Fandry: Expression of Deep Distress

By Praveen Lulekar

First things first, this is not your Shaala, not at all Timepass and most importantly, nothing of that theme song going viral on the internet. Fandry is the expression of a deep distress nurtured by an irrelevant caste system. It is at once beautiful, owing to the director’s sophisticated cinematic sensibility, and also a crude, ugly picture of our society. All this through an impossible, one-sided love that is only a medium to depict the larger picture. Enter Fandry not to relive an adolescent love story, but to understand a completely different life, through an honest, non-dramatic lens.

It is rare in mainstream cinema that we see a piece of life extracted as it is on screen. It neither has a beginning nor an end; just a story where everything might not be relevant, but surely contributing. Fandry tells the story of Jabya (Somnath Awghade), a lower caste school boy in 7^th standard. Madly and quietly in love with Shaalu (Rajeshwari Kharat), an upper caste girl, the aim of the current phase of Jabya’s life is to kill a black sparrow. A madcap cycle store owner (Nagraj Manjule) has told him that the ash of the sparrow would make Shaalu fall in love with him. That, of course, does not happen. Instead, Jabya ends up chasing pigs in the village along with his father (Kishor Kadam), as lower caste people are supposed to do.

Jabya is a character of inferiorities. What would you feel when you see a pig eating shit in the hagandaari – an open village ruin for everyone to defecate? Nauseous? What if you are looked upon as that animal? And you are forced to believe that that is the truth! From his complexion to his clothes to his caste, Jabya is ashamed of everything about himself. Reason: to appear better to her. A simple implication where he watches Shaalu force her friend to get bathed after the latter accidently bumps into a pig, speaks a lot about Jabya’s agony. The face powder in a small paper wrap, his attempts to buy a ‘jean’ pant by selling Pepsies (ice candies)…nothing works. His last resort, time and again, is the black sparrow – an unachievable, unrealistic dream.

Fandry is also about its other characters – Jabya’s father, his mother (Chhaya Kadam), his married but

abandoned sister, another to-be-married sister and his friend Piraji (Suraj Pawar). But more than everything else, it is about director Manjule. In an exquisite style of his own, he mixes the romantic European cinematic style with a narrative that emerges right out of his roots. The camera mostly serves as a third party that is watching everything from a distance. It has that shaky feel of reality, the enormous pace in chase sequences and calm when Manjule chooses to draw the landscapes. You constantly get the feeling of an artist just observing what is actually happening. The narrative, barring a couple of dream sequences, is absolutely non-dramatic. Background music, only appears when Jabya is in his trance; the one piece, after his cycle breaks, could have been avoided. It unnecessarily heightens the tragedy.

Both, Kishor Kadam and Chhaya Kadam deserve a special mention. It is again to Manjule’s credit that he gets Awghade’s act so defined. He shows complete trust in this supposedly non-actor when the camera zooms in right on his face. The penultimate scene of jatra, where Jabya is trying to express his love through his dance and is consequently made to stand with the lights on his head by his father, breaks your heart. The climax where Jabya finally decides to throw a stone, hits you right in the face. Like the Ambedkar and Shahu paintings on the school walls, you are a restless spectator in the end!

m4m says: A Must Watch

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