WRITING UP A STORM
Despite all her films courting controversy, writer Kanika Dhillon remains authentic, candid and defiant
Kanika Dhillon’s films all know how to make a headline. Manmarziyaan (2018) was said to have hurt Sikh sentiments. Kedarnath (2018) was accused of promoting ‘love jihad’. Mental Hai Kya, releasing in July, has done damage with just its poster. Twitter users were outraged to see Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao balance a blade on their tongues. One thought the image was a trigger, while others objected to the film’s title.
Screenwriters aren’t usually in the firing line, but Dhillon has been credited on the contested poster. Happy that her name is out there, Dhillon, 34, says, “A poster never conveys the overall story. As a society, we have very strict definitions of ‘sane’ and ‘normal’. I feel the story of Mental Hai Kya tries to portray people who don’t fit in these boxes. It asks—how do we look at them without judgement?”
Dhillon rubbishes labels such as “odd” and “insane”, but the film’s tagline lingers in the foreground—“Sanity is overrated.” While it might enable some, there remain the mentally ill who spend their lives trying desperately to remain sane. “Without painting disorders negatively, I, as a scriptwriter, have the right to tell an entertaining story, using a mass medium,” says Dhillon, but adds that the mainstream comes with constraints. “I can’t give you a detailed diagnosis in a commercial Hindi film, or prescribe treatment, but I can ensure people talk about mental health. That’s happening already.”
Dhillon writes from the inside out. After she lost her father in 2014, the writer suffered depression and anxiety. “Suddenly, these afflictions didn’t just happen to other people,” she says. “I dealt with it for two years, and finally came out of it, wanting to write about it in a lighter vein.” Mental Hai Kya, she insists, might encourage others to share their turmoil. “That’s the only way you eliminate shame”—an assertion that might bring her and mental health groups on the same page.
Dhillon draws her inspiration from the contemporary. Though she thinks these are the best of times to be a storyteller, she does confess that they are also the worst:
“It’s possibly because of the digital access we have, but there is an extreme, rightwing attitude pervading most things. This isn’t healthy for creative expression.”
With her films, Dhillon hopes to talk about things that are seldom spoken about. In Manmarziyaan, for instance, Rumi (Taapsee Pannu) is caught thinking about her illicit lover while standing in a gurdwara. “I was asked, ‘How can a woman standing in a holy place think about her lover?’ I ask how can anyone put barriers on what one can and can't think. It reeks of patriarchy to me. I’m not saying sorry or that anything I’ve written should not be out there.” While Manmarziyaan was lauded for its depiction of real, messy love, Kedarnath was dismissed by some as hackneyed. The trope of a Hindu girl falling for a Muslim boy is a cliché. Dhillon counters, “I wish I could say the Hindu-Muslim divide was passé. Strangely, even in 2019, this is the one issue that swings votes. Even now people are lynched because of their religious identity. It’s my duty to write about it until it stops.”
Last year, the MeToo movement made apparent a more implicit but equally pernicious social fissure. As women in the film industry accused men in Bollywood of predation and assault, the resultant news reports highlighted an obvious truth—the Hindi film industry didn’t afford women the safety it touted. Dhillon believes this unravelling was crucial. She says, “I do think that Bollywood inadvertently helped make MeToo a national issue. Women in smaller towns grew more aware of what comprises sexual harassment. In cases of sexual assault, it is again essential we help remove shame.”
With her upcoming Netflix original, Guilty, Dhillon asks what constitutes shame. Rather than focus on the rapist or his victim, the show adopts the perspective of a third woman. “Women are equally patriarchal and, at times, their judgement only exacerbates a victim’s suffering.”
Dhillon, it’s certain, has equal contempt for sanity and sanctity: “If my story can make even one person evaluate, or even if it can just make that person uncomfortable, I will consider my job done,” she says.n