Filmmaker Priya Thuvassery’s documentary raised questions on orthodox beliefs and customs around chastity in various parts of India
In some rural parts of Rajasthan when a girl is married she is made to wear a white undergarment at the first night of the marriage. The undergarment is to keep a check on her “purity.” If the bride is found to be “impure” the panchayat is held and sometimes the groom is asked to remarry. It is called the Kukari Ki Rasam and if the bride is found to be non righteous, the groom’s family demands repayment of the money they paid for the bride.
There were many such shocking facts that were brought to light through the short film My Sacred Glass Bowl. The movie that was recently screened at the India Habitat Centre raised questions on the beliefs and customs of the orthodox India and dealt with the concept of virginity in various Indian cultures.
The film, directed by Kerala-born filmmaker Priya Thuvassery was produced by PSBT and Doordarshan. The film was conceived after Priya read a newspaper report citing instances where virginity and pregnancy tests were conducted on girls before matrimonial alliances. “This short film is a documentation of the idea of virginity perceived by different cultures. There is no masculine word for virginity, we only find people relating virginity to females. There was an incident in Madhya Pradesh where the government conducted a mass marriage and the girls had to undergo a virginity test. This was under the Mukhyamantri Kanyadan Yojna where all the expenses for the marriage were to be taken care of by the government. The virginity test was uncalled for as the males were not even checked for HIV,” shared the director.
The film also talked about the issue of virginity in metropolitan cities. “We find educated people from middle class and upper middle class families giving much importance to virginity at the time of marriage. The generation gap can be one of the reasons. In the documentary, I have included the advertisement of hymenoplasty, which is one of the fastest growing plastic surgeries in India. The girls are even ready to go under knife because of the huge societal pressure,” shared Priya.
The documentary ended with a beautiful sequence portraying apples lying on a bed of grass, the notion behind it could be different for different people. But the original idea was to refer to the story of Armenia. As per the tradition in Armenia, apples were gifted to the bride’s family if the sheets were found stained after the wedding night. But people protested to this tradition and apples were buried in the ground to convey their discontent.
The narrative of the film was very personal and tried to break many notions about documentaries. It used animation to describe the subject. It will be aired on Doordarshan soon.