Gautham Vasudev Menon, the acclaimed movie director, arrived in Auroville on Saturday evening the 26th August 2023 to take part in a discussion as part of Auroville LitFest. He joined a discussion with the Secretary of AV Foundation Dr. Jayanti Ravi, Apsara Reddy, "a transgender woman" who is "a senior journalist with editorial distinctions in various national and global media outlets", and Malcom, an American national living in Auroville, at Bharat Nivas.
Honest to the point of being blunt he admitted that most filmmakers treat women as an object. There is no pay parity. The heroines are not paid as much as the heroes are. There is change happening at the writers' level in Hollywood. "I am really hoping for young women to come and write like in the west, you know, writers like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood. Those are the few pieces of literature I have read. I have been largely inspired by them." To Apsara Reddy's question if he thought the Mother's aspects of Maheshwari, Mahalakshmi and Mahishasuramardhini (sic) would manifest through women empowerment in cinema, he felt it was not possible in Tamil cinema. Dr. Jayanti Ravi began with a Sanskrit song and shared, among other anecdotes, how the female-to-male sex ratio significantly improved from 850 per 1000 to 951 per1000 during her last 4-year long tenure in Gujarat as the Health Secretary. She spoke in glowing terms about the great Carnatic vocalist Smt M.S. Subbulakshmi and said the singer was awarded Bharat Ratna (the highest civilian award in India). Gautham said he doesn't write scripts to suit the image of star actors (as some do). Towards the end, he sang a couple of lines of the classic Hindi song from the movie Kaagaz ke phool (Paper flower, 1959) "Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam. Tum rahe na tum, hum rahe na hum." (Time has done such injustice. You are no more yourself, I am no more myself.) Before starting to sing Gautham wondered if he should really be singing after (the level of proficiency of singing evident in) Mrs. Ravi's song.
Taking questions from the audience, Gautham politely declined to answer a part of one that touched politics - about cinema actors/artists who became top political leaders in Tamil Nadu. He revealed that he is the only director who openly invites through a website, women to compose for musical pieces that are non-cinematic but might be used in cinemas in the future. About 800 composings were received and out of which 4 were selected. Malcom spoke about the opposite scenarios prevailing where he was and where he is now and bringing up his daughter without the loss of her own uniqueness. Apsara Reddy was the anchor for the discussion.
There was no fireside chat at the Outdoor Amphitheatre as published. In fact, while watching the animation movie on Sri Aurobindo in the auditorium before the discussion with Gautham Menon began I thought it might be more appropriate to have a discussion with him on the stage. I was glad that's what actually happened. Cinemas are made for audiences in auditoriums and his love of theatres was evident when he said during the discussion he watched his movies only in theatres and judged it as a member of the audience.
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| Dr. Jayanti Ravi speaking |
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| Gautham Vasudev Menon speaking |
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| A view of Sri Aurobindo Auditorium, Bharat Nivas, Auroville |