Geeli Puchchi: A Messy Tale of Caste and Desire

— ✍️  Ananya Gupta

“Bhool gayi thi kya hum Dalit hai? Table-kursi ka sirf khaana milega; table-kursi ka kaam nahi” (“Have you forgotten we are Dalits? They will allow us to eat at a table but not work at one.”)

This line from the movie Ajeeb Dastans aptly encapsulates what many Dalits go through in the 21st century. It portrays a time when societal values profess to support the upliftment of Dalits, yet this support seems to wane when it comes to their involvement within the confines of their workplace or home. Society’s morality lies in a grey area, allowing it to treat Dalits like equals but only to the extent that they do not interfere in their designated spaces, like their home or workplace—just like in the movie when Bharati was ‘allowed’ to enter their house but not given the same utensil to eat from.

“Geeli Puchhi,” one of the four segments within the film Ajeeb Dastans, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, intricately weaves the narrative around two central characters: Bharati, a Dalit queer woman employed as a 'machine-man' in a factory, and Priya, a Brahmin woman who is also grappling with questions about her sexuality while working as a data operator in the same factory. This film stands out for its inclusivity, with the director being a Dalit person himself and the protagonist, for the first time in Indian cinema, being a Dalit queer woman. Both women in the movie are shown to be morally grey, which is also a break from the typical ‘aspirational heroine complex’ of Bollywood. Interestingly, they are confronted with the same underlying themes of gender, caste, and sexuality, yet their responses to them are extremely different, navigating the complex web of intersectionality in India in starkly different ways. Their inter-caste queer love is something that Bollywood or even the broader anti-caste discourse has not explored before. Although the film could be critiqued for casting an upper-caste woman (Konkona Sen Sharma) as a Dalit woman, it courageously ventures into territories previously unexplored in Indian cinema.

The film's cinematography is a standout element, effectively immersing the audience in Bharati's humiliation and Priya's profound sense of loneliness. The movie is divided into two main colours: blue and orange. This deliberate choice becomes evident from the outset, as Bharati is linked with blue and Priya with orange through their clothing. An interesting visual metaphor unfolds when Bharati enters the factory; the camera captures orangish cylinders on the ground, while Bharati and her fellow workers occupy the blue side. Interestingly, this symbolic use of colour is given more depth by the historical significance of blue, a colour favoured by Ambedkar for its representation of an egalitarian open sky, where all stand as equals. The tension between the difficulties faced by the blue-collared worker and her potential to break free embodies a sense of liberation and sustains the anti-caste colour of blue.

Through this review, I try to highlight the intricate knots that bind individuals to their social contexts, shedding light on the multifaceted realities that shape lives in the world's largest democracy. I also try to shed light on how different social factors affect the characters in the movie and whether any of the characters are ‘at fault’ for doing what they did, or if it is a bigger play of societal norms that led them to their actions.

‘Intersectionality,’ a term often discussed but rarely comprehensively understood, is the crucible in which identities are forged and disparities perpetuated. For many people in the world, understanding how social factors affect people’s daily lives is a struggle, but for those who do understand this, connecting more than one social factor becomes an even tougher task. Most people understand the hindrances of a lower-caste woman through one lens only—either her caste or her gender. More so, her sexuality, class, and other social factors are either ignored or seen as separate things entirely.

Kimberlé Crenshaw talks about a case in a factory where Black women were not getting employment, whereas women in general were. The court dismissed the appeal for hiring Black women and said that they should not be allowed to create a ‘super-remedy’ outside what the relevant statutes stood for. This shows how people think social factors lie on a linear spectrum with no intersection. According to her, the main issue for Black women is that there is no ‘framing the problem;’ in the previous case, the court saw sexism and racism in play as an either/or but not as a combined form of oppression.

The collective disparaging social factors of a Black woman are not framed. And because their identity falls under both a ‘woman’ and a ‘person of color’ category within public discourses that only look to respond to one or the other, the interests of a Black woman are often marginalized in both. This also leads to the burden shifting to the most privileged members of a group (Black men in the Black Lives Matter movement or white women in the feminist movement) and results in a ‘single-axis framework,’ which distorts the analysis of people affected by social factors.

In the same way in India, the kind of problem a Black woman faces in the U.S., a Dalit woman faces in India. The phrase, ‘All women are upper-caste and all Dalits are men,’ shows the underlying ‘invisibilisation’ of Dalit women in broader anti-caste and feminist movements. A Dalit queer woman, like Bharati, becomes even more marginalized in broader caste, sexuality, and feminist movements. Her gender and her caste play a big role in deciding her position in the factory. She is seen as a ‘man’ because of her behavior, which is typically outside the norms of feminine behavior. This highlights how women need to ‘prove’ their femininity for them to be called women. This is to the extent that she does not even have a separate washroom from the men in the factory. Moreover, her limited job prospects reveal a deeper societal issue. While a desk job may appear trivial to some, it symbolizes the entrenched cycle of oppression that Dalits grapple with in India, constraining them within predefined social spaces.

On the other hand, Priya is shown as a sweet, innocent girl who is tackling internalized homophobia and is ignorant of her caste privilege. She also gets a job in the factory and, being the first ‘real’ (upper-caste) woman, as called by many, is treated like a goddess in the factory. Despite the factory being a departure from the domestic sphere, she brings an aura of domesticity to the workplace. Her autonomy and sexuality, however, are subject to societal norms and the pervasive influence of Brahmanical patriarchy, a framework that centralizes control over women's sexuality. It is not only governed by her family but also other men, like her employer, when he tells her not to sit with the other factory workers. He takes it upon himself to “guard her upper-caste purity of blood by the threat of the sexuality of lower-caste men,” like the other workers. Upper-caste women are taken as the entrance to the caste system and, in turn, have the most stringent control over their sexuality.

We also see how, on the same spectrum of gender, women of different castes face different problems in the public space. A Dalit woman is more likely to face the threat of physical assault or rape, but an upper-caste woman faces violent control and restrictions on her mobility and sexuality. This is also exemplified in the behavior of both characters, where Bharati used to be physically and mentally harassed by her male co-workers, while the sexuality and mobility of ‘Sharma Ji ki Bahu’ were regulated under the guise of ‘protection.’ The ‘honor’ of the family was placed in Priya, and even her making friends outside her caste would lead to the impurity of the caste lines.

Their ‘fondness’ for each other is enough for Priya to question her sexuality but not enough for her to see beyond caste lines. In this film, Bharati is seen struggling between her feelings for Priya and her anger towards her for being an ‘unintentional’ perpetuator of the caste system. The coexistence of these feelings becomes so tangled that it gets very tough for the viewer to gauge what Bharati feels more strongly. However, instances like Bharati deleting Priya’s pictures from her phone confirm to viewers how dominantly her caste shapes what she desires.

Later in the movie, we see how Bharati does not explicitly come out about her sexuality but does about her caste. Dhruba writes in their article that caste is surveillance, with queerness being too flimsy to guard it, and how being queer and lower-caste together is tough, so they give up one. In the former half of the movie, we see Bharati first erasing her caste and then, in the latter, giving up her sexuality—but never allowing herself to be aligned with both identities at once. Priya’s reaction to Bharati’s caste then highlights how love and queerness are shaped and fall short of caste, and how caste does the same in return. This reaffirms what Uma talks about in her book: “Caste cannot be reproduced without endogamy, and it is for this reason that endogamy has been regarded as a tool for the manifestation and perpetuation of caste and gender subordination.” For Priya, stepping outside her caste lines was tougher than accepting her sexuality because, if she did choose her feelings for Bharati, then the whole concept of caste would not have been able to be reproduced in this scenario.

One particularly intriguing aspect of the movie that caught my attention was the departure from the conventional portrayal of the heroine as an idealized role model. What sets Bharati apart as a radical character is that her experiences of discrimination do not render her vulnerable or marginalized. Instead, they serve as the catalyst that fuels her strength, threatening to overshadow everything else. The conclusion is executed perfectly, as it portrays Bharati calmly sipping her tea. Despite being offered a separate utensil and questioned about her family's occupations, the expression in her eyes conveys a sense of triumph, signalling a sort of ‘victory.’

In the end, one realizes that neither Bharati nor Priya can be solely held responsible. Bharati's actions were borne out of a desperate attempt to shatter the shackles of generations-long oppression, while Priya, ensnared by the confines of her caste, unknowingly contributed to Bharati's continued suffering. They were both, in essence, casualties of a deeply ingrained societal framework. Each was fighting for a rightful space to call their own, struggling against the weight of an unjust system that sought to confine as well as define them. Their journeys, intertwined and full of complexities, serve as a motivation to change the negative connotations attached to these identities.

As Crenshaw said, differences in identity do not need to be a form of oppressive domination. Instead, they can serve as a source of political empowerment and a means for reconstructing society more equitably and inclusively. When humanity as a whole understands the importance of diversity and differences in people, real equitable change can be brought.

- The author is a fourth-year law student at Jindal Global Law School, Haryana.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Mooknayak.