Juice: An Unseen Privilege
- The Crux
- Apr 22, 2020
- 4 min read
By Bakhtawar Ahmed
A get-together with friends, some delicious snacks and endless talks; Doesn't the weekend scenario match with every middle-class households' in our society?
Short film Juice is the story that revolves around a “normal” and “everyday” occasion of a middle-class family’s get-together with a not-so-casual account of a malfunctioning fan vs the breezy air cooler. Sounds interesting right!
The hosts of the evening are Manju Singh ( Shefali Shah) and her husband (Manish Choudhary). Some office colleagues along with their families are invited at their place. Between the snacks, drinks and the laughs, something completely unexpected is about to happen.
The opening scene is set during a dinner gathering, Manju, a regular housewife is in the kitchen, busy cooking for the evening. The husband is enjoying drinks with his office colleagues and friends in the living room. Manju along with the wives of the aforementioned colleagues is slogging in the hot kitchen to keep the party going on for the men.
While there is an air cooler in the living room, while women are sweating in the kitchen.
All men, with their drinks and cigarettes, are cheerfully dissecting the inevitability of Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump and the cause of death of great emperor Akbar. They are cackling on about the usefulness of a new female employee. They are announcing their personalities instead of embracing them. While the women, willfully occupy a kitchen to cook, sweating in the scorching heat of gas, busy themselves discussing job and kids.
They are discussing how a pregnant woman among them will have to give up her job now that the baby would require attention.
As men continue their talk, Manju’s husband call out to her to take the kids away so that they can chat in peace, yes! Their very important chat is getting disturbed here!
The women are caught up with more mundane stuff in unbearable heat -- preparing dinner for everyone. Yet, there is more than one pressure cooker in this environment; only, the whistles are at different stages of high frequency.
Even in this pocket of liberal slavery, the women discuss progressive concepts while making sure the “maid servant” doesn’t drink from the same glass. The expression on the young lady’s face is upsetting; she can’t help but think, “Do these madams even realize that we are all in the same boat tonight? And yet, they locate a hierarchy in suffering, too”.
This film is reminder of how gender roles are ultimately inherited in this society, as one of the mothers pulls her young daughter away from her video games to serve dinner, – kids of the same age – their dinner before she eats. While the young boys are allowed to stay back and continue playing.
Interestingly, while the film centers on Manju, there aren’t too many dialogues for her. “Diaper badalna hai toh wo toh hum hi ko karna padega na, inn logo ke haath se toh remote chhoot jaayega” is perhaps one of the only two lines she use to express before finally reaching boiling point.
The husband is giving regular calls to Manju to fill-in the snacks plate, to clear out kids from the dining area; there is a scene wherein she just leers at the sound of knife piercing into a carrot piece by piece. She keeps toiling the chicken snack and finally turns off the gas.
Manju’s “rebellion” does not happen just as a reaction to what she faces. She is perturbed that the women gathered in the kitchen are brainwashing a young woman to become a mom, not because she wants to but because that’s how you “save” your marriage after the “spark” is gone. She is disturbed to see a young girl being asked to serve her brothers who are busy with their video game.
It is only towards the end that Manju bursts - no dialogues or tantrums. After struggling with a table fan while trying to fix the heat in kitchen for her guests and trying her best to get the husband to fix it, Manju pours herself a glass of orange juice, drags a chair right in front of the air cooler in the living room and enjoys the break even as the men, including her husband, stare at her with stunned expressions on their faces.
An indicator is the way a background score seeps in during the final seconds, just as Manju is about to explode. The ending drives the message home and is perhaps the strongest scene of the film. The moment Manju steps out of the kitchen to enter the living room occupied by men, there is silence everywhere as the other women gather to see what’s happening (while never daring to enter the boundaries of the living room themselves) and the men sit in absolute discomfort as Manju pulls up a chair in front of the fan and sips on her juice.
She isn't and not going to be appreciated or acknowledged anyway. So why not leave everything for once and have a glass of juice?
And the music reappears as soon as she glares at her husband – with aggression and assertion and betrayal and confidence that have replaced a million failed words. Manju’s steady gaze pierces deep into the normalized patriarchy of middle-class households
Juice hits close to many homes that don’t even recognize the mental assault. The film might seem like it ends on a high – through a victorious gesture of not feminism but humanism. But it really is an everyday tragedy. This film is more like a reality check of how women are treated in most parts of the world.
Neeraj Ghaywan directorial has rightly portrayed the chaos, heat, and sexism that exist in the society. The film’s feel is very organic to the middle-class households in India; the lived-in nature of the home, the thoughtful production design, the costumes, the conversations.
Patriarchy is ingrained in the minds of many men. Treating women as a being of lower intelligence is a norm for many. And despite the increasing discussions on changing how women are treated, there is still a big section of the society which is too rigid to change. Women do not have to necessarily absolve themselves of traditional duties to feel equal, all they need is to feel and act as equals in both responsibilities and privileges.
The ending is left open-ended with very silent sensible and sensitive message for the audience.
Don’t miss it, you can watch Juice here:
Bakhtawar Ahmed
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