A lament more than a love story

There is a knock on the door, a careful perusal of the markers of the boy’s caste, and then suddenly a push from a balcony. Suicide says the media because of academic pressure. But the audience knows it is because the boy dared to step out of line, and love someone beyond his caste. He had to be “purged” from society, “cleaned” from the system.

Dhadak2 is a lament disguised as a love story. It is a lament on the state of our society where caste continues to prevent people living their lives to the fullest. It is a lament on the state of youngsters who have been indoctrinated to hate others because of their birth. Most of all, it is a lament on the absence of compassion in society. Kal hamara hai, says the student activist (a briilliant Priyank Tiwari in a breakout performance) in a powerful poem in the film. But what about today?

You can’t see the difference between us or don’t want to see the difference between us, says the Dalit boy to the Brahmin girl. He has been made brutally aware of his identity since his birth, and made aware of it by his strong mother, who tells him early on that life is not about money, but power. It’s the rule of the jungle, she tells him, eat or be eaten. If her son has to avoid the latter fate, he has to educate himself. He has to become a lawyer, just like Babasaheb Ambedkar, who figures repeatedly in the movie, as motif, as memory, and as mantra.

It is a powerful lesson but one that her son (Neelesh, who prefers not to give his surname for fear of being identified by his caste) learns only with repeated humiliations at the hands of his peers and even a particularly vile teacher. He is in college to study, not to indulge in politics, he tells the student activist who wants to recruit him to his cause. “Politics entered your life the day you were born,” the student activist tells him.

Indeed. We know this. It is 2025 and India is still struggling with identity politics, and destroying young lives. Whether religion or caste or ethnicity, young people are being told whom to love and whom not to love, where to live and where not to live. Education alone helps them to cross boundaries, but sometimes even that is not enough. As Neelesh says, his family left their village because the fields, the lanes, even the water was not theirs. They thought they would come to the city, but though the streets were wider and the buildings taller, the mindset was small, perhaps even smaller. “Main udna chahta tha, par aapne to mera aasman cheen liya,” he says.

Directed by former architect Shazia Iqbal, who worked with Anurag Kashyap, Dhadak2 shows us who we are, those with privilege and those without. The privileged who are blissfully unaware of their entitlements. and those without privilege who are reminded of it every time they step out of line. Yet Iqbal creates a world that is not without hope. There is the Muslim principal, a julaha, who has earned his power by educating himself. There is the Dalit father who has chosen to embrace his art, no matter how it requires him to dress or perform. Who says the mother has this role and the father has that role, he asks his son. Who decides? There is the stray dog whom Neelesh adopts who shows us the power of love and compassion.

Most of all, there is the idea that love can ease the pain, even if it can’t remove it. But more than anything education is the only way forward. Educate, Agitate, Organise.

Iqbal has made one of the strongest debuts in recent cinema history, and though the film is an adaptation of Mari Selvaraj’s Pariyerum Perumal she has a unique and assured voice of her own. The leads are effective but Priyank Tiwari as the activist and Saurabh Sachdeva as the “cleaner” who rids families of their “problem” children are outstanding. “I am not a criminal,” he says, “samaj ki safai kar raha hoon, punya ka kaam hai.”

The film is an indictment of the country we live in, and even its Bollywoodised version is something one can’t look away from.

cinemaDhadak 2movie reviewSiddhant ChaturvediTriptii Dimri