Even as people struggle with the End of Meaning, yaniki, the End of Memeing, because Game of Thrones and the Avengers series are ending, on another corner of the internet, there is trending excitement because Katrina Kaif might play PT Usha
llustration/Ravi Jadhav
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Even as people struggle with the End of Meaning, yaniki, the End of Memeing, because Game of Thrones and the Avengers series are ending, on another corner of the internet, there is trending excitement because Katrina Kaif might play PT Usha.
This has irritated people as expected, and the tweets have run the gamut from despairing nostalgia, yaniki, "PC as Mary Kom was still acceptable but this…" (completely forgetting the discussions on representation from that time), to scorn, "When you don’t have enough money for a good casting director," to indignation, "Let Katrina say Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha first." According to a certain status-driven approach Indians favour, a really big sports star should be played by a really big movie star, so what’s there?
So far, we don’t know what Usha thinks of this impending reality. She might think, theek hai, mostly because she has better things to do than keep discussing, like the rest of us, such as running (could not resist) her training academy in Kerala. Or, not.
But, for the way stories offer us an imagination of what can be, it would be a terrible loss, that happens in translation. The fashion for biopics, as well as the persisting idea that ‘realistic’ cinema is either drawn from reality or filled with gritty images, confers a halo of significance on its makers, but does no service to the variegated world of reality.
In fact, even Kaif, who recently put in a stunning performance as a woman wounded by the journey of liberation in a straight-square world, doesn’t get to explore these talents further, and therefore, bring unusual urban characters to the screen. In order to be hatke, one is condemned to this pseudo-realism in our cinema, alas.
But, of course, the big loss would be the sheer uniqueness of Usha, one of pre-liberalisation India’s most resonant figures. Her unusual persona made prettiness, an inescapable quality of Kaif’s, completely irrelevant. Hers was a body that was all about athletic skill and determination. Her two most common expressions were intent focus while running and a huge smile when winning. Her success and her particularity made her a national hero. "What is PT Usha’s full name?" was a question on that famous pre-liberalisation show, Quiz Time, and someone knew the answer (without multiple choice). She symbolised an idea that women could be remarkable in various ways — beauty was one of them, but it was not a necessary accompaniment to excellence.
Post-liberalisation is not expansive thus. Where visibility is often translated as success, a shiny appearance must accompany achievement. In translating Usha’s life to screen via a screen goddess, there would be a loss of that very particular body, which ran like the wind and the idea that it was its own kind of special. We will not then celebrate an Usha as she was, but in a made-over form, as though the original were both, not enough, but also too much.
These translations, in which younger actors play older sharpshooters, in which Javed Akhtar overwrites Naezy, not only homogenise, but generalise the world’s variety and unexpectedness. These narratives, dislodged from their origins, convert very specific journeys of desire into linear stories of success. That’s how we translate inspiration — the journey to excellence — into aspiration, wherein anyone can succeed (but they can’t, not like Usha).
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevipictures.com
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