I’m not a fan of Hindi film-making that places commentary over craft. Such stories tend to treat intent as an artificial substitute for substance. Especially in this day and age, the trend – where cinema itself becomes secondary to the business of social posturing – is more pronounced than ever. But there’s something about Abhinav Singh’s 19-minute short, Sita, that sort of subverts this stereotype. The film looks shaky, it’s shot entirely at night, a child is the protagonist who learns a harsh lesson, and it’s just a couple of scenes rounded by a long monologue. At face value, Sita is not too sophisticated. Yet, it’s not as simple as “good thought, poor style”.
Sita opens with a street-dwelling boy, Badri (Om Kanojiya), noticing something strange at the dead of night. A middle-aged man dumps the lifeless body of his newborn at the steps of a temple. The implication: Female infanticide. Badri is reluctant to be the responsible one, but his young heart can’t handle the indignity of a stray dog lurking around the baby. Badri then spends the night looking for a way to cremate the little girl on the ghats of Varanasi. He carries her around, determined to give her the last rites she deserves. A local Domar cremation worker hesitates – he sends Badri to a pandit (Lilliput), because Badri maintains that the infant’s father was an upper-caste Hindu man. But the pandit refuses because Badri himself is a Dalit boy, which in his eyes means that the baby girl is ‘untouchable’ by virtue of being in the boy’s arms.
At one point, Badri stands in front of a bonfire, tired and confused, wondering if he should simply sneak the baby into the flames. He can’t understand the fuss – Why so many rules? What’s the big deal about honouring a nameless newborn? When all is lost, the meaning of the film’s title emerges. Badri meets a mysterious woman (Shriya Pilgaonkar), who narrates to him a little-known anecdote about the titular female protagonist of the Ramayana. As they sit by the banks of the Ganges, Badri is educated about the kind of bitter truths that sound way above his (intellectual) paygrade. She speaks with depth and wisdom, almost as if she’s addressing someone her own age. Without getting into the details, the essence of this scene is that life stands no chance when even storytelling – in this case, Hindu mythology – is rooted in the hierarchy of heritage. There is no hope for the future when history itself is a canvas of subtle oppressions. This woman’s presence is no secret, of course, for anyone attuned to the trope of movie characters appearing out of thin air.
What Sita lacks in narrative identity, it more than makes up for in terms of its sure-footed messaging. This message is even more striking in a nation that fails to acknowledge the complicity of tradition in the age-old culture of gender and caste discrimination. It also critiques the fact that religion – particularly in modern India – is less a marriage of faith and storytelling, and more the foundation for a political narrative built to divorce marginalized sections of society from the right to dignity, in both life and death. That Sita uses the language of mythology to make a (brave) point about civilization only cements its muted visual grammar. I’m not saying the clunkiness is deliberate, but it certainly ties into the voice of the film.
Pilgaonkar makes the woman sound resigned and cynical, almost as if she has spent years sitting at that very spot and judging the world she was once looking over. She scoffs like somebody who is more disappointed than disillusioned – the symptoms of a Goddess who is all too familiar with the hypocrisies of being human. The way she’s dressed also conveys a gaze that, over time, has morphed from holy to hellish. It’s a very interesting performance, because Sita is not a sermon. It’s a modest reminder that Indian society is an all-knowing victim of the storytelling that keeps it afloat. Could it have been a better film? Maybe. But it thrives on the irony that the fictions shaping our lives are the culprits of reality. It counts on the paradox that this is a low-key script about all the little scripts that define our bigotry. How else do you explain an imaginary character coming to life in the most defeated – rather than uplifted – capacity? In that sense, Sita offers a no-nonsense answer about why we aren’t better people. And sometimes, the memo is all that matters.