A stone’s throw away from the Madhya Kailash temple, bordering the woods of IIT, Madras, stood a decrepit Institute of Tamil Language and Culture. I chanced upon the gems that place holds in its dusty shelves and moth eaten library when I went to read up on Tamil textile history many years ago.
My reading revealed that until the 14th Century, as with most of India, before garment making, costume making and cutting and dress making were known, men and women were clad in a long piece of cloth that they pleated and knotted about their waist. Above the waist an upper cloth, a thundu, if you may call it so, was also used. Aristocratic women were often bare-breasted and they often annointed sandalwood paste and coolants over their breasts in the heat. Women of the serving class were known to cover their breasts with a kachai, a ribbon like cloth fastened and knotted at the back;mensturating women and lactating mothers too were known to wear the band around their breasts, especially in the zenana.
Tamil epic Silapadigaram makes mention of breasts as a tool of vengeance when Kannagi, the epic’s protagonist, in righteous fury, tears one of her breasts and lobs it to set the city of Madurai in flames. The famous Chola bronzes that were said to have been made a thousand years ago depicted the female form, as goddess or otherwise, in frescoes and sculptures in temples as bare-breasted.
Consequent evolved forms of garment-making and tailoring came with ideas bought by invaders and subsequent colonisers who introduced different techniques of garment-making, tailoring and a happy amalgamation of styles and habits perhaps coalesed to form the kind of jackets, cholis, skirts that began to be worn by women in India. The sari in its many forms worn across the country did not have an accompanying blouse until much later.
Given their former state of undress makes you wonder what men of those times did about such provocation?
Because it seems that men are custodians of what women ought to wear. Else ask the Asins, Shriya Sarans and Mallika Sherawats who are admonished for their ’inappropriate’ clothing in Chennai.
Kamalahasan’s forthcoming film Dasavataram will have Mallika Sherawat doing a jig on screen that will be watched by many such male judges of Tamil female honour and proprierty, who will whistle and cheer lustily at her glamour, skimpy costume, seductive display of limbs and curves for their benefit in the darkness of the cinema hall. Considering politics and cinema are close cousins in Tamil Nadu, it may not be surprising if select screenings of the film are shown for the political masters of the state. No Tamil man, watching it, will find it objectionable. Afterall it’s cinema, and anything goes and what’s a wench who flashes her bits for their consumption?
However a different code of conduct and morality governs the private felicitation platform unlike the public screening of a film. Here egotistic heroes, self-important filmmakers, wily politicians will gather to promote the film. Of course the heroes would tog out in starched white veshtis and trousers and shirts, their impeccable reputations resting on the Ujjala whiteness of their threads. But as with flowers that decorate a table, the actress is expected to lend glamour to alleviate the gravitas of the important masculine gathering. She will clap her lovely hands in appreciation, help light a lamp and gush sweet words of thanks to the top dogs on the dias and dress up to invite attention.
Shreya Saran, the PYT of the monster-hit Sivaji was earlier hauled up by loony groups like Hindu Makkal Katchi for displaying her cleavage during a commemoration ceremony of the film that seemed nothing to the amount she displayed in the film. Poor Ms Saran and Ms.Sherawat have been quick to cower and apologise for any unintended ‘insults on Tamil culture’. Because they now know that Tamil culture rest on women’s sartorial choices.
This is the state where the chief minister’s literary outputs included purple passages and details of the curve and crest of his female characters in his literary canons meant for public readership. This is the film industry whose toe-tapping numbers have lyrics that include vulgar innuendoes and metaphors on female genitalia and coitus whose audio releases are feted and celebrated.
This is not about whether Saran’s boobs were out or whether Sherawat’s knickers were peeping. This is about who decides what is appropriate conduct and dress code for women in Chennai. While the old Dravidian canons proclaim that they stood for women’s empowerment alongside social upliftment, the cultural and gender aspirations were quite opposite. The metaphor went that maatran veedu malligai manakkum (the blossom in the neighbour’s garden smells sweeter). It’s an analogy that hints at the Tamil man’s conquest over the non-Tamil woman, a certain covetousness that he takes as part of his patriarchal privilege. Hence the non-Tamil actress is enjoyed for her fair skin and her uninhibitedness on screen for his voyeuristic enjoyment but also denigrated for indecent exposure.
If the actress is imported for her exposure and commodification why object to her glamourous abandonment? It’s what she’s meant for, is it not? In the mixed-up kink of the male promulgators of Tamil culture and morality, the actress is but a pawn.
Pray why do they decide what is an appropirate dress code for women? And this is the film industry that in blatant constitutional discrimination disallows women make-up professionals and costumiers and will have only dirty old men pat pancake on the heroine’s navels and tie their saris.
Perhaps it’s time that the pretty young things of Bollywood say no to dancing to the tunes of self-imposed champions of Tamil culture. And the captains of Tamil cinema are chivalrous only to weepy mothers and wailing sisters. For them, any other form of female personality is to be trivialised with.
Posted in men | Tagged kamalahasan, mallika sherawat, sari, shriya saran, silapadigaram, tamil cinema | 51 Comments »