Love that dare not speak its name in Haider and Dedh Ishqiya

With Haider, arguably this year’s most talked about film, Vishal Bhardwaj has completed his trilogy of Shakespearean adaptations. Critics have been near unanimous in their praise for this Indian Hamlet, whose setting is Kashmir circa 1995.

Hamlet is one play of Shakespeare's that drips in intrigue, especially of the sexual kind, and Bhardwaj has acceded to selecting his subject matter on that parameter. Freud famously articulated that the prince of Denmark delayed killing his uncle because he somewhere identified with him. To be sure, Bhardwaj does not uphold this line of reasoning. If anything, Haider’s raison d’etre in the film is the search for his father, who is a victim of “disappearance”.

Even so, Bhardwaj is not resistant to the oedipal possibilities of Hamlet. There are scenes between Haider (Shahid Kapoor) and Ghazala (Tabu) that reward a deeper reading. In one such, Haider playfully sprays a perfume on Ghazala's neck and then kisses it. This happens twice in the film, first when he is still an adolescent, as yet unaware of the serial tragedies that will befall him. The second time is when his mother is preparing to marry his uncle. By then, Haider has already transformed into a one-man force bent on avenging his father's killing, a crime for which he blames his uncle and suspects his mother's involvement. He comes to his mother’s room and perfumes her neck, kissing it. But this kiss, unlike the earlier one, is not innocent - it has a sense of the beastly about it. Is Haider hurting at his mother's infidelity towards his father, or towards himself?

It would be simplistic to divine a straightforward sexual undercurrent to the relationship. There is none here, and none perhaps was intended. Bhardwaj has said in interviews that it is easier to include sexual nuance while capturing relationships on the screen in India. This is partly because the mass audience is not looking for nuance and therefore there is no threat to the film’s commercial viability, and partly because great intimacy is not uncommon between family members. Even so, to show a mother and son relationship in a romantic light without degenerating into the perverse is an especially difficult task. It is to Bhardwaj's credit that he carries it off with delicacy.

Consider the film’s last scene. Ghazala, who Haider has always blamed for emotionally blackmailing him, has come prepared to die. She has strapped a series of bombs to her person which she will ultimately detonate. She has planned this to perhaps let Haider know that hers is not an empty boast. Meanwhile, Haider is all but certain to die as his uncle Khurram's men have surrounded the outhouse in which he is hiding. Ghazala begs Khurram to spare her son's life. Later, she is shown entering the outhouse as Haider comes down to meet her.

Thus far the viewer is not aware of her plans. But already, there is a hint of wistfulness to the meeting between mother and son, as if it were the final goodbye between lovers. Ghazala implores Haider to shun the path of violence since it would lead to no good. But this could be any mother beseeching her son. Then, at the end, there are kisses, including a tender one that Ghazala places on Haider's lips. It is completely platonic, but it can as easily be construed to be the opposite. Tabu is merely a decade older than Shahid, and in casting her as Ghazala, Bhardwaj shows great perspicacity, lending greater credence to the idea of romance between the two.

Bhardwaj, then, seems capable of walking the thin line between possible truths and his portrayal of them. The charm of this understated depiction comes from the director's invitation to the discerning viewer to make of the scene what he will. In this year's Dedh Ishqiya, another film with which Bhardwaj was closely associated, Madhuri Dixit plays a widowed Begum Para who, as the sole inheritor of a large haveli, is battling not just land sharks but also loneliness and other demons. She lives with a female assistant, Muniya (Huma Qureshi) and the movie, directed by Bhardwaj protégé Abhishek Chaubey, is centred on the shenanigans of menfolk who hope to get a piece of both the Begum's property and her heart.

Halfway into the film comes a remarkable scene in which the shadows of the Begum and Muniya intermingle in what looks like lovemaking. Khalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi) watch the couple as if in a trance, the light from the floor above casting giant shadows on them. "Lihaaf maang le," says Khalujaan to Babban, in what must be the most oft-quoted and analysed dialogue of this year. The reference is to Ismat Chugtai's lesbian story, “Lihaaf”.

True, to viewers who search for redemption in their art forms, such subtlety can at times disconcert. When I learnt of the “Lihaaf” connection in Dedh Ishqiya, I was irked by Chaubey's refusal to make the lesbian storyline between the Begum and Muniya explicit. Be that as it may, there is something to say for the director's willingness to give space to alternative renditions while sticking to the rubric of what is commercially acceptable. To that extent, the “Lihaaf” scene in Dedh Ishqiya and the Ghazala-Haider faux-romance in Haider are worth celebrating.