"You have been naughty again, haven't you?", Surekha (Vidya Balan) asks her son Sonu (Sanika Patel), as the child enquires about the wounds on her face. Shaan Vyas' 30-minute short film Natkhat, a part of Voot Select Film Festival, is a compelling tale about generational misogyny, violence against women and lays bare the terrifying truths about 'natkhat kanhaiyas'.
Set in a semi-rural place and narrated as a story within a story, the film follows Sonu as he goes about his daily routine of attending school, playing with friends and then returning home. However, the child's inquisitive minds observes and takes in everything going around him.
Natkhat opens with a disturbing sequence of a bunch of teenagers talking about abducting girls and dragging them to the jungle. Sonu intently listens to the conversation, and thereby follows another equal troubling encounter engineered by boys in his school. From a reluctant passive observer, Sonu gradually becomes a perpetrator.
After such incidents, Sonu returns home to the warm embrace of his soft-spoken mother Surekha. Despite having a distinct urban accent, Surekha always covers her head and makes sure the ghoonghat covers her face when she is in the presence of the men in her family.
She believes that her son is studying hard, but one conversation at the dinner table proves her wrong. While chomping away on food, Surekha's father-in-law and brother-in-law speak about 'dealing with' independent and successful women. Her husband may not be explicitly sympathetic to their ways, but he is abusive in the bedroom. Sonu jumps into the conversation and boasts about something he had done, that shakes Surekha's beliefs.
Harassing girls, catcalling them, teaching them a 'lesson' because 'boys will be boys' - everywhere Sonu goes, he witnesses this aggression towards women.
But how does Surekha make him realise his follies? She doesn't punish him or rebuke him. Instead, Surekha weaves a story about taking advantage of entitlement and abusing one's position, evoking the same sentiments.
She does another interesting thing too. Towards the beginning, we see the woman getting beaten up at night and trying to hide her scars in the morning. As Surekha's story progresses, she decides to expose the wounds to her son. She tells him that everyday he does something 'naughty' a fresh scar will appear on her face.
With the storytelling format, Shaan Vyas tries to do away with hackneyed, preachy dialogues. Reiterating the age-old saying that learning begins at home, Natkhat points out that stories remain etched in impressionable young minds. They have the power to reform. The film is also an attempt to sensitise someone by bringing the violence closer to home. Time and again, Vidya's bruises make Sonu feel a stinging pain that he was oblivious to while inflicting the same on other girls.
But will the magic of stories stay with Sonu forever? How will this little boy turn out to be? What happens when he snaps out of the utopian world and gets sucked into the dark, real one? 'Natkhat' ends on a sweet note, but at times the approach feels a little too naive.
When it comes to performances, Vidya (who is also a producer of this film) is compelling as Surekha. Surekha embodies the pain of thousands of women who toil day in and day out, only to be made to feel invisible by their families. She carries the weight of generations of abuse and is right in saying that a mere 'sorry' is not going to fix the rot that has already spread far and wide.
Sanika Patel also shines as Sonu, a child who is struggling with the notions of right and wrong. Peer pressure, the constant expectation of living up to a skewed and dangerous notion of masculinity robs this kid of a childhood he deserves. However, casting a girl in Sonu's role is a decision which quite surprised me.
Natkhat doesn't narrate a story that we haven't seen before. But it needs to be hammered every now and then. In one of the sequences, a teacher is shown asking questions to his class. Both boys and girls raise their hands, but only the former is invited to answer. Change has to start from early on. Only then can we start staring at a tiny ray of hope.
Natkhat premiered at the Voot Select Film Festival on 24 July.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)