PAKHI TYREWAlA’s latest outing as a director gives voice to the unheard, says SAURAV KAR
Pakhi Tyrewala has dabbled in many different things. She has been a model, a stage artist an actor, a script writer, a theatre director and her newest avatar is that of a director. Her debut movie, Kajal, bats for women empowerment where Salony luthra, an award winning Tamil actress, plays the lead.
But doing different things doesn’t imply a lack of focus for Tyrewala. Work, she thinks, is one of the major things that helps a person find his/her true self.
“I explored a lot more than most people maybe because I didn’t find myself. I finally found myself as a storyteller not necessarily in direction but also as a scriptwriter. Even if you see, acting was also probably an attempt at storytelling but I found myself as a director and as a writer,” she shares.
Of all the different things she has done, Tyrewala finds writing the most fascinating in her life. The actor who was last seen in the much-panned movie, Jhoota Hi Sahi, wanted to be a storyteller. And she wanted to tell her stories, in her own way to the audience.
She thinks that as a scriptwriter, eventually, the story that is written is surrendered completely to a director. It was in this quest to tell her stories in her own way that she decided to become a director.
The 20-minute short film, Kajal, is about finding one’s inner strength. The protagonist is a girl but could be a boy or anybody who is bullied, harassed or abused. The whole idea of the movie is that one should not need others to stand up for them. If someone wants to be an individual, have an identity of their own, then they have to stand up for themselves.
The protagonist in the film, a woman, doesn’t have any dialogues or even a name. The director explains how this signifies the powerless position of women in the Indian society. The film beautifully characterises how women do not have an opinion. Tyrewala further states, “They vote for the government that their husbands are voting for, they cook the food that their husbands and children like. Even women who are in professions do not have a voice. And that is the reason we didn’t give the protagonist any dialogues is that voice is that women in India don’t have a voice and of course the reason she doesn’t have a name is that they are nameless and faceless,” she says.
Kajal got an overwhelming response across the world and it is still making its way to other big film festivals. “I am a little overwhelmed with the response from the audience and juries,” she said.
Tyrewala hopes that it will inspire other young filmmakers to be brave and pick up issues that need to be discussed. She also plans to take the film to different colleges and schools. She hopes to have a conversation with the young girls who are going to be tomorrow’s women and make them understand that it is not rights that will get them strength, rather the strength has to come from within.
As a debutant director, Tyrewala didn’t face any challenge because most of the crew and cast members were her friends. It was while shooting her next film Pahuna, where the team was larger, that she faced a challenge. “Handling a crew of 110 is way more difficult than handling 10 of your friends,” says Tyrewala with a laugh. The feature film is being produced by Priyanka Chopra and filmed in Sikkim, a place where not too many films have been shot.
If one probes whether the situation of women is improving and the idea of women empowerment is gaining ground or if it is just portrayed as such without any improvement in the ground situation, the actor turned director has a plausible argument. She says, “Everywhere there is a poster of women empowerment but it’s not working because you are not igniting self-respect within girls from day one. We tell girls about women empowerment but we also tell her not to go out after dark. That’s not empowerment. You have to teach them how to be strong, be safe, how to become a person. We should not constantly remind them that you are a girl, a woman, makes it appear that being a woman has a disadvantage. Gender and religion is a secondary identity. I’m a person first and have equal rights and equal importance. I have a strong identity as much as anyone else out there.”