation while sounding indignant on the face of it.

The relationship in Chetna, on the other hand, remains private from start to finish. Nobody else has a stake in what transpires between Seema and Anil and in the end, the choice Seema makes too is her own. Right or wrong, she doesn't feel the need to justify herself to anyone including Anil, who must accept her decision with the same fairness that he has treated her with throughout the film.

That such a man rarely manifests even in the make-believe is a telling disappointment.