In Rohena Gera’s Sir, things come full circle for Tillotama Shome. Around the halfway mark, Ashwin (Vivek Gomber) returns to his Mumbai apartment at an unexpected time of the day. As he nudges his bedroom door, he sees his domestic help, Ratna (Shome), trying on a new dress she has stitched for her younger sister in front of the full-length mirror. An awkward silence ensues, as both of them are shell-shocked. As Mr Park (from Parasite) would say, Ratna realises that she has ‘crossed a line’ here. Meanwhile, Ashwin feels terrible about intruding into a private moment like that.
Shome’s reaction in this scene is reminiscent of her first role in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding from nearly 20 years ago. Playing a domestic help in that film too, Shome’s Alice gets carried away and tries the bride’s jewellery and attire, only to get ‘caught’. Even then, Shome had aced the expression that was equal parts shame, innocence and shock. Relegated to playing a meek character in the 2001 film, over here Shome’s character bravely goes up to her employer and confronts the situation. “Other servants switch on the AC and watch TV, but I never do that. The only reason I went to your room was because the mirror in my room is really small,” she tells Ashwin. Several years since I first watched Shome in a film, it’s always rewarding to see her under the spotlight, unfurling the nuances of a complicated role with confidence.
Gera’s directorial debut, which premiered in the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, is releasing after being on the festival circuit for over two years. Based on the dynamic between a city-bred man and his domestic worker, Sir treads the tricky terrain of telling a love story between a man and his help . Telling the comes with the responsibility of understanding the deeply unequal power dynamic at play where the man is in a position of extreme privilege. It also has the responsibility of avoiding falling into the sexist trap of portraying lives of less privileged, working women as some sort of exotic, tragic fantasy. Gera manages to create that super fine balance of realism and romance in her storytelling.
Like a million migrant labourers in the city, even Ratna has come to Mumbai with limitless dreams and ambitions. She begins working as a maid for Ashwin and his ex-fiancée, Sabina. After they break up, Ratna is asked if she wants to look for work elsewhere? She refuses. When she’s suddenly summoned from her native-place, the building’s watchman and driver speculate if the wedding has been called off. When one of them asks Ratna, with a glee on his face, she shuts him down and tells them to mind their business.
In the above two instances, we learn that she’s loyal, fearless and direct. When she sees Ashwin in a bad mood, she quietly carries back the tray of water she was about to bring to him, allowing him the privacy of an outburst. When she sees Ashwin not picking up a call on his mobile, and when that same phone call comes on the landline, she smoothly makes an excuse on his behalf. Ratna tells him about her own brief marriage, trying to impart that everyone finds a way to move on. Ratna even tells him about her interest in training under a tailor, showing her enterprising nature, her willingness to work hard for her dreams.
Ashwin, on the other hand, isn’t pigeon-holed as a ‘snooty, rich’ type. He’s a flesh-and-blood character, who understands the transactional nature of his relationship with Ratna. He’s sensitive to the problems of those around him, and we get a glimpse of it when he hands his driver some money to take a cab home, shortly after he’s driven him home from the airport in the middle of the night. He makes it a point to apologise to Ratna, when someone behaves badly with her.
He’s generally mindful about adding a ‘please’ after most of his instructions, even when they are cold and curt. He doesn’t shy away from showing his emotions, even if it is in front of Ratna, but he always makes sure that she doesn’t have to unreasonably endure his rage spill. The more he talks to Ratna, and finds out about her life, the more he comes to admire her, like her and eventually fall in love with her. And just when you think all hell is about to break loose in the film, it doesn’t.
Gera’s film prods our notions of class, the set ways of hierarchy in the world, even in our own homes. The central romance between Ratna and Ashwin never becomes a joke, even if there are characters around it in the film itself, who do dismiss it as one. Ashwin’s friend, Vicky (Chandrachoor Rai), tries talking ‘sense’ to him. “She will never be able to live it down,” he tells Ashwin. Even Ratna constantly pleads with Ashwin to not make their romance public, because she knows that he has the privilege to ‘not care’ about what people think.
She can’t. Gomber is excellent as Ashwin, maintaining a stoic face even while having his heart broken. However, the film belongs to Tillotama Shome, who lights up the scenes with her fully committed body language — for example the tiny details in the business-like manner with which she draws up the blinds of the living room.
Zoya Akhtar’s short film in Lust Stories touched upon something similar, but it ended kind of expectedly, showing the woman being ignored and humiliated for acting on her desire, and heart. In Gera’s film, even though the romance is dealt with in broad and feel-good strokes, it never seems insincere for a single moment. Gera’s film is so committed to its notion of pure people, that it’s impossible to not be disarmed by it. Sir is arguably the most tender love story we have seen in Hindi cinema in recent times, and we should toast the team’s ability to tell such a tricky story without failing to afford the sensitivity it deserves.