“You’ve never seen anything like this before,” is a tough compliment to get in the horror-thriller genre considering the sheer volume of films and shows. And yet, it’s one that Tumbbad has received over and over again – and there is something about the film that elicits that response when you first watch it.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” feels like too rudimentary an understanding of the ‘horror’ of Tumbbad – most of the discomfort in the film comes from its setting. From the first sequence alone, it becomes obvious that Tumbbad is a clear allegory of the way patriarchy and consumerism work in tandem.
The exploitation of the protagonist Vinayak’s mother – both with regards to sexual violence and servitude – is a product of this.
When she asks for the mudra after over a decade of working for the ‘sarkar’, he says she has to ‘earn it’. It becomes glaringly obvious that she would never receive the mudra until ‘sarkar’ is alive – in the system she exists in, even decades of work won’t be enough for her to ‘earn’ it.
The film plays out in three chapters, all separated by more than a decade between them – we see the mother’s story followed by Vinayak’s own, which itself is a predecessor to Vinayak’s son Pandurang's journey. But all three of these chapters are driven by greed.
In a system which keeps women out of the lines of inheritance, whether it be with respect to land or money, Vinayak grows up believing that the bungalow and the land it rests on are his own.
Of Greed as Inheritance
Greed, especially in dangerous abundance, is at the heart of Tumbbad.
Vinayak (played by Sohum Shah) tells Pandurang (Mohammad Samad) about a goddess who granted food and riches to the world only for her son Hastar to try and steal them from her. This greed is punished by the gods – and the goddess hides Hastar away in her womb to protect him from their wrath. It is this act – ‘locking away as protection’ – that will come back later in the film by design.
The entire movie, then, becomes about the act of men who continue to intrude and encroach upon her womb. The film constantly signals that Hastar’s resting place is still a living, breathing entity – and Vinayak’s entry is an intrusion.
Armed with stunning visual cues and language, Tumbbad might make the womb seem like a hostile place, but once you understand the reality of Vinayak’s mission, this hostility also ties back to the goddess’ natural instinct to protect and preserve.
Vinayak’s greed is one for treasure – he believes he is entitled to the treasure because he has inherited it. He disregards his mother’s advice and the ancient lore that asks people to stay away from it and from any mentions of Hastar.
Even as he tells his son that there’s a curse of torrential rain on Tumbbad because they built a temple in the name of Hastar, you can’t help but wonder what drove people to worship Hastar over the goddess?
If the goddess was responsible for food and wealth, why, instead, did the village build a monument to the one who tried to steal it from her?
Even Pandurang naturally inherits the greed – from a young age, he aspires simply to follow in his father's footsteps and bring home the ‘gold’. His greed, however, is tied to his need for his father’s approval which in turn is tied to his assumption that he will become the ‘man of the house’ when his father dies.
Interestingly, Vinayak has two daughters who he barely even glances at – even after admitting that his son might not be able to complete the task at hand, he never turns to his daughters and wonders if one of them could take his place instead.
The passage of wealth must only go from father to son; the alternative never even crosses anyone’s mind. The ties between the feudal system and patriarchy become more apparent in the way monetary success instantly grants social and capital power to Vinayak – an understanding he passes on to his son without even speaking a word.
Even as Vinayak lives through India’s struggle for freedom, he only sees the revolution as a ‘hobby’, perhaps because his class and caste privilege protect him from seeing the reality of the violence the British rule brought with it.
In a particularly striking scene, the viewer is meant to focus on a conversation between two side characters on screen but, in the background, a woman can be seen pleading with an official to let go of the person he is attacking. For all intents and purposes, this violence escapes Vinayak’s gaze.
His caste privilege is evidenced also by his wife putting up the ‘flour mill run by Brahmins’ outside their house to signify ‘superiority and purity’.
Greed Through Generations
But Vinayak’s flaws don’t start with him – it is hinted that he has inherited his greed from his father. We don’t see Vinayak’s father in the film, but his presence is felt through the interactions between the young boy and his mother. His mother’s disdain towards Vinayak’s greed for the ‘treasure’ gives the viewers a sense of the injustices she must have dealt with during her marriage. ‘You are, after all, that man’s son,” she spits out often in anger.
Even his father’s death is introduced through its consequences on her – her shaved head and the striking red cloth.
Her servitude to the ‘sarkar’ is the only thing that protected her from having to participate in sati – patriarchy leaves her with a choice between violence and violence, effectively stripping her of that agency of choice.
That is perhaps why the mudra is her way of survival, of escape. On the other hand, Vinayak’s affliction towards the mudra comes from the greed to be rich and his entitlement towards the land.
Like Anand Gandhi, the co-writer and creative director for Tumbbad, had revealed,
“For centuries, men have automatically been granted social privilege, control of property, and moral authority by just the virtue of their birth. The patriarchal system has granted some the power to incessantly violate even the most fundamental rights of the ones excluded from the system because of their gender or their caste. In some cases, people commit horrors upon the victims of their oppression. 'Tumbbad' is an allegory for the horror of patriarchal power centers (sarkar) run by a toxic mix of consumerism (the foreign goods), greed (the gold), and intoxication (the opium).”Anand Gandhi, co-writer, Tumbbad
Of Goddesses and the Women of 'Tumbbad'
The world of Tumbbad is populated by men with ambition and women who have been relegated to the sidelines – not by the film but by the system. In one of the film’s best scenes, Vinayak’s wife asks their son what lies in Tumbbad. Pandurang replies, “That’s between father and me. You handle the household chores,” with a mix of condescension and pride in his voice.
Vinayak’s wife is kept out of the conversation about her family’s wealth and its subsequent decline – her husband never reaches to her for help. When she does try to start a business to support her family after her husband vanishes without a trace, she recoils in horror at his return. She has, in Vinayak’s eyes, committed the sacrilegious act of having ambition and getting a ‘job’. Her independence irks him.
She is always seen explaining her actions to Vinayak but isn’t expected to ever have questions of her own – even when Vinayak welcomes another woman into their family. This woman is a ‘gift’ from his friend who tells him that she was about to be asked to perform sati but he ‘saved her’.
Like Vinayak’s mother, this woman’s identity is reduced to a commodity – the parallel is woven into the film as we see her stand in the rain in her striking red clothes much like Vinayak’s mother outside the home of the ‘sarkar’.
Almost immediately after the conversation with his mother, Pandurang offers his father’s mistress a gold coin as a promise to marry her. He assumes that control over the house translates to a control over women and this assumption comes from the patriarchal setting in which he has been raised. He, too, has been raised with an entitlement – once his father dies, the house, the bungalow, and all the riches are his. Vinayak’s daughters gradually vanish from the film.
Even the act of proclaiming his ‘ownership’ over a woman eventually becomes a ‘joke’ between father and son. It is chalked down to an equivalent of ‘men will be men’ – Vinayak’s complaint isn’t that his son has inherited a toxic masculinity, it’s that he’s ‘too young’ to be acting that way. Pandurang inherits his father’s greed, his entitlement, and his treatment of the women in his life – and none are positive qualities.
Though the film has many memorable sequences, a brief interaction between Vinayak and his son encapsulates the film’s idea – when Vinayak tells his son that the ‘sarkar’ (the Indian government) will lock the bungalow away, the latter asks, “Sarkar aurat hai kya?” (Is sarkar a woman?)
Perhaps he was raised to believe that women keep things locked away – the fact that the entire story started with a goddess having to lock her son away to protect him despite his encroachment on what was hers gets twisted into this assumption.
In this world of men chasing after their greed, a goddess torn between the need to give and protect and the real world’s women’s lack of agency in the face of violence in the domestic and social sphere mingle into each other in an entangled mess.
Tumbbad was originally released in October 2018. It is running in theaters again as part of the Hindi films being re-released every week.
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