'Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper': Speaking of Gender & Desire In a Man-Eat-Man World

'Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper' is streaming on Netflix.

Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper stars Manav Kaul and Tillotama Shome among others.

(Photo Courtesy: Instagram/ Altered by The Quint)

There’s an interesting thread that connects Mirzapur and Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper – the co-existence of violence and desire. In Mirzapur, desire existed in the backdrop as violence and the whims of men fighting for control took center stage, but CA Topper flipped that script. In the Manav Kaul-starrer, desire is at the forefront while the campy Bollywood references and violence flow in the undercurrent.

In a way, this is less about the show’s merit as a work of cinema and more about the conversations it has.

The best thing about Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper is its premise – an Everyman Tribhuvan (Manav Kaul) is an honest Noida Town Planning Board employee whose life is thrown into disarray after a bank scam that cuts him off from all his savings. In a desperate attempt to ‘fix’ things, he starts working as a male sex worker or a ‘gigolo’. The show uses this unique premise to explore female desire and the nuance that accompanies that discussion.

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Mishra lives in Noida with his wife and two children. His children are frustrated by how he never takes their side and his wife constantly reassures him that their hand-to-mouth living is not going to be a problem. But outside his family, most people see Mishra as an ‘idiot’ which starts to affect his self-confidence. However, he has a superpower – he’s good in bed.

His wife, in a scene that is rather exposition heavy, points out that he is ‘more concerned with his partner’s pleasure’ than his own but eventually it becomes clear that Mishra’s appeal comes from just being empathetic to his partners. For instance, his favourite client Bindi (Tillotama Shome) is attracted to him simply because he listens to her and acts like the ‘Bollywood hero’ of her dreams.

The Omnipresent Bollywood ‘Item Song’

We meet Bindi in a theatre while a raunchy song plays on screen – Mishra is embarrassed to watch and is on his way out to get popcorn for his kids. Bindi is mesmerised by the visuals on screen. This simple scene is enough for some food for thought.

Bindi's dialogue in a still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

These eye-grabbing, foot-tapping tracks, often called ‘item songs’, are frequently incorporated into Bollywood movies primarily to cater to the male gaze. Like most things, even cinema has, for the longest time, been aimed at a male audience. The songs have frequently and rightfully been criticised for the objectification of women. But sensuality has never been the issue with item songs – it’s the gaze. Most of these songs either have lyrics (and visuals) directly aimed at bolstering the hero’s image and sexuality.

These songs create a space in the film that acknowledges sexual desire, but this acknowledgment is solely reserved for the man. However, several women have reclaimed these songs to explore their own sexual agency – a cultural shift Bindi stands for. She often asks her husband to dance with her to Bollywood songs, an extension of her desire. Her husband, who conflates listening to his wife with weakness, often dismisses her.

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

He also often calls her ‘childish’ and asks her to ‘act her age’ (she is about 40) which touches upon another recurrent theme. Intimacy and desire isn’t limited to adults of a certain age bracket but Bindi’s husband’s attitude towards his wife’s desires likely comes from social conditioning. When we refuse to view sex outside the act of procreation, we tend to forget that intimacy and desire are actually acts of pleasure.

Combine this with the problematic idea of forcing a ‘biological clock’ on women and his dismissal begins to make more sense. This is where Tribhuvan Mishra comes in.

Can Intimacy and Lust Be Mutually Exclusive?

When Mishra meets a more experienced sex worker ‘Desi Ghoda’ for tips, he has one major tip – listen to your clients. “Unhe jitna sunoge utna samajh paaoge (The more you listen to them, the more you will understand them),” he says.

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Over the course of his career, Mishra meets multiple women and also gets a glimpse into how vast ‘desire’ can be – while some of his clients want to sleep with him, others show him photo albums, and you even see him paint a woman’s nails as she talks to him. The lines between things like intimacy and lust and love and sex are neatly drawn if only to show how they can both coexist or stand alone.

‘Desire’, then, leaves the confines of a man and a woman sleeping together. Sexual desire and intimacy stops being centered on male pleasure and becomes an entity – it’s present in their conversations with each other and in their interactions with each other. The need for intimacy is sometimes completely devoid of sex and sometimes it is just about companionship and vice versa. While the show’s exploration of this topic isn’t always well-sketched-out either – it uses a lot of its screen time on a cat-and-mouse chase – the conversation is important.

The use of Bindi’s love for cinema is also quite interesting – enough has been said about the reasons women find certain Bollywood heroes charming. It’s reminiscent of why Shah Rukh Khan became the ‘romantic hero’ of everyone’s dreams – the figurative King of Romance.

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

When Aditya Chopra told the actor, “Your eyes have something that can’t be wasted on action,” he was onto something. SRK stood for a ‘resistance’ almost to the preexisting themes of desire on cinema – his characters looked at women with devotion instead of viewing them purely as an object of desire (yes, there is a massive difference). It is this difference that is at the heart of Mishra’s interactions with his clients.

Beyond Desire Amid Subconscious Biases

Beyond this, the show also takes a look at subconscious bias (and misogyny in that context). A male sex worker is a rare sight in Indian cinema and everyone who finds out about Mishra’s work first reacts with surprise more than anything else.

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

The show uses its premise to look into the idea of unconscious bias as well. From a cop to a miffed husband, everyone assumes that it’s Mishra who is paying the women and not vice versa. The idea that a woman might seek intimacy outside of an established “relationship” or that a man might be a sex worker doesn’t strike anyone.

And once the show separates sex from the man-woman binary, it then also gets to explore attraction between two elderly people in Mishra’s life, queer love, and much more. The conversation about desire and intimacy, then, becomes intertwined with the concept of agency. When women contact Mishra, they’re exercising a control over their own sexual agency – something that is a resistance in its own.

Taking a brief segue back to the SRK conversation, Shrayana Bhattacharya (the author of 'Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence') said it best in her op-ed for Guardian:

“I heard too many stories of violence against women for simply watching a film on their own or keeping a film star’s picture in their room. Fandom was seen as an uncomfortable signal of female sexuality.”

Shrayana Bhattacharya, Guardian

Female sexuality is always viewed as a taboo, something to not be discussed or discussed in hushed tones. It’s partly why films like Deepa Mehta’s Fire, Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha, Shonali Bose’s Margharita With a Straw, or Lust Stories receive the adoration and flak that they do.

But this agency isn’t just limited to ones sexuality – there is an omnipresent bias against what we assume women are capable of and one character’s ‘revolution’ takes a different route. Remember how Stereotypical Barbie and her friends use the misogynist bias the Kens have against them to take back power?

A still from Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

That’s essentially what Shweta Basu Prasad’s character Shobha does. She uses the fact that she's practically invisible in this man-eat-man world to carve out a space for herself - she is clearly always the brains behind the operation. Hers is a desire for power.

This still doesn’t completely touch the surface of all the conversations a show like CA Topper should start – many that the show itself doesn’t manage to give enough space to.

For instance, the conversation around sex work isn’t black-and-white – there is much to talk about with regards to consent, agency, and exploitation of women in sex work. But till we don’t accept that sex is not the problem with sex work, we won’t be able to do those conversations justice either.