“The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power. We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn’t feel that it detracts from our femininity.” - Elizabeth Wurtzel.

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Tongues on Fire film festival, which celebrates and reflects the ‘excellence, performance and achievements’ of Asian women in cinema. Bollywood stars such as Mahima Chaudhry, Konkona Sen Sharma, Lisa Ray, Raima Sen, Sameera Reddy and Ayesha Takia all mesmerised the public on the big screens during the month of March, to fight their plight of the Asian woman. Silently supporting them were the women behind the stories told; bold, brave, and brazen film makers such as Tanuja Chandra and Mira Nair, who have enriched and indulged the film industry with their talent and vision. InsideDesi caught up with the news and views of Mahima Chaudhry and Tanuja Chandra, at the screening of their film ‘Hope and A Little Sugar’, to find out just what made these independent women hold their head high in the film industry which notoriously revels in the adamant belief, that only men sell at the movies.

‘Hope and a Little Sugar’ ~ Synopsis.

Set in New York in the weeks before and after 9/11, this poignant tale of love set against the forces of hate and intolerance centres on the romance between an aspiring Muslim photographer, Ali Siddiqui, and a young Sikh widow, Saloni. Ali develops a close friendship with Saloni and her husband Harry. But when Harry dies in the World Trade Center on 9/11, his father, a retired Sikh colonel, directs his longstanding animosity toward Muslims at Ali, as the young man’s affection for Saloni grow increasingly evident. Unable to accept his son’s death, the colonel threatens to bring a violent end to Ali and Saloni’s budding romance.’

Mahima Chaudhry

Down-to-earth, giggly, vivacious; a VJ, turned model, turned actress. Her laughter so contagious that it is impossible not to catch; her mannerisms shrouding you in the false belief that you have been well aquainted for many, many years. With each question, she responds without pomposity; no air of haughtiness, no signs of attitude. Her films include Prakash Jha’s Dil Kya Kare, Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja, Shashi Ranjan’s Dobara, Anurag Basu’s Saaya, and Dharmesh Darshan’s Dhadkan; her won-awards and nominations are aplenty. In essence, Mahima Chaudhry really needs no introduction.

Returning after her brief spell away from the silver screen due to motherhood, she is instantly questioned by the public on her value as an actress. It is a common trait of Bollywood cinema, that actresses are not welcomed back with such ease after embracing marriage and motherhood. Directors and producers are reluctant for a heroine to marry, especially at the peak of her career, in fear that it will lower her value and desirability. Asked whether she was worried about her comeback and at the acceptance of her audience, the actress pauses for thought.

“I think earlier it’s been very acceptable, and the audience has never had a problem with actresses going off and having kids and then making their comeback. Nutan, Tanuja, Rakhee, Dimple Kapadia, they all continued their careers. It’s only later that a bunch of actresses just decided that after getting married they would give up their career, and I think that’s where the trend began. But I think now it’s come round full circle; actresses are coming back, and audiences are still fine with it. I haven’t had any problem because of marriage and motherhood.”

And what about actresses who can’t get back into shape after pregnancy? “You must excuse me if I’m looking a little fat, I will lose it soon,” sighs the perfectly elegant and trim actress, “but audiences are very interested in how actresses look and appear after having a child, be it Kajol or Madhuri; it’s a common point of curiosity.”

Mahima’s love for Bollywood shines through her words. Of hindi cinema, she gasps, “I think Bollywood has it’s own charm! I mean they’re all musicals, and we just love our musicals. We like to break into a song; I love the rain songs, where the saree is just flying and you’re looking so glamorous!”

Asked how she landed the role of Saloni in Tanuja Chandra’s Hope and a Little Sugar, Mahima erupts into giggles. Still grinning, the actress braces herself to spill the beans.

“You know, it’s funny. She first told me that she had signed Lara Dutta for the film, and I was pissed! I mean, that’s not how it works; we know other actresses are landing roles, but we don’t wanna hear about it! And then, another day, I hear Urmila Matondkar is doing it! Well, because there was a kissing scene in the film, Tanuja figured I wouldn’t do it because I had a boyfriend. Eurghhh, you know how boyfriends can be, he wouldn’t allow me. Well….. soon after, I broke up with him!”

Launched by the same man that began the careers of Madhuri Dixit and Manisha Koirala, eleven years on, Mahima Chaudhry is still the girl-next-door who burst onto our screens, and immersed herself in the role of Ganga, for Subhash Ghai’s super-hit, Pardes. Yet today there is a serenity and stillness about her which only adds to her charm, and confirms her new identity and role; that of motherhood. Here, in her comeback to cinema, we welcome the new, more-refined Mahima, to the industry that has missed her charismatic presence.

Tanuja Chandra

Recognised the world over for her intensity and passion on women-centric films, Tanuja Chandra is the woman behind powerful movies. The sister of renowned writer, Vikram Chandra, films such as Tamanna, Dushman, Sur, and Sangharsh all reside under her belt. She has furthered the careers of actresses such as Pooja Bhatt, Kajol, and Preity Zinta, by giving them the opportunity to flourish in her created characters. Her female protagonists have been messiahs of ferocious strength, integrity, freedom, and independence; “I find women have a huge latitude to be able to take a lot of pain. My mother is incredibly strong.”

Her characters include a woman who discovers that she is the produce of rape, a woman who finds that the man she knows as her father, is a eunuch rejected by society, and a woman whose twin sister is raped and murdered by a psychotic postman, as she listens helplessly on the phone. Yet to her credit, Tanuja has always been highly praised for giving her male characters a strong voice in each of her stories.

She is no feminist. Of feminism, the dignified director says,

“The term feminist is a little passe, actually. I wouldn’t call myself a feminist. I wanted to convince with my movies, so that I could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any male director. I enjoy making films on a female subject, not because I want to wave a flag and change the world, but because those are the ones that interest me, and I just get really attached to those stories. So I don’t see myself particularly as a ‘female’ director; I’m just a director, and I’m accountable for whatever I do wrong, and for all my failures.”

Tanuja co-wrote Zakhm, a film about the Muslim/Hindu divide in society, and a woman’s struggle to have the right to be buried in accordance to her faith, despite the contrasting views of both her sons. “There is a greater violence in our society than films can portray”, says Tanuja, on the reality of the society she has observed. In 1992, she witnessed the Mumbai Riots as a television journalist, and the experience brought her to face the conflicts within humanity: “I included the 1992 Mumbai Riots in the film, because I was a television journalist at the time that happened, and I saw how it was myself, and just how badly people got hurt from a very close-up angle.”

Hope and a Little Sugar is her latest released project. Here, she stitches such societal issues together and brings to the forefront the ongoing tensions between the Muslim and the Sikh communities, and their delicate relationship due to a violent and turbulent history. The 9/11 attacks, upon which the film is based, have only added to this problem, with the case of mistaken identity playing a fundamental role. However, Tanuja manages to transform this issue of mistaken identity in the most positive light, by portraying it as an antidote to cure hatred:

“In New York, there were quite a few Sikhs who were mistaken to be militant Islamists, and that’s what I found to be the perfect answer for the colonel’s anger; he holds Ali responsible for the death of his son, and accountable for the extremists who blew up the Twin Towers, but when he himself gets mistaken for something he is not, it brings him to forgive Ali for a crime he knows Ali has not really committed. Like he says at the end, he ‘mistook the man for the enemy’.”

On watching the film, Tanuja’s social message on the subject of peace and tolerance is vividly apparent, as an idyllic ending is given to an intensely-sensitive subject matter: “We all just have to learn to live with each other, we have to learn to co-exist. You can’t just decide to rid the world of one community, because eventually, somebody’s gonna hit you back.”

Many found it difficult to digest any harmony between the two faiths, as ultimately portrayed in the film, yet Tanuja made her intentions clear; “Muslims and Sikhs have always had bad history. But the film just had all that potential of how it could be, you know? You don’t always love me, and I don’t always love you, but come on, let’s not kill each other?”

And when finally quizzed about the cliched happy ending to the film, Tanuja’s easy laughter displayed the beliefs of a woman who knew just how to hold her ground, and stand-by all that she delivered to the audience; “Of course it had to be a happy ending! It’s about hope! It’s about finding hope and finding love, and being able to love someone.”

As the evening comes to an end, Tanuja’s opening words ring in our ears. “I live for applause!”, she had said, straight after the screening of Hope and a Little Sugar. An honest film-maker with pure conviction in her work, and an imagination which challenges her own knowledge of the conflicts within society, Tanuja Chandra is a woman of authenticity and ingenuity. A woman neither driven by greed, nor confined within the restrictions of ‘contemporary cinema’, she is happy to settle for small-budget films so long as the story she tells is from her heart, and delivered to those whose hearts are open to receive. Most definitely deserving to be celebrated at the Tongues of Fire film festival, and most definitely deserving to hear the applause which she so longs to hear.

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