by NAEEM MOHAIEMEN
Watching Meherjaan, I could give it space as a counter-narrative project, whether I agree with it or not. But analysing it as pure cinema, I was jolted by the absurdist elements of the fairy tale screenplay. Meher plays out her love in soft-lit evening glow, with translucent water frolics, multiple costume changes (the soldier even has a dhoti ensemble) and wandering baul serenades. Half my viewing time was spent wondering how this couple could spend hours holding hands and engaging in close clinches, while remaining undiscovered.
Once the lovers are found, the reactions are mellow and measured to the point of delirium. Even in peacetime, male aggression and macho swagger reacts aggressively, possessively and patronisingly to questions of “honour.” But in 1971, in an extreme environment where reprisals against transgressive Bengalis were also the norm, the characters carry on as if Meherjaan has only been caught stealing peyara. Meyera ektu erokom korei…
The film gives the audience a way out from the central conundrum. The soldier is not the dreaded “Punjabi hanadar” (just as “Bihari” became a stand-in for “Urdu speaker,” Punjabi is another flattening signifier), but rather, a Balochi. You are meant to think of the post-71 Baloch uprising. And to sweeten the taste, he has run away from his battalion and hasn’t killed anyone. A traitorous Pakistani! The other transforms into, well… us.
Meherjaan packs many subplots: the closeted possible lesbian, the last Muslim quasi-feudal, the feisty coquette, the leftist radical. People attempting a meta-reading can ponder the choice of Jaya Bacchan as memory locus or Victor Banerjee as Muslim grandee on the cinderblock. The latter is especially ironic, given Banerjee was a onetime campaigner for the BJP, during their anti-Muslim zenith.
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(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor of SACW)