Bishaldeb Halder
There are diseases and then, there is AIDS. It is difficult to think of any other disease which takes as much a psychological and social toll on its victim as a physical one. The first factors assume greater importance in light of the nature of the disease itself: everything depends upon the nature of rehabilitation post the onset of the disease. Often, the social stigma associated with AIDS is enough to block any further inquiry (let alone care and rehabilitation) or even countenance the victim any further. This is especially true of a country like India, with its unique but rigid social structures.
Inquiries into the nature of the disease ,along with preventive and palliative measures, have been covered in dime-a-dozen documentaries, social awareness shorts and Government health ministry advertisements over the years since the late 80’s. It’s a sign of how inept they were in tackling the social and psychological fallout of the disease, these ads invariably provoked nervous and salacious giggles among viewers.
The first piece of work this writer used to tackle the subject in a consciously dignified way was the TV series ‘Lifeline’ (1991), by Vijaya Mehta. A highlight of this series was the guest appearance of Shabana Azmi as a social worker who sensitizes people in the hospital to a little girl who is an AIDS patient. Clearly explaining the causes by which the girl contracted it (born of an AIDS patient), she emphasizes the fact that AIDS does not spread through contact or social interaction like sharing food and beverage. The Government, taking a cue from this, created a public service announcement replicating the original ‘Lifeline’ scene almost shot for shot.
The Hindi film industry took much longer than Hindi television to overcome its diffidence in this matter. Mahesh Manjrekar’s ‘Nidaan’ (2000), by no means a niche film- in aesthetic terms, at least- had a release befitting one owing to its subject matter and the lack of stars, that can again be attributed to the subject matter. Exploring the devastating consequences of an HIV positive diagnosis on an ordinary, middle class family, the film sidestepped the more uncomfortable questions about how AIDS was transmitted, by having the patient contract it through blood transfusions.
The most interesting and notable portrayals in this regard appear in the 2000s. In 2002, Doordarshan began screening a TV series named ‘Jasoos Vijay’, an episodic series of criminal mysteries solved by a Sherlockian sleuth. There were a few notable features however: the stories had exclusively rural settings, the protagonist (played by a then-unknown Adil Hussain) had no last name, and the end of each episode had a segment by Om Puri, disseminating information about the nature, modes of contraction and prevention of AIDS. The producing credits of the show read the BBC World Service Trust, along with the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and Doordarshan. Not content with having AIDS awareness talks as a separate segment at the end of each episode- people often skipped the boring bits- one of the stories had a primary murder suspect who was an AIDS patient. Owing to his condition, he is ostracized from his village and lives in an abandoned hut on top of a small hill in a desolate stretch. When a murder occurs nearby, he becomes a de facto suspect, a merely short stretch from his already existing ignominy. While it serves as a usual, clichéd red herring, what it deftly underlines is the senseless and hostile bias AIDS patients have to face daily, fueled by superstitious beliefs and pernicious concepts of purity and pollution.
If ‘Jasoos Vijay’ portrayed how much it took to change mindsets and create awareness about AIDS in rural areas, Revathy’s ‘Phir Milenge’ (2004) showed how close urban areas were to rural ones in that regard. Ostensibly inspired by the Tom Hanks starrer ‘Philadelphia’ (1993), ‘Phir Milenge’ tells the story of an employee terminated from a company due to no apparent reason. This lack of reason only masks an irrational prejudice against her as an HIV positive person. The person who happens to be homosexual in ‘Philadelphia’ is replaced by a person who happens to be a woman in ‘Phir Milenge’, thus adding another layer of prejudice against the employee. The rest of the film is a courtroom drama fought over her claim to damages from the company. For the first time in Hindi cinema a woman was portrayed to have contracted AIDS from an HIV positive male lover and had to fight against the double victimization with dignity and due process of law.
The year 2005 saw ‘My Brother Nikhil’, a film that was unabashedly, angrily emotional about the social stigma attached to AIDS patients, particularly when they happens to be homosexuals. Based on a true story of a swimmer in Goa, the film shows the physical and mental degradation that Nikhil faces as a result of the disease and at the hands of a conservative, ritual bound society.
In the years since, barring a patently misogynist episode of Sanjay Gupta’s ‘Dus Kahaniyan’ (2007) or a drolly ironical instance in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey (2009) there have not been any further interpolations in this regard. Dylan Mohan Gray’s searing ‘Fire in the Blood’ squarely blamed American capitalist pharmaceutical companies for thousands of AIDS related deaths owing to their rapacious profit-making proclivities that guide pricing policy. One can only hope that the Hindi film and TV industry do not take leaves from the pharmaceutical industry’s neoliberal book.
English
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