The Mirror (Lust stories)

Looking inside

Confession - I have not seen the first edition of Lust Series. One of the feminist blogs that I ardently follow labeled it as pretentious, and that did it. I am like that. I was not intending to watch the second edition too - until my sister called me and asked me to watch the Mirror.

I can't speak of the other stories - haven't watched all yet and sexuality in India is still such a delicate, unexplored topic and I do not blame them if they have not got it right. Too many perspectives. Too little expression. But Mirror got something right. It was not stretched, or exaggerated, or progressive-for-the-sake-of it. You know what I mean, right? Claiming to showcase women’s desires when actually only objectifying her.

I liked Mirror because it had so many layers to a simple story - no, a stray incident within a story. It starts with Ishita, a 30 + upper class professional living alone, coming home early because of a splitting migraine and catches her househelp having sex on her bed and finding out that she actually enjoys watching the act. What is more is that the househelp also enjoys her watching the performance. The husband is the only one in the dark here. But more on him later.

For a single working woman living in a posh society of Bandra West, with no dearth of material possessions, the deprivation Ishita feels in not being sexually satisfied is unnerving. This is not to say that those who seek pleasure in porn or watching others perform are always lonely. But there is a certain vulnerability to Ishita in her looking at Seema Didi (the househelp) and her partner and getting aroused.

We often place privilege in the frames of class, caste, gender (rightly so), but in this - Seema Didi, the househelp had an edge - she had a partner who satisfied her in all ways a partner can. So when she shouts this out to Ishita in the screaming, spewing row that ultimately ensues when both of them are “caught’ in the act they already knew they were doing, this was the perfect hurtful retaliation to the reference of class that Ishita commented to silence Seema Didi.

Maybe we can never have it all. But there is no judgment in wanting, desiring that all in the Mirror. Konkana Sen Sharma is unapologetic in her portrayal of the desires of both the women - as both sheepishly confess to each other in the end.

A peep into the one room in the slum which Seema Didi lives and sleeps at night is enough to give us an insight on her brazen act in her employer’s house. In a shanty occupied by their children and another snoring adult, there is no room for lust Seema and her husband craved for, leave aside the simple acts of intimacy.

Privacy is something that is taken so much into granted by those who have it by the default of their class. Think of us raising objections to loud music people play out on streets, when we swing to the same in enclosed, private parties that we have the privilege to be a part of, and you will know what I mean.

For Seema Didi, who takes care of every nook and cranny of her employer’s house, making out on her bed feels like an entitlement, and why not - how can we expect people to labor for something that they cannot have ownership on?

And there are the gossiping neighbors.

So many conversations such a small film can invoke! But what struck me as the most compelling was the element ignored in for-a-good-change rendering of the female gaze. Seema didi’s husband.

Upset at first when he finds out that his wife did not disclose the voyeurism and the pleasure she seeks in it, he still makes an attempt to understand her mind. He understands her because he loves her - and that is enough to accept her fantasies. His reaction is not stereotyped when it could have easily been - angry, violent, uncomprehending, moralistic - as men shown from a male gaze behave.

The last part - in which both the women, as empathetic equals - finally come in terms of what had transpired, is a leveling ground. In the end, We don't know if the act of doing and watching continues, we don't know if the husband also becomes a consenting partner for the same in the future, as the clock strikes 3 and the key turns. We know that both the women are liberated in the knowledge that it is okay to have weird fantasies, and that is enough.