“WOMAN
IN THREE PARTS” – SCENARIO 
{For private & restricted
circulation}
IDEA: To
take a close, sympathetic look at the origin, current status & future of
Gender sensitive culture in an orthodox, upwardly mobile society …
and then gently float it into the vast embrace of “Advait Vedanta” …
There has
to be a woman. She will have to grow in the film. The film has to be about this
woman. Yet she must turn into a metaphor. Three parts can be roughly divided as:
Ossification
Impression
Immersion
Coda
OSSIFICATION
This is
happening in modern times. Like in any suburban house we see in Hindi t.v
serials; a house with a lawn & verandah, uncles & aunts, other young
& olds, including babies. She is one among all of these. The house leaves
every one pretty much to them.
She has a
boy friend, a young film maker. He’s got a powerful motor bike, real test
driver’s helmets, even for pillion rider. He likes to play songs for her on his
guitar in public parks, in other places he blows upon the harmonica that’s
always in his jacket pocket. He likes to go fishing with a rod and baited hook,
plays tennis & billiards. She is an air hostess, likes to party anywhere on
off nights. They are on board a plane, accidentally. He is returning from a
shoot, flirting openly with the lead girl. She comes to serve them. There
ensues a subdued implosion within the aircraft. Other film crew, guys &
girls, senior hostesses & flight attendant, even the Captain turns up for a
toast as they are pronounced Man & Wife by a Christian Priest co-passenger
on flight. This is known as ‘Janasakshi’ and restoration of peace. She gets ten
days off for honeymoon during which they separate. She gives up her job as
well. If there isn’t anything in it for her, she isn’t gonna take it.
An aunt in
the house is a social activist. She, our leading lady, we call her Gimmi, is
helped along to meet women’s groups who hate men. There Gimmi meets with a
female partner called Squirrel. They start living together. While social work
takes her further into public life, emotionally something seems to whither away
somewhere deep within. She keeps pet cats that sleep with these women in the
same bed. Her sensual nature oozes out in her professional dynamism. Her house
is like a den and so is her car, but this sublimation is flawed; there is a vacuum
somewhere. A void that is not to be filled with anything but the truth. What
‘truth’, she doesn’t think of all those things at all, but there is something
missing, it is telling upon her health, every one can see that. The aunt runs a
‘gift your toys’ link with poor children and manages to secure a male child for
Gimmi to ‘virtually adopt & support at a distance’ by means of checks paid
monthly to a name; picture of this child she remembers seeing in the agency reference
on Facebook. She has a link saved somewhere. She is at the top of her carrier.
A comfortable plateau or caesura from her giddy, meteoric rise where physical
time and personal space were on premium, now like in a time capsule she is
shrouded in ennui & cloud computing.
IMPRESSIONS
Gimmi &
Squirrel decide to jump in their car and wheel it to where their adopted child
is situated. They look up a flight map like and hit the road with little other
than a checking account book & a bottle of Bisleri. This journey by road
opens up certain horizons for both G & S. There occur several incidents to
give them ‘reality check’ and help them back to basics. After the glorious
autobahn like speeds up to Pune they have to be slower on the route to
Hyderabad. First thing to break down is
the a/c of their car. It is hot on Southern Plateau and they run out of gas at
a meal stop on the road. As they struggle to start their car, G & S are
hounded by little and large children constantly ogling at them, their curious
eye-balls are plastered upon the flimsy clad, sweating bodies of these women.
She is reminded, despite her best efforts to avoid, that Adoor, the child she
adores could well be one such brash brat. Fact is that rural kids are totally
shameless and inquisitive. A car driven by female, another female passenger to
boot. This in itself is a sight for village children. Boys & girls alike,
they stare them down to limits of embarrassment. Squirrel decides to quit. She
has had enough. They have a show down and Squirrel catches a bus in opposite
direction which had stopped to give them a helping hand. Gimmi is at a null
point. After a caesura with local women who take her down to their village to
dinner at their house, she steels herself for the onward drive. There are other
things, new observations, experiences & situations that have made her act
in certain ways she would never have dreamt of in her city based professional
life. Tedium of solitary driving, coping with unknown languages and crude
cultures, irregular eating habit and sleeping just anywhere to avoid falling
asleep on the steering wheel while speeding on straight stretches of road on
Deccan Plateau with its fantastically breathtaking molten lava honey droplet
like rock formations, no trees, extreme weather; all these combine to give her
a weary, far out contemplative look. She is discovering or being led by force
of circumstance to feel for ‘the other’. And she finds it difficult and tedious
to do so because, “what’s there in it for me?” she reasons.
The car for
the most part has behaved. She has remembered to fill gas and have it serviced
at Hyderabad, where she has had a most charming Muslim family sell her some of
the most exquisite dresses imaginable called ‘shararas’ & ‘ghararas’. She
feels like a princess in those softest of cotton textures and styles for
summer. The road is now getting easier on her. She is really beginning to enjoy
driving at high speeds. She goes up Nandi Hill for fun on hairpin bends. Once
up there she is not able to take her self away from spell binding bird’s eye
view, cloud formations, squeezing and funneling between lower down hill tops
for days. She has never connected with time & space like this before. She
finds herself staring at the clouds like those children stared at her. And who
was that … yes, that black, monstrous looking Tamilian bus driver who said
that, ‘the only true relation in this world is that of a Mother & Child’.
He’d even addressed her as ‘Amma’ & she’d felt that he regarded her as one.
At that moment it had irked her vanity to be called Amma. But in the South even
little daughters are called Amma. This mind blowing journey is acquiring the
form of a pilgrimage now for there is a strange look of determination on her
face, such as we see only on pilgrims driven by some spiritual or fantastic
zeal.
Gimmi is
well on her way, she is approaching the East coast. The weather is mild. She
can live off her car and not have to stay at hotels. She is losing her gender
consciousness insidiously, not aware of it yet her self. Children’s staring
does not trouble her at all any more, for instance. Somehow, or probably due to
this loss of consciousness in her, children have actually ceased getting
attracted to her vibrations. She tries to make efforts to be friendly with
children she comes across. They do not speak the same language but connect in
startlingly refreshing & creative ways. These children are something else again;
she thinks fondly of Adoor and drives on.
IMMERSION
The
orphanage, she reaches late in the evening, housed in a French colonial
building with a compound in Pondicherry. All along the drive way there are
vegetables growing. It is a huge house, leaky during monsoons, damp & dilapidated.
Here some twenty or more boys & girls live and share all their existential
works and pleasures. There is a man who almost looks like and behaves like
their mother. They call him ‘Mother with Moustache’. Gimmi is amazed at this
strange family who are singing happily and serving their guest. The Man is
silent for the most part, courteously enjoying how Gimmi soaks in details of
their dense, emotional & sensual energy. This group or family knows nothing
about her nor do they speak her language. The ‘Mother with Moustache’ speaks English
haltingly, but he chooses his few words well. As the meal is done and over,
current goes off. Children light up the place with candles or oil lamps. It is
an amazing magical sight. She is handed one candle and shown to her room with
the promise that her ‘child’ Venkatesh, will bring her coffee in the morning.
In her
room, first thing that strikes Gimmi is the quality of silence here. Without
electricity silence is darker, a deep roar of distant sea is filling it through
huge French windows with no barriers. Sleep is impossible. She wants some coffee
now. The whole house is dark. ‘Mother’ is walking up & down in silence,
bare feet, upon the drive way. She still doesn’t know his name. He makes her
coffee in his rooms. They have a silent conversation. Sitting there, Gimmi
realizes, ‘…they are so coherent because they have practically defeated
consumerism and abolished dependence on paper currency. They have found joy in
elemental life and they are digging it…’
In his rooms,
there is a charge, perception heightens with blazing aroma of freshly ground
well roasted coffee. The roar of Sea seems to have become louder on the rear
verandah, silence has deeper tones filled with sighs of worshipful joy; the
tide is shifting; all fluids moving toward a cosmic orgasm. One adorable
convenience being lesbian was you disregard contraception. So here, she
conceives, tonight. Her pilgrimage is complete. She sees herself behind the
wheel of her car, driving home with a benign smile of contentment. Soon to be a
single parent.
CODA
Early the
next morning, however, Adoor brings her a good tumbler of steaming coffee as
promised. She is delighted to find that this is the same boy who’d come to town
responding to her call for street directions to the Orphanage and now she
recollects him being silently near her through out last evening. She hadn’t
reacted to the vibe, that’s all. They have washed and cleaned her car. It is
sparkling in early morning sunshine against the lovely period building with
cabbages in foreground. Suddenly its time for taking pictures. She goes to town
with children buying things they want or need or wish from a town, that is to
say a market place. She finds a ticket to Bombay on a night flight the same
day. In the evening they go to see her off at the airport; ‘Mother’ comes along
as well. At the airport she tells him that they should keep her car and use it,
she is tired of driving and that she will come back soon. Then they will need
to use this car and hurriedly moves away from disbelieving eyes of children.
There is eye contact with Mother, but no one goes inside the airport & all.
The movie should end here. Unless there is some earth shaking idea forthcoming,
this is it. -----------------------------------------------------------
Text prepared by Rahat Yusufi for CACA (pronounced
kasa)
Creative Advancement of Cinematic Articulation.
© Author shall be pleased to see his I.P. Rights
intact.
