Telling stories

Many of us know the story of Ahalya beautiful and virtuous wife of Gautama rishi from the Ramayana Indra driven by lust for her impersonates Gautama to seduce her Gautama curses them Indra is covered with 1000 vulvae which later turn to 1000 eyes and Ahalya turns to stone liberated many years later by Rama The story of Ahalya was frequently retold between the 9th century BC and the 15th century AD each time a little differently raising different questions Was Ahalya raped by Indra Or merely fooled by him When neither were her fault why was she punished Or was she aware of the impersonation and so consciously unfaithful an asceticrsquos wife longing for sexRadhika Apte plays AhalyaThese recurring questions of virtue blame justice female desire social roles patriarchy and masculine ego inherent in the Ahalya myth repeatedly bring it to the foreStories are multifaceted concepts which help us make sense of our lives Each retelling reveals something about the time itrsquos told in mdash explicitly through questions it foregrounds implicitly by reflecting the attitudes of its time in the details In this way it weaves the old with the newSujoy Ghoshrsquos recent short film Ahalya released online does not so much retell the Ahalya myth as invoke it drawing on our awareness of the story In the film Ahalyarsquos aged husband Goutam Sadhu has a magic stone which allows young men to assume his form tempting them to sleep with Ahalya If they give in they turn into stone figurinesTherersquos much intellectual pleasure in this retelling Elements of the Ahalya myth are adroitly mapped onto a pulpy thriller form The trope of the insecure husband anxious to keep his sexy young wife is turned upside down The fun of the film lies in this cleverness and thelegendary Soumitro Chatterjeersquos juicy performanceThe explicit themes of the film are issues constantly reverberating around us female autonomy choice and sexual desire why sexual blame always attaches to women The film presents a woman who desires sex and a man who accepts and abets this Itrsquos ambiguous if the voluptuously sashaying Ahalya is complicit She scolds the figurines for being lsquonaughtyrsquo which seems to imply she is Either way therersquos a welcome lack of moralisingThe crux of the film lies in its inversion Itrsquos not Ahalya who turns to stone but the menIndra symbolising who is really to blame And at this point we suddenly wonder actually what are the men punished for If Ahalya desired them either mistaking them for Goutam or knowingly or if her husband conjured up situations to sexually please her what crime did the men commitThe answer appears to be desiring another manrsquos wife But is this the fulcrum of sexual relations mdash who a woman lsquobelongsrsquo to or whether she is seen sexually Surely the most crucial issue is the womanrsquos consentBut this important theme becomes obscured because the female protagonist is so opaque Ahalya is filmed as a sexy even sexual body and little else She may not be trapped in stone But she seems trapped in a gaze which gives us little idea of her interiorityIn that sense the film does reflect our times Intellectually wersquore confronting ideas of female autonomy and the problems and anxieties of patriarchal masculinity mdash an important new beginning Yet our discussions keep circling back to how to punish men rather than imagining and engaging with women as fully rounded beings We struggle still to put womenrsquos freedom needs or feelings at the centre of the story as a way to change the equation Hopefully in the next retellingParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at wwwparodevicom