A lot of noise is being made in the media for Priyanka Chopra’s name being associated with the short film Anuja. Although several producers’ names are also linked to this mawkish poverty-is-liberating kitsch that the West loves, it is only Ms Chopra’s name that’s being pushed around for grabbing eyeballs.
Anuja, about two impoverished sisters with unbelievably shiny teeth, laughing and sobbing their way through a gauntlet of suffering, is 22 minutes of treacly kitsch. The selfsconscious “poverty realism” of the presentation is just what the West wants to see in India.
The Western Gaze positions two dusky girls, Palak (Ananya Shanbhag) and Anuja (Sajda Pathan), in a tailoring organization founded on child labour and run by a cheesy supervisor (Nagesh Bhosle) straight out of Oliver Twist.
This Mumbai-bred Fagin is dirty and leery. He wants the two sisters in his office early in the morning before the workforce arrives on the same day when the younger sister, Anuja, is supposed to sit a crucial test that will ensure her escape from drudgery.
So much melodrama in a short film is itself a feat. The fact that the presenters of this poverty-prom would have us believe that they actually care about the Anujas of the city is laughable. Director Adam J Graves’ gaze and vision are completely divorced from ground reality. This is realism as per imperial guidelines. The two girls—ah, those brave, tortured, giggly souls!—are just waiting to be rescued.
In the meanwhile, they lighten the load of their misery by watching Vyjayanthimala dancing to ’Udi jab jab zulfein teri’ in the 1958 film Naya Daur with two bags of popcorn in a millennial mall.
If this isn’t escapist realism at its best, what is?
