Bollywood has been unfair to the ‘queer gang’ for several decades; they have had broken wrists dangling, made to put on loud make-up, forced to walk with the annoying wriggle and surprisingly even shown as manifestations of evil, well almost all of Bollywood.
There have been a few exceptions in yesteryears, but Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh, just blows up in your face. I see it doing the same to Bollywood, what Brokeback Mountain did in Hollywood- causing one hell of a ripple effect (which we have already been reading about in the political section of the dailies).
Yet the film with a charm of its own, hinged on Professor Siras’s (Manoj Bajpai) story with simplicity, will be that revolutionary flow of lava in Bollywood; that has for some time now stagnated in terms of good stories and scripts.
A closet differently-sex-oriented professor of a premier Indian University invokes the wrath of a vicious sting operation against him. A malicious reporter along with his colleague just walks into the private bedroom of the professor and forcibly shoots him in a compromising position with a male friend (a rickshaw-puller of the slums).
They not only beat up the duo but also suddenly have an entourage from the university who have made a sudden appearance without being called in for any form of assistance by the professor.
It’s what happens thereafter, which is the core of Aligarh. Dr. Siras is not only suspended but also ridiculed, ostracised and even thrown out from the University staff campus. There are protests and amidst all this, journalist Deepu Sebastain (Rajkummar Rao) seeks to do that human interest story, the other side that the world perhaps may not know about and should be given a picture of.
It is the essence of this and the court case that follows which make up most of Aligarh. After silent yet critical successful ventures like Shahid (2013) and Citylights (2014), Mehta does it again. He takes the lost, the forgotten, the neglected, whom we so often call, “the common man/woman” and elevates him/her to that position of glory, which he/she so rightly deserves.
Each one of us rightly deserves ‘our own place’ under the sun, for each one of us has that ‘special something’ be it the fiery Muslim lawyer, Shahid or the village simpleton Deepak Singh or the love-searching lonely Dr. Siras.
Manoj has thus far proved that there is no one else that could have essayed the role, somewhere in the stillness of the dark, he merges into the persona of the professor and they become one. Rajkummar is equally good.
The duo reminded me of the ying and yang passions that help keep each other in check. The selfie in a boat is an image that will not go out of my head for a long time, even so as I struggle to come to terms that all Dr. Siras wanted was a quiet life, with no upheavals and his shot or two of whiskey just before he tumbled into bed, with his partner, who merely happened to be the of the same sex as him.
Mehta tells the tale of a man that no longer lives with sensitivity much required, sans the gawkish circus so often created, which dies down a silent death. But Aligarh will live on at least as a fitting memory to the spirit of a man who never gave up and lived life on his on terms, at least as far as he was permitted to.
Rating: 4/5