They are properties of their husbands without them, they have no identity. But pretty soon as their discussion wavers off to other matters like whether a widow should be allowed to go to the nearby pond to fill water or die of thirst, you realise, a state of Emergency-level suppression already prevails in this village. The men, sitting around passing the hookah, dismiss it as just another bad repercussion of letting a woman run the country. The village is so remote, that neither the news of the Emergency or the actual Emergency can have any effect. Hellaro is a Gujarati film set in 1975 in a village in Kutch that hasn’t seen rainfall in three years. There would be Hellaro, which means an outburst. But imagine a place and time where the men danced their hearts out in the open, while the women were confined to their homes, prohibited from this expression?Īnd imagine what would happen when the women finally had enough and rebelled? There would be an outburst of uncontrolled expression. And like most Indian dance forms, it is also an offering to a deity, a Goddess, and therefore, is primarily a woman’s domain. When the beats fall on the dhol, it is hard for anyone (yes, non-Gujaratis even) to hold themselves back. Garba, which is Gujarati folk dance form, is a medium of expression. He recalled a folklore he had once heard, but decided to imagine a world where the essence of this story was flipped. It is this restriction on self-expression that birthed the idea of Hellaro in director Abhishek Shah’s mind. And we thought women weren’t properties anymore? The real stretch is when a girl tells you she won’t talk to a guy friend because ‘My boyfriend doesn’t like it’. We still see women who don’t put on makeup because ‘My husband won’t like it’ or who return home before dark because ‘My father doesn’t like it’.
But we all know, their suppression hasn’t exactly gone away, it has only evolved. What can I say about the oppression of women that we’ve not said, seen, and even done ourselves already? We may like to flaunt our educational degrees and our modern clothes and gadgets, and claim that women have come such a long way.
Fuelled by powerful performances, stunning cinematography, vibrant choreography and pointed dialogues, ‘Hellaro’ takes Gujarati cinema to a new high.
,Abhishek Shah’s National Award-winning ‘Hellaro’ sparks a fire about women‘s freedom much needed in today’s times.
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