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Release
date:
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January 24, 2020
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Director:
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Ashwiny
Iyer Tiwary
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Cast:
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Kangana
Ranaut, Yagya Bhasin, Jassie Gill, Neena
Gupta, Megha Burman,
Smita Dwivedi, Rajesh Tailang, Richa Chadha
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Language:
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Hindi
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She
was the captain of the Indian kabaddi team with an international career awaiting
her before the birth of a premature baby prompted her to turn her back on the
game she loves. Jaya Nigam did not have in-laws pressuring her or a
husband bullying her: she simply did what she did because it did not occur to
her that there was an option and, as her son later points out, it did not occur
to her husband to share her load.
Seven
years later, which is when we first meet her, Jaya is running a ticket counter
for the Indian Railways in Bhopal, micromanaging her child’s life and constantly
stressed out. She adores her family and they adore her right back, but a
dissatisfaction gnaws at her that she finally confronts during a minor quarrel
at home. So begins her journey to return to the country’s kabaddi scene.
Kangana
Ranaut plays Jaya, a woman like a million others whose professional dreams
remain unfulfilled because she did not treat them as a priority. The film does
not judge her nor does it particularly advocate the choice she makes: it is
what it is and we are simply being told that this is what she did. This
non-judgemental but non-idolising view of Jaya is the selling point of Panga.
In Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary’s directorial debut, the sleeper
hit Nil Battey Sannata, a poor mother
goes back to school to spark ambition in her daughter who, till then, had a “well,
a housemaid’s daughter will obviously grow up to be a housemaid” approach
to life. Chanda
in that lovely film had to cross several external hurdles and handle her
troubled relationship with her child. In Panga, Iyer Tiwary has Jaya battling almost
entirely with herself. We are surrounded by women like her: women who are so
entrenched in home management that they are convinced their families are
incapable of handling the job and their families therefore never give it a shot.
Again, Panga neither judges Jaya’s
attitude nor idolises it – it is what it is
and she is who she is.
The
first half of Panga is thoroughly
engaging as it portrays Jaya’s blissful domestic existence and quietly
simmering discontent in a charming, understated fashion. It is only in the
second half that it gradually becomes evident that, heartwarming though the film’s positivity is, it also ends up giving us a sanitised
view of middle-class India and women’s struggles.
Apart
from her own choices, there is almost nil conflict in Jaya’s life. Her husband
is loving and angelic to the point of being near perfect. Her mother is near perfect. Her son may say a
couple of hurtful things to his parents but he too is a darling. Her neighbour
is ever willing to chip in. Her friend, a professional coach played by Richa
Chadha, drops everything at the drop of a hat to move to another city for her.
Her colleagues are fond of her. If her boss is hard on her, it is because she
is late to work. And she encounters no gender prejudice from men in the
personal or professional sphere. None. In fact, so intent is the film on
reminding us that family did not stand in Jaya’s way, that having made the
point convincingly through the narrative in the first half, it gets her to say
so in so many words to a TV journalist in the second half, as if in a bid to
ensure that conservative audiences got the point.
In
fact, the ONLY opposition she faces while working towards her career goals
comes from women: her mother’s mild admonition is overshadowed by the mean
female team captain, and a fleeting glimpse of mothers at her son’s school
indicates that they are a nasty lot. Men – her coach when she was younger, her
husband, the coaches she encounters during her second innings, the son whose
goading is responsible for getting her back in sports – are all unequivocally
supportive. The thing is, individually each of these characters is
believable. Collectively viewed though, the overall niceness scrubs out the
reality of women’s struggles in
middle-class India steeped as it is in misogyny,
sexism and discrimination. And the unstated point that women are the only
ones who stand in the way of other women is offensive (though saleable to the
masses of course) because it is far removed from the truth – no doubt plenty of women play along with patriarchy, but men helm
and benefit from it, so why are we pretending otherwise?
The
film’s play-it-safe nature is seen in other ways. Like in Sultan before it, when an ambitious woman gets pregnant, the A-word
is not even mentioned. I am not suggesting that all ambitious women would
consider abortion in such circumstances, but that it is unrealistic to portray
a scenario in which not a single person brings up the possibility.
Elsewhere,
although Panga makes an appearance of
being cool around Chadha’s
character, the
normalisation of Jaya’s casual dismissiveness towards her at one point
because she is unmarried is problematic and the
ending suggests that the team of this film – like Chhapaak before it – just cannot fathom being single as a possible ‘happy
ending’ for a woman. In this matter it reveals the innate conservatism closeted
even in most liberals.
To be
honest, it hurts to make these points about Panga,
because Iyer Tiwari gives her film a pleasant tone at all times, the rhythm of
the narrative never lets up, the ending is gripping and it is a film I liked at
many levels. The charismatic Ranaut’s sedate performance anchors the
narrative and she never wavers even when her character’s stress reaches fever
pitch. Jassie Gill is wonderful in the role
of her husband, making him an Everyman in whom every woman might find an
ally. The supporting cast is dotted with
likeable actors. And the very confident Yagya Bhasin as the lead couple’s son
never allows his character’s maturity to cross a line into precocious acting.
Panga is
charming and in the first half very credible, but its charm also camouflages
the warts in the world women face every day.
Rating (out
of 5 stars): 2.75
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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129 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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