Film
The sisterhood of Tikli And Laxmi Bomb
An upcoming independent film, produced by an almost all-woman crew, is breaking new ground in tackling a difficult subject with remarkable sensitivity. Suprateek Chatterjee finds out how it was made.
Aditya Kripalani’s upcoming Hindi feature Tikli And Laxmi Bomb was shot on real locations in Mumbai, mostly in the northeastern suburb of Powai. The 50-day shooting schedule, which took place in February and March last year, came with a string of challenges that were compounded by the restrictive production budget. Several scenes required the actresses, who play a gang of rebellious sex workers, to stand on the street at odd hours of the night, surrounded by a crew of nearly 50.
On one such night, a wide shot was in progress, with the camera and crew on the other side of a highway. A leery old man, presumably misled by the actresses’ revealing clothes and garish make-up, mistook them for actual sex workers. He ambled up to Divya Unny, who plays the role of a precocious 18-year-old, and mumbled, “Chalti hai kya? [Want to go?]”
“On any other film set, I’d have been scared stiff,” says 32-year-old Unny, a journalist-turned-actor from Mumbai. “And as an actor, I can’t break character. But because I was there, surrounded by my girls, I felt safe.” Somehow, she powered through the shot and when Kripalani called ‘cut’, the women burst into relieved laughter, the man having been escorted off the location by the production crew by then.
By and large, the Indian film industry is notorious for being male-dominated and misogynistic, but this indie, made on a modest budget that was partially raised through a crowdfunded campaign, can take some credit for going out of its way to correct this state of affairs. A rousing tale of a group of Mumbai sex workers who decide to form a cooperative and eliminate the middle-men who oppress them, Tikli And Laxmi Bomb stands out as a film that attempts to tackle a difficult subject with remarkable sensitivity, and one that took great pains to avoid submitting to the male gaze.
To begin with, Tikli And Laxmi Bomb is one of those rare films that has been made by a nearly all-woman crew. Aside from its male writer-director, who adapted his own 2015 novel for his feature filmmaking debut, most departments were headed by or prominently utilised the abilities of women technicians and professionals. These include cinematography, costume design, editing, and art direction. Its principal cast, headlined by Vibhavari Deshpande and Chitrangada Chakraborty, has the lion’s share of screen-time, with the male actors — the most prominent among them being Upendra Limaye — making up the supporting cast. This makes it stand apart from other Hindi films such as Mitr – My Friend (2002) and Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017), which have made similar claims but have a more even-handed gender ratio when it comes to crew composition and distribution of screen-time (from India’s regional language cinema, Priya Beliyappa’s 2015 Kannada feature Ring Road is a notable and legitimate example of a film with an all-woman crew).
Writer and director Aditya Kriplani
© Mumbadevi Motion Pictures
Kripalani, 36, who has also co-produced the film along with his wife Sweta Chhabria Kripalani, says that the decision to have this “feminine energy” on set made aesthetic sense, given the sensitive nature of the story and the characters he was dealing with. “I wanted to completely lose the male gaze,” said the ad-man-turned-filmmaker, on a WhatsApp call from the United Kingdom, where the film was being screened in multiple cities as part of the UK Asian Film Festival. “So many of our films, when dealing with this subject, end up omitting that side of things [the feminine perspective] and the only way to do it right was to do it this way.” In February, Tikli And Laxmi Bomb won Best Feature at the 10th Berlin Independent Film Festival. While its festival run is still on, Kripalani says he is in talks with streaming platforms and estimates that the film will have an online release soon.
This feeling of sisterhood was established before the shoot began, with the cast (barring Chakraborty, who was brought on board later) undergoing an intense, five-day workshop to break down inhibitions and barriers between them. “We were asked to stand in front of each other, look into each other’s eyes, touch each other, and share some of our deepest, darkest secrets,” says Unny, who calls those sessions “revelatory”. “At the end of it, I remember we all looked at each other and ended up in this massive, emotional group-hug.”
Deshpande, who plays Laxmi, the matriarchal figure of the group, credits this process with lending synchronicity between cast and crew. “One doesn’t do this consciously, but because the content was so strong and at the back of your mind you know what you’re saying is so important, that kind of gave everyone this common focus and passion,” she says. The 39-year-old actor, noted for her work in award-winning Marathi films such as Shwaas, Harishchandrachi Factory, and Natarang, thinks of this as the most challenging role of her career thus far, and one of the most satisfying creative experiences she has ever had.
Actors and crew-members I spoke to unanimously gushed about the process and the positivity they experienced event while acknowledging that it was an incredibly difficult shoot. “I didn’t even hear one woman calling anyone a ‘b**ch’, at any point,” says 28-year-old Chakraborty, who in her career as an actor and a model has witnessed her share of toxic behaviour and unhealthy competitiveness on sets. “Sure, Anuradha [Pandey, first assistant director] would lose her temper, which is bound to happen on a film set, but she was never demeaning or abusive. If there were disagreements, there would be frowns for a bit, but eventually, everything would get resolved.”
The low production budget, a fraction of what a mainstream Bollywood movie would perhaps reserve for a single action sequence, meant that there were no vanity vans for actors to disappear into. Instead, a one-room flat in Powai’s Filter Pada settlement, taken on rent for the duration of the shoot, served as a base for the cast to go rest between shots, use the bathroom, change costumes; and fix hair and make-up. True to the spirit of the film’s story, Kripalani says that he saw his cast adapt to their circumstances and helped the run the operation like a cooperative, casting aside professional hierarchies. “Whenever I’ve worked with men, I’ve seen that egos tend to come in the way,” he says. “But here I saw Chitrangada doing the make-up for a junior artiste; another time, I’d see Suchitra [Pillai, a senior actress] sharing her food with everyone. These are things that don’t generally happen.”
A still from the movie
© Mumbadevi Motion Pictures
Quite often, because of hurried timelines, it wouldn’t be possible for the cast to get to their base, and they’d have to change into costume at the location itself; other times, as per the requirements of the script, they’d have to film intimate scenes in public areas. The presence of an alert and sensitive crew of mostly women, including director of photography Aditi Sharma, established a level of comfort that aided their performances. In one scene, when Unny’s character had to seduce a man in a car by undoing her top, the presence of a male focus puller made her uneasy. “He offered to adjust the focus while looking away from her, and I thought that was very sweet of him,” says Sharma, who adds that she believes that this sort of sensitivity should be extended to actors regardless of gender.
While Kripalani expresses appreciation for the atmosphere on his sets and has shot his next feature film, Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal, with the same crew and a similar process, he recalls an incident that left him both amused and exasperated. “In the beginning [of the story], Vibha [Deshpande] and Chitrangada [Chakraborty] are not supposed to be friends. I was taking this shot where they had to cross the road. But because of the way they’d bonded, I saw they were holding hands while crossing.” Deshpande laughs and says. “Aditya was on the other side of the road in a car, trying to be invisible. He had to cut the shot, go ahead, take a U-turn, come to us and tell us, ‘You are supposed to be hating each other – you can’t hold hands like you’re soul sisters!’”