Indian women not waiting to be saved by some prince: Rohena Gera on ‘Sir’

Is Love Enough? Sir was always going to be a love story, says director Rohena Gera about her critically-acclaimed debut film which examines the many different ways class impacts an individual’s life in India.

The movie premiered at Critics' Week Sidebar at 2018's Cannes Film Festival where it won the Gan Foundation Award and released in around 25 countries, before making it to the Indian theatres on November 13.

The Tillotama Shome and Vivek Gomber starrer was all set to be released in March but the coronavirus pandemic led to a change of plan.

Gera, however, stuck to her dream of releasing the film on Indian screens.

“Absolutely. That’s why I started writing it when I thought of doing it as a love story,” the director said when asked whether she always envisioned the film as a love story.

Sir is a tender romance between a widowed domestic help, Ratna, and her employer, Ashwin, who has returned to India from the US after a broken engagement.

The filmmaker, who debuted as one of the screenwriters on the popular 2003 show Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin and made a documentary What’s Love Got to Do with It?, said as a woman writing about women, it was important to present Ratna’s character (Shome) not as a pawn but a fully-developed person.

Ratna, Gera said, is no Cinderella, the fairytale character waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming.

“I was not thinking about Cinderella at all, it was farthest thing from my mind. Ratna has her own hopes and dreams and she is going for it. She is not waiting to be saved by somebody and that’s how I see Indian women. We’re not sitting around waiting for the society to change. We navigate around a system that’s not necessarily the most just in the world,” she told PTI in a Zoom interview.

The 47-year-old director said Ratna's character has come from her own observations about Indian women who “take the lot that’s theirs and just run with it and even manage to laugh along the way”.

“This is something that I find really beautiful and inspiring when I look around. This character comes from the people I’ve seen in my life. I don’t think any of us are sitting around waiting to be saved by some prince. We have to make our own lives and along the way if we save a prince, then good for him.”

Gera said she never viewed marriage or the whole ‘happily ever after’ notion as some ultimate goal.

“I am very much romantic at heart so I love the idea of finding a partner and being in a good relationship and all of that, but most people have to find their own path in life,” she added.

The seed of the idea for Sir grew from Gera’s discomfort with the deeply-rooted class divisions in the Indian society, she said.

“Class barrier is something that we live with every day. I also lived with it but in my heart, I always felt that it was something that I needed to look at. When I thought of doing it as a love story, that’s when it really crystallised into something interesting for me that ‘let’s do a story where two people can be equal through love and then let’s see what happens’.”

There were challenges along the way as a first-time feature director but Gera kept finding people willing to collaborate with her once they read the script, like Shome, who came on board a year before the movie was shot.

Through her on-screen Ratna, Gera found her other protagonist, Ashwin in Gomber, who had done the National Award-winning Marathi feature film Court at the time.

The journey of making Sir has also been about examining her own prejudices, the filmmaker said.

“That’s what happens when you’re writing the story. You want something to happen and you feel ‘can this happen, can this not happen?’ And if you answer is no as they (Ratna and Ashwin) start getting closer, you are revealing your prejudice. The whole journey of making the film has been about questioning my own prejudices.”

The most challenging aspect about the movie was writing its ending and Gera said she kept fiddling with it for a long time.

“I was battling with my own prejudices, optimism and desire to suddenly go into a fairytale space. It was extremely challenging to not fall into cliches, not give in to make something dramatic and listening to my own voice.”

Going forward, there would be a lot of “self-inflicted” pressure, living up to the dream run that Sir has had, but Gera said she has learnt to trust her vision as a filmmaker.

Asked whether she has been able to put a finger to why so many people have connected with the film, the director said it may have to do with the realistic portrayal of love.

“The idea of love that’s portrayed is the idea of real love. It’s not a beautiful woman and background music. It’s a story of two people who inspire each other and bring out the best in each other. And that’s what probably connects with the audience.”

The film also reveals that privilege and happiness are not the same thing, she added.

“It is not talking about this typical idea of the privileged and underprivileged. It really shows that how happy you are, comes from within, from having a dream and from chasing that dream. We all want to be a better version of ourselves and to be inspired and to dream,” she said.

Sir also stars Geetanjali Kulkarni, Ahmareen Anjum, and Rahul Vohra.