Gangubai Kathiawadi

 

Ganga poses at Kamathipura. 

- Brian Mendonca

Of all the pictures which flood the net on the movie Gangubai Kathaiwadi (2022), the one above, for me, is the most poignant. The expression sums it all up. Here is a sex worker who beckons the viewer. One can see that she is doing it inspite of herself. There are pools of pain behind her eyes. She is distracted. Her body is in the present, but her mind is in the past. 

One may be tempted to see this as a documentary. But that would be a mistake. Gangubai's meteoric rise to fame and her subsequent deification are quite unnecessary. The verisimilitude the movie begins with - with its realistic sets of Kamathipura - is thrown to the winds by the time Gangubai glides by, clad in white, in her victory march with streamers falling around her. Little school girls salute her and the soundtrack is like one to a hero of the nation. This is perhaps quite unlike the real Gangubai. The conflation of the real and the reel is a paradox on which Bollywood - and its economy - thrive. 

In the movie Gangubai is abandoned by her so-called lover Ramnik with whom she elopes. She does not find love later. Instead she is compelled to use her body to solicit customers. Her world, her dreams, her hopes all come crashing down to become initially a sordid tale of sex and sleaze. 

Though the media focus is on the valorization of Gangubai, the third gender, the eunuch, seems to be largely ignored. Both Raziabai and Gangubai challenge the norms of sexuality in society. They are on the same side. However in an Outlook story Gangubai's adopted daughter Babita says Raziabai did not exist in her mother's time. Raziabai could have been introduced as a foil to Gangu to increase the dramatic quotient of the movie. 

So to what extent do we say the movie is a true account? There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie but who remembers it? The real and the reel collide. The movie has given Hussain Zaidi's book Mafia Queens of Mumbai (2011), on which it is based, a new lease of life. Nevertheless, with Plato one is tempted to say the movie is thrice removed from reality. 

The movie opens with the case of a 14-year-old girl trapped in the trade. Hate runs high in the movie. Gangu shares with the writer Fezi that she has stayed 15 years in the hope of meeting Ramnik and making him pay for what he did. Fezi tells her that he wishes she does not meet him for if she does, Gangu will become Ganga, and she will forget her commitment to better the lot of her protegees in Kamathipura.

The binary of Ganga/Gangu operates throughout the movie. Ganga is the pure river, the holy place, the delight of the Gods. Gangu is a distortion of Ganga. It is everything which Ganga is not. Yet Ganga (or Gangu) has to live with these two identities like a split personality. 

The 'Tees second' scene for me is the most poignant. Ganga has left the home with the keys of the almirah and is now calling after 12 years. Her mother is so bitter that she refuses to accept her own daughter. She informs Ganga/Gangu that her dad is dead. She also tells him that he refused to have Gangajal before he died because it had her name in it. The scene ends with Ganga railing into the phone after it has been cut after the mandatory 30 seconds. 

The movie is pretty straightforward and eschews complexity. It is based on the life of Gangubai (1923-2008) who ran a brothel in the 50's and 60's in Mumbai. She came to Mumbai to become a heroine in the movies but ended up in the red light area. But as Babita says, her mother was not a mafia queen (which sells) but a queen. That's it. 
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Updated 19/3/23.