The kiss scene in Sir (2018)

And thoughts on the politics of asking, is love enough?

Post below contains spoilers for Sir (2018).

It’s always nice to discover that a work of art gone mainstream is genuinely good, good to the roots. Sir (2018) is a good-to-the-roots movie. The movie toured international circuits for a few years before coming home. It’s been out on Netflix India for about a month and a half now, and in that time has counted among the three most-viewed movies on the platform. Much has been written about the length and breadth of its goodness. I was entirely absorbed on my first viewing (the finely drawn characters; the subtext and quiet unfolding; a forward movement that resists melodrama), and when some days later I felt the hunger pangs for a good movie, I thought fuck it, and had a rewatch. My second viewing was just as absorbing. (I’m now idly planning a third.)

Sir is a movie about a domestic worker in Mumbai who falls in love with her employer. Critics Rahul Desai and Tanul Thakur observed on their podcast that movies with inter-class romance are strangely absent from the Indian mainstream nowadays. But it is also true that this movie is not the usual Bollywood fare. It has been executed in a very particular way. For one, Ratna is the one in the subordinate class role (the combination we so often watch is Rich Girl / Poor Boy, something also noted by critic Trisha Gupta, which I think requires a less sophisticated navigation of social dynamics). It is also primarily Ratna through whom the story moves. She has desires, and personal failings, and a life altogether larger than her employer Ashwin. These are some features that make the movie not just particular, but also thrilling. If you’re reading this and you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll watch Sir.

I wanted to write a quick post about the scene that’s been living in my head for weeks and weeks. It’s The Kiss; or more accurately, the build-up to The Kiss.

The backdrop is the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, one of the few events outside floods and funerals of high-profile politicians for which Mumbai comes to a collective stop. As Ashwin’s car pushes through traffic, he stares out the window and at the celebrations; the giant, pink-cheeked statues of Ganesha. I suspect he’s thinking about Ratna’s religiosity. (A few days earlier he went into her room when she was away and examined the life crowded into those small shelves; plastic flowers; a Shiv Sena calendar in Marathi, likely an election handout; a framed picture of Ratna and her deceased husband smiling through the face holes of a cut-out board; and of course, the arrangement of incense sticks and lamps around a garlanded Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Later, on a windy and bare-cement rooftop, Ashwin will ask Ratna if she believes in God, and she will reply karna padta hai; I have to.)

Back at Ashwin’s high-rise gated residence, workers and employers are gathered in the lobby out front and dancing to loud music. Ratna’s friend and fellow domestic worker (also named Lakshmi) pulls her into the crowd. Ratna is shy at first. But then she starts dancing with real joy and silliness, playing off the energy of her friend. (A good friend is so very important if you want to have fun dancing. Indeed, in a scene breakdown for Netflix, the actor who plays Ratna, Tillotama Shome, confirmed the way she danced was possible only because of the actor Geetanjali Kulkarni, and the way she reeled Ratna into the crowd).

When Ashwin gets out the car, this is what he sees. Ratna, moving goofily to the drum-beat, expressing her humanity in a way that is completely unrelated to him. (This image of her mid-dance are at the heart of the original theatrical release posters; I think that’s quite intentional.) Ashwin observes this expanded Ratna, a Ratna who is happy not because Ashwin gifted her a sewing machine, or said something encouraging, but a Ratna who is happy because she is with a close friend, and the music is in her.  

This is the build-up to The Kiss. In the hands of lesser writers writing lesser characters, it might well have been something different. The premise of ‘forbidden love’ invites certain tropes. A relationship gets built not upon the mutual recognition of humanity, but through an unequal distribution of it. Think to the scene where Ratna is trying on the dress she sewed for her sister Chhoti in front of Ashwin’s full-length mirror, and Ashwin walks in. What might that scene have been, in a story that respected neither Ratna nor Ashwin? (In that same scene breakdown, Shome says, “When you google for stories or testimonies of marriage or love across a man and his maid, the only hits are pornography.”) But in this movie, your employer walking in on you using their mirror is shown for what it is. Humiliating, as you explain why your own mirror is small and insufficient, and then harrowing, as you explain why you deserve to keep your job.

So, Ashwin sees Ratna dancing. Ratna sees Ashwin, and stops dancing. Ratna’s friend invites Ashwin to join in the dancing. Ashwin declines, urging Ratna to stay. She does not, of course, but accompanies him back up to the flat.  

(It is an endearing and heartbreaking truth of Ratna’s character, that she is proud and believes she deserves good things in life, even when told the contrary by tailors, shop assistants, and Ashwin’s friends; but that also, by virtue of being a live-in maid and always on the clock, and being a widow, with all its gender- and caste-based exclusions from social life, and perhaps also being responsible for a slightly frivolous younger sister, sees fun as indulgence.)   

Ashwin and Ratna ride the lift in silence to the flat, Ratna panting as quietly as she can. Apparently, the second half of the build-up, from lift ride to flat to inside the flat, was shot a full day after Ratna’s dance scene. I believe it. In construction and atmosphere, there is a clear line of division between both scenes. Ashwin has seen Ratna; Ratna knows. But they stand next to each other in that lift, trying to pretend the earth has not moved.  

I won’t say more about The Kiss, other than that it is lovely, and that the actors, who are good friends, made sure to negotiate boundaries and consent before filming it, and that it starts with something completely unexpected: Ashwin kissing Ratna’s forehead. Specifically, her hairline, which is where all the sweat from her dancing must have accumulated. I found that choice incredibly moving.   

I think one of the capital-P Points the movie is trying to make is this: it’s a shame that it takes falling in love with his domestic worker for Ashwin to recognise her humanity. It says something about the way we view the people on our payroll, and our ability to imagine their inner lives. We should be able to connect profoundly with others through more means than just romance. (How about friendship? How about comradeship?). But I also think it would be a misreading of the movie to dismiss the power of romantic love altogether. I don’t think it’s enough to answer the titular question, ‘Is love enough?’, with a pat ‘nope.’

It is not ideal that it takes falling in love with Ratna for Ashwin to get rattled about workers taking their meals on the floor; but it does matter that he gets rattled. It does matter that at the end, he leverages his significant socio-economic capital and gets Ratna a foot-in-the-door in the industry of her dreams. He provides her the means to be independent of him. I think the fact of loving her, or once having loved her, will alter him forever. He will not easily be able to unsee the way he once treated Ratna when he interacts with a driver, or a cook, or a watchman. We should not underestimate the power of this. Our enemies certainly don’t. Not the authors of the 1863 pamphlet, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, nor the authors of the 2020 ordinance, Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion. In a world where the powers that be are trying their damnedest to drive out any love or solidarity we extend to those different from us, Sir reminds us what exactly they’re afraid of.   

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With love to Raghav for making me watch Sir the first time. Rohena Gera if you’re reading this, I love your brain and you own my ass.