Baapya (Marathi)
Directed by Samir Tewari
What if? What if your wife decides to change her gender? Baapya in Marathi, which opens this Friday, is the sort of rare cinema that prods our conscience, redefines, and restructures traditional concepts of cinema and makes us question our current allegiance to violent and venomous cinema.
There are no Dhurandhars in Baapya, just ordinary people trapped in an extraordinary situation. What happens when your spouse takes off on a tangent which you didn’t see coming? You seethe, you protest, you taunt, and then you try to accept your wife as your buddy… Baapya makes it all seem plausible.
The underused, underrated Rajshri Deshpande (remember her as the bereaved mother battling for justice in Trial By Fire?) is astonishing as the woman who would rather be a man even if it means losing everything worth having. From her gender transformation to her voice modulation as a woman who frees her body to surgically attain manhood, Rajshri is not only pitch perfect, she never plays Shailaja/Shailesh for sympathy.
As for Girish Kulkarni, the simple, unassuming husband of Anya, does this actor ever fail? Does he even know the real Girish Kulkarni? Each time I see him on screen he transforms into the character he assumes. Here in Baapya, he is nothing more, nothing else, than Shailaja’s love-smitten husband, trying to process his emotions when she returns as Shailesh.
There are some remarkable supporting performances, actors who lend a lingering grace to the extraordinary happenings which could easily have become gimmicky had the director Samir Tiwari not exercised such austere control over the goings-on.
There are no villains , no party poopers in Baapya. Even Anya’s second wife is played with such infectious empathy by Devika Daftardar; she is a scene-stealer. The narrative sneaks in lighthearted interludes between Anya and his second wife, and between Anya’s mother-in-law (played with sly sanctity by Varsha Dandle) and the rest of the family, so organically these don’t feel like the traditional ‘comic relief’.
Above all, Baapya is a venture that takes a leap into the unknown without the fear of falling. A woman abandoning her family for self-gratification is radical enough (remember the price Reena Roy had to pay for doing this in Apnaapan?). But a woman breaking the family mould for a gender conversion surely falls in the realm of the unthinkable.
Hats off to this small film with a large heart for letting us know, once again, what cinema is supposed to do. Baapya makes us think and question our beliefs without seeming to revel in unconventionality. To be honest, I found the basic theme a little gimmicky.
But eventually as the winds blow, the narrative acquires wings, due in no small measure to the exhilarating songs and soaring background score (Joel Crasto).
The brave, beautiful, pathbreaking, heartbreaking film ends with a mother-son reconciliation on a beach bench, which had me holding back my tears (and full credit to Rajshri Deshpande and her screen son played by Aaryan Mengji).
And then the son poses a question that had me in splits.
Tears, laughter, anger, frustration, hope… Baapya gives us all of it. Embrace this.
