Ahana Takes Us Into The Taboo World of Male Infertility

Ahana, which marks the directorial debut of a young poet and academically brilliant Promita Bhowmik, deals with the delicate issues of male infertility in marriage for one, and the challenges men face when married to more famous wives for another.

The two issues appear to have no links but Bhowmik proves that looked at closely, through a powerful narrative enriched by beautiful cinematic aesthetics, they can be closely linked as they find justification through the two characters, husband Rudraneel (Joy Sengupta) and wife Ahana (Sudipta Chakraborty) married for eight years without kids.

Ahana is a Bengali language film but it has universal issues discussed, analysed and dissected. Ahana is a celebrated novelist in contemporary Bengali literature and is also dutiful towards the family comprising husband Rudraneel and his father.

She borrows time for her writing between her daily chores and sometimes, also has to give her public appearances a miss because ‘family comes first.’ Husband Rudraneel teaches Sociology at a college which includes invitations to lecture at colleges away from the hometown. His lectures spill over with the need to free women from globally present gender discrimination while his personal life is consumed with sometimes silent, and sometimes articulate expressions of subtle violence against Ahana.

There is no third person involvement threatening the marriage. There are no financial strains the couple must go through. Dowry is conspicuous by its absence.

But the cracks are visible because there is almost total absence of communication between the husband and the wife. Yet, they keep on living together under the same roof, have dinner together at the same table and have sex at night in which the wife remains a completely passive partner.

This is one side of the picture. The other side is that when the couple discovers that the barren-ness is mainly due to the low motility factor in Rudraneel’s semen and IVF is suggested, he vehemently opposes the idea leaving his wife to do what she wishes to. He goes on to confide in a colleague blaming his wife for the barren marriage.

The abuse here happens at two levels. The first one is the barrenness of the marriage in which he blames his wife though he knows full well that he is the one responsible.

The second is that Rudraneel completely rejects his wife’s talents as a writer of merit obviously for everyone around to understand. His father is very proud of his talented daughter-in-law’s achievements. But he maintains complete silence on the perennial conflict between his only son and his wife, blaming it on his own failure to be stricter in the upbringing of his motherless son.

Ahana finally makes a decision about her life with or without Rudraneel. She tells her father-in-law once, “But I love him…I think.” Ahana feels distressed when she finds her sister Mili trying to take herself out of severe depression through drugs. Mili has been taken for a ride by a professor she fell in love with who had a daughter around her own age and who finally, ditched her.

For the first time in Indian cinema, a young, debutant director has shown the courage of exploring the issue of male infertility within marriage. “He is not impotent. He is quite capable of a normal sex life. This confuses me a lot,” Ahana says once to her childhood friend Aditya who keeps suggesting psychological counseling which fails completely because Rudraneel resists all questioning.

The director could have easily steered the story to suggest an adulterous relationship between Ahana’s childhood friend Aditya (Priyabrata Sen Sarkar) and herself because it is clear that this friend still holds a candle to their close friendship across countries and time. But the director keeps her focus constant on her two agendas within a single marriage.

The sound design is low-key yet emotionally resonating with just two songs, one a Tagore number and another a composition by Lalon Phokir both recorded in the background. There is so little background music that you hardly notice it at all. Perhaps this is to show the cold silences Ahana and Rudraneel’s lives have been reduced to.

Joydeep Bhowmik’s brilliant cinematography takes the cake after the marvelous performances by all the actors. You can see the sun filtering through the windows falling on Ahana’s face, or the rays of the sun stepping into the room, or, the silhouetted Ahana walking away and across a tree-filled space in the open outdoors.

Sudipta Chakraborty in the title role, Joydeep Sengupta as her husband, Soumya Sengupta as the father-in-law, Sukriti Lahori are brilliant in their roles as is Priyabrata Sen Sarker as Ahana’s childhood friend who arrives from London to holiday in Kolkata.

Trees in the film act as a metaphor for Life– big trees filled with leaves and branches heavy and healthy and fertile, trees with skinny branches with no leaves, pointing at the bare, empty and barren life of Ahana, or, Ahana captured in a long shot walking through a pathway between the tree-lined spaces captured in silhouette. The closing shot repeats the woman in silhouette walking through the tree-lined landscape in the opening frames of the film. But this time, with a little girl holding her hand with a Lalon Phokir number playing in the backdrop.

Very often, the false sense of superiority a husband harbours about himself in relation to his wife is complemented by the wife’s own feeling of inferiority and/or guilt she has internalized just because she is born a girl.

Rudraneel’s insecurity is rooted in his infertility on the one hand and his wife’s success as an awarded author within Bengali literature on the other. He takes very sharp potshots at her fame as a writer though his office colleagues compliment him on his wife’s award. Her fame as a writer is glossed over with little highlights pointing out to how she divides her life between being an efficient housewife and a successful writer.

Emotional violence often happens when the wife is a high achiever and even if she is just a fulltime housewife. A noted doctor complained to her friends about not being introduced by her husband when friends dropped in. The husband felt threatened by the reality that his wife was an achiever. The fulltime housewife gets similar treatment for the opposite reason – there is no need to introduce her because she is no one anyway!

Interestingly, for Ahana, since the violence inflicted on her is explosive in its silence, she has no way to take her complaint to any social service organization or to a court. She does not have any intention of breaking the marriage or walking out because she believes she still loves her husband and wants to live within the marriage. So, finally, she practically pushes herself to take her life in her hands and learn to live it on her own terms.

Elizabeth Wilson in her book, What is to be done about Violence Against Women? Crisis in the Eighties, writes, “The more likely cause is the involvement of men (in a long-term relationship with a woman) lies in retaining their power and authority in the family.”

Far from being considered as grossly abnormal behaviour, the violence of men towards the women they live with should be viewed as an extreme form of normality, an exaggeration, in fact, stemming from how society expects men to behave.

There is really, therefore, no need to look for a cause. The factor of wife-abuse is more concerned with and is more directly and undeniably related to the wider issue of power and inequality between the husband and the wife than with the simpler issue of a husband indulging in negative and silently abusive behaviour with his wife.

Ahana, the film, keeps haunting you like a sad song that saddens you every minute but you still want to keep listening………..It is painful, but it also carries that small ray of hope at the end of a dark tunnel. I tip my hat to you, Promita and team.