A lonely private life

Nonika Singh 

“Love is such a beautiful word. But you make it feel so dirty,” says Manoj Bajpayee as professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras in Aligarh. Indeed, when it comes to same sex love, the majority straight community tends to view it with not only myopic lens of morality but also colours it in sordid tones. 

Of course, Aligarh is not so much about same sex relationships as about a man’s dignity and his right to privacy. Unless you were marooned in an island cut off from the world, the film’s story ever since it premiered at Busan Film Festival has been the talking point as well as reference point for debates on the LGBT community.

Based on the life of a Marathi professor Siras, who was thrown out of the AMU for his sexual preferences, the film brings to you the loneliness of an educated man ostracized by society. That it’s Manoj Bajpayee, one of the finest actors of the Indian film industry, who is playing the protagonist, only helps take the narrative to another level. Bajpayee lends so much dignity to his character that even in moments when you should be laughing at him (like when he dozes off during the court proceedings), you empathise. His awkwardness makes your heart ache, his predicament makes you indignant.

Seriously in a democracy can an intellectual be shamed with such blatant shamelessness? Hansal Mehta, who remains close to his subject not veering in any unwarranted direction, tells you in no uncertain terms--yes. How a man’s privacy can be invaded and how that very illegal intrusion can be held like an albatross around his neck….all this and more forms the backbone of the film. The focus all the time is on this man who is uncomfortable talking about the way he is. He is not holding a placard for either gay rights or even activism. In one of the scenes he even questions how can three letters (read gay) explain “how I feel.” In yet another one he is rather diffident when he sings a Marathi song in the company of others like him. He is a man most comfortable in his lonely private life where he sips whiskey, listens to Lata Mangeshkar songs. Yet, moral custodians won’t let him be. Any wonder when his story breaks out, even journalists smell a sex scandal. But as Rajkummar Rao playing the empathetic budding scribe Deepu Sebastian reminds, “It’s not a sex scandal, it’s a human story.” And Aligarh most certainly is. In a poem Siras tells you “the real poetry lies in the silence between the words” here too silence, gestures speak more eloquently. As for the explicit sex scenes otherwise a must in films dealing with such taboo subject are all but given a miss. And when these do appear juxtaposed with a heterosexual one it’s neither meant to titillate nor shock. 

Anguish is the overriding emotion. Full of pathos, yet not for a moment does either the writer or the director go for your lowest emotional denominator. Mehta steers clear of overt sentimentality. No rhetoric not even in the court scenes where the skewed moral compass that we employ to judge these people surfaces. Mehta might believe a film can’t change things. He has gone ahead and made a film that can certainly change mindsets in a country where, as things stand, Section 377 holds and homosexuality is a criminal offence. No, the film is not an audiovisual petition for gay rights, only a requiem and an evocative plea that they be treated with humaneness. For those of us only too eager and willing to push them to the margins that is a very sobering thought. It may not be a film that will entertain you but should you choose not to skip it, it will remain with you for a long, long time. And for that the credit goes as much to Bajpayee as Mehta and his writer Apurva Asrani. If Bajpayee’s Bhiku Matre of Satya still lingers on, his professor Siras will be indelibly etched.