What is Buddhist about Bora Diya Pokuna?

J. Devika reviews Satyajit Maitipe’s Bora Diya Pokuna – A Buddhist Parable In Three Parts, and looks at how the film brings in the religious metaphor to portray socio-sexual life

I must confess that I entered the cinema hall at the Thiruvananthapuram International Film Festival (2006) before the screening of Bora Diya Pokuna with several misgivings. First, the title sent alarm bells ringing in my head; it seemed too Orientalist, too redolent of the languid and sensuous calm associated with that ultimate tropical paradise, the Emerald isle. Secondly, it came under the label ‘Asian Cinema,’ which meant that it was burdened, right from the outset, with the task of representing ‘Asia’ in general and Sri Lanka, in particular. Too often have I walked away from cinema that takes such (imposed) tasks seriously, unable to bear their preachy shrillness. In this case, the claim was that it was a Buddhist parable, which made me feel all the more suspicious.

A scene from the film

I hope I’m not making too gross a pun (rather Orientalist, I must admit) when I say that the experience that followed was truly one of serendipity. I was proved wrong in each of my misgivings, and there is no greater pleasure than to be corrected in a felicitous way. Bora Diya Pokuna proved to be a visual account that displayed a sensitivity to culture that might be found in truly self-reflexive anthropological representation. It is best described as a ‘critical description’ of a slice of time in a culture. Unlike many Bollywood films (and those which cannot escape its ways), which are saturated with a lurid eagerness to tell you how to be a ‘real Indian’ or, even more frequently, ‘how to be a good Indian woman,’ Bora Diya Pokuna has no normative load; it describes, without prescribing. For that reason, there is no violence in its representation of culture, as it does not lay out for us the routes to authentic Sri Lankan Buddhist culture, all the time hiding menacing fingers behind them.

It was important for me that the film did not begin with tired clichés about Buddhist culture, and dangerous hints that it would stand for all of Sri Lanka. We also do not find ‘pristine’ and ‘uncorrupted’ Buddhist men and women. Indeed, the reverse would be true. The film scrupulously details everyday life within the specific social milieu of garment factory girls and army men, bringing into light its heady mix of little pleasures, major sorrows and unfathomable promises.

Through avoiding predictable stereotypes and paying attention to the details, this film achieves a unique documentation, the tracing of a culture without reducing it to binaries and oppressive stereotypes, with a deep respect for time. Time figures as a formative force. The presentation of time in three distinct ‘slices’ is perhaps why some found the film to be somewhat reminiscent of soap operas! But unlike the latter, this film also meditates on time, on its constant flow and irreversibility, on the futility of trying to turn it back, and hence on the need to forgive and let go. Indeed, the last scene evokes the infinite movement, and the circularity of time, with Gothami seeing through the window of her car three other young women seemingly treading the same paths covered by Mangala, Swineetha and herself.

This indicates that the film’s attempts at description were not simply ‘value-neutral’ – so that second title has not been inserted in vain. The film holds upfront the worldview with which it makes sense of life. And that is Buddhism. The film certainly does not set before you the merits of Buddhism, instead it shapes the interpretative structure of the film decisively.

Yet, there were layers in the film that were Buddhist in deeper and quite unexpected ways. Of course, the very fact that the narration privileges understanding over judgement makes it Buddhist. In the brochure that was distributed, the director, Satyajit Maitipe, identifies the Buddhist content of the film to lie in his conceiving of the three young women protagonists as representing the three archetypal Buddhist paths to salvation: Gothami – representing the extreme ascetic path, Swineetha – the middle path and Mangala – the hedonist path.

I, however, found the film to be Buddhist in a more intensely structural way. If I were he, I would have titled the three parts of the film ‘Kama’, ‘Trishna’ and ‘Karuna’ respectively, each stage growing out of the preceding one. The first part documents the explosion of erotic energy in the lives of young women and men, who are buffeted by it. The three – or actually, the two – female protagonists are certainly not idealised. I say, two, because, Swineetha, another character in the film, characterised as very ‘decent,’ is hardly in the focus at all. Gothami is certainly not ideal. She bursts with passion, and is almost consumed by it.

The director’s decision to focus on her is certainly informed by the Buddhist faith, for it is she who possesses the fundamental passion and energy that surfaces immediately as erotic, but holds the potential to be transformed into higher forms. Mangala, in contrast, is the passive belle par excellence, the ever-smiling receptacle of male admiration. No wonder, then, that she wilts beneath the heat of Vipula’s intensely-physical passion; now wonder, too, that she finally blossoms only to the touch of the ‘romantic’ lover, the budding poet, which ironically, turns out to be brittle, compared with Vipula’s unflinching devotion! Gothami’s frustration is understandable, for she senses herself to be the befitting receiver of Vipula’s passionate energy.

The contrast between Suranjit and Vipula is also important in the film’s recuperation of the erotic, for it confuses our neat elisions between erotic passion and lust. Through the three stages, the film documents how erotic energy gets transformed into the energy of longing and search, and is finally metamorphosed into that of compassion and giving. Some participants in the discussion that followed the film wondered why the last part of the film had some melodrama. I think I fully understand. For we, who belong to the South Asian cultures, do express the Karuna Rasa in ways that may well be termed melodrama. An interviewer once asked the great Indian filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak why there was so much melodrama in his style. He replied that that is how we are; our expression of the Karuna Rasa is far more instense. There is no reason why we should not find melodrama useful!

Bora Diya Pokuna also expresses eroticism in a noticeably non-European way, challenging the all-too-familiar association between nudity and eroticism. I cannot help being reminded of the Korean filmmaker Kim Ki Duk. Is it a coincidence that both these directors never studied filmmaking formally? Is it why they represent life with such overpowering rawness? Of course, there are other similarities as well, which may generate much the same controversies that the latter’s films have faced. The most obvious one is the refusal to judge violence, especially violence in eros. In the mating scene between Gothami and Vipula, the violence of the act is evident, yet the director manages to tell us that the act stems not from the desire to harm, but from the agonised helplessness of a man whose capacities for expression are strictly limited to the bodily (and Duminda de Silva fits the role like a glove!).

Satyajit was of course fortunate to have actors like Kaushalya Fernando, whose stunning performance won round after round of applause at the discussion. The role was a difficult one, not just because she had to play a snapping, unpleasant young woman, full of wiles and strategy. It was difficult also because she simply could not rely on any of the ready-made formulae that actors have at their disposal to fit into their roles – for instance, none of the erotic scenes had nudity. She was wise, and brave as well, to dismiss the usual hurdles that South Asian women actors – even the most senior, most talented ones – face when they are offered the role of a lifetime, but which has explicitly erotic content. Satyajit’s technicians filled in wherever his imagination failed. Some well-worn metaphors were made through brilliant editing – for example, when Mangala tells Gothami of her abortion, the woman washing the kitchen pots in the backyard throws out the water. The familiarity of the metaphor is remedied with the quickness with which the spectator is caught.

As I came away from the discussion, I found myself ruminating on a question that an admiring viewer had asked, about the stark reality of ethnic and religious hatred. I was surprised why such a question had come up, as the film had indeed addressed it in its characteristically muted and reflective fashion. By making such a film, Satyajit has rescued faith from the clutches of institutions that force it into strait-jackets and press it into the service of violence. In South Asia, torn as it is by belligerence between religions and ethnic groups, such thinking has a healing effect. It directs us away from seeing religion exclusively as an external force that inheres in social life and institutions, and towards thinking of it as a resource to transform one’s own self, as a starting point for a new society. Faith, therefore, is turned into armour that may protect us from the evil that institutions breed.

I also wondered why the questioner had not noticed that many in Sri Lanka find the film unpalatable. Those who made this film should look upon their failure to gain acceptance as a badge of honour, non-violence and courage. It reminds us that the critique capable of making a difference does not come from projecting stereotypes, vapid and mechanical; rather, it ensues from putting up unflagging resistance to all such stereotypes, to all threatening gestures that direct one to paint the world as either fully black, or fully white.

(The writer is attached to the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala)