On NH 10

NH10, directed by Navdeep Singh, is a brilliantly made, if at times too graphic, look at the different worlds urban India is all at the same time. It also involves an innovative use of the trope of the woman who smokes. Smoking is never merely smoking for Hindi cinema’s heroines. It has always been a code for the modern/westernized woman, and the woman at ease with her sexuality. Initially seen as a negative trait, now she is shown with less judgment, but the use of the cigarette as a shorthand has stayed. Film-makers, even those challenging mainstream Hindi cinema with different representations of women, often fall back on using the trope in this lazy way.
It is here that NH10 does something different. Meera is a closet smoker, a habit her husband Arjun, discourages and reprimands her for occasionally. It is present right from the first few scenes in the film, when after a kiss before a party, he asks her if she has started smoking again, to which she lies and says no. His discouragement is probably a mix of various reasons ; health and the fact that she is a woman.
Still, at her birthday for which they drive to a resort in Gurgaon which changes everything in the narrative and their lives, he gifts her a pack of cigarettes as a treat. Obviously he knows her well. She is happy, he encourages her to light one, and they drive through the semi-urban Gurgaon Highway.
As they stop at a dhaba for lunch, Meera is shown making way to the toilet, only to sit there and smoke in peace. This is a perceptive detail because for a woman, smoking at a roadside dhaba at the Gurgaon highway will invite staring, judgement and insinuation about her ‘character’. At best it will attract attention and no one wants it all the time. It is a different matter that she is not alone here either, as she finds the word randi written in chalk on the toilet door. Feeling eyes on her, she makes an effort to rub it off.
The film then charts the nightmare that Meera and Arjun get sucked into, initiated by Arjun’s lack of judgment and immature need to salvage his masculine and class ego. In doing this, Singh shows remarkable skill in balancing gripping thriller-ish storytelling with an insightful understanding of the context in which the story takes place. Every twist and turn says something about the place in which NH10 is located.
One particular scene that stands out is the way it is gradually revealed to us that the female sarpanch, played wonderfully by Deepti Naval, whose house Meera lands up asking for help is also involved in the situation. She does not hear what Meera is narrating to her because of her missing hearing aid, and when her daughter-in-law refuses to give her the aid, you know this is building up to something dangerous. In that brilliantly performed moment, Naval changes from concerned and gentle just a minute ago, to scathing, power exerting and even scary. This contradiction is a big part of how patriarchy and feudalism function- which side of it you see depends on who you are, where you come from and whether you accept its rules. Her “private matter” makes her loyal to her family honour and safeguard her grandson, but does not extend to forgiving her daughter who she obviously loves. She had to get her killed off. As she tells Meera towards the end, that is just what she had to do.
In the closing moments of the film, as Meera becomes fearless, she sits down and lights a cigarette. This does not seem to be a metaphor for her having become a “man”, or for showing her as a strong woman as has been suggested by some reviews. It actually is a throwback to that moment in the beginning when Meera had to hide in an unfamiliar toilet to do what she wanted to do, which is after all only a habit, an unhealthy one for sure, but not something that can tell you the type of woman she is. Nothing more, nothing less.
Meera is now free to smoke in the open, unafraid of the judgement of people, because she feels she has just built that space for herself. She has earned it and this is her way of reveling in it. Problematically, she has done this by resorting to the violence that she was up against, because all other ways failed, though this is not shown in the social-message manner in which it was in Mardaani. Here, it becomes instead, a comment on institutional failure. In the process, the film frees a clichéd metaphor from our collective prejudice.
