In Tees, Dibakar Banerjee explores the way personal histories sometimes completely conflict with official narratives of the past and present. The film looks at three generations of a Kashmiri Muslim family’s lives to tell a story of loss, grief, political turmoil and freedom. In the 90’s, Ayesha (Manisha Koirala) struggles to deal with growing communal unrest in Srinagar, finding refuge in her memories of a shared cultural identity with the Pandits of her city.
Three decades later, her daughter Zia Draboo (a mesmerising Huma Qureshi) and her partner Meera (Ruchi Pujara) run pillar to post trying to buy a flat in Mumbai, with housing societies rejecting them both for their sexuality as well as Zia’s Muslim name. “All this is happening because I am Zia with a ‘Z’ and not a ‘J’,” she cries at one point.
More than two decades later, in 2042, Zia and Meera’s son Anhad Draboo (Shashank Arora) has his manuscript ‘Tees’ rejected by the Literature and Arts Commission of a dystopian state, owing to the sensitive nature of its content.
In an ironic turn of events, Dibakar Banerjee’s film has met the same fate as Anhad’s book. Commissioned by Netflix, the film has been in limbo since its completion in 2022, when the streaming platform shelved its release. Netflix has since said that it has no plans to release the film. In an interview with Deadline, Banerjee said, “Netflix has never given me any other reason except they don’t know if this is the right time to release the film. Given what happened with Tandav, the only conclusion to reach is that Netflix is reluctant to release the film out of fear of being similarly targeted. But the film I have made is very different to the web series in question.” Tandav, a show on Amazon Prime, faced criticism and protests from Hindutva supporters who objected to the show’s references to Lord Shiva, with criminal cases being filed against Prime Video executives, cast, and crew.
Premiering at the Dharamshala International Film Festival last weekend, Tees is now in the hands of potential buyers and discerning festival audiences. While the film depicts a future dystopia, it seems the censorship and bureaucratic authoritarianism that impact Anhad’s book have affected the film’s future too, in the here and now. The all-powerful, surveillance state in Tees doesn’t seem to be too far off given the predicament the film finds itself in.
Through its 142-minute run-time, writers Banerjee and Gaurav Solanki deal with a plethora of complicated issues like homophobia, Islamophobia, displacement, generational trauma and the eventual banality of tech-based surveillance. At no point however, does the script belabour the matter, coursing through the lives of its characters with empathy, complexity and humour. Even as Ayesha and her Pandit friend Usha seem to be caught in the turmoil of communalism, their relationship becoming strained, Banerjee never leaves the messy grey area for the safe harbours of a black and white fallout over identity.
Food becomes an important marker of a multifaceted identity, particularly to Ayesha. “Let’s put your (Hindu) recipes and ours (Muslim) together and create a cookbook so that others can see what Kashmiri food is all about,” she tells her friend Usha. Food here may divide, but it also brings the two friends together. Usha and her husband’s final escape from Srinagar is arranged by Ayesha, even as she cleverly uses the unrest to steal Usha’s recipes from her home. Ayesha takes from Usha that which she will most remember her friend by, their physical separation also turning into an existential one. Koirala plays the chaotic and confident Ayesha with a beautiful restrained and quiet quality. Several long shots of her face as she talks to her Pandit friend on the phone reflect perfectly her inability to face the present without the glint of nostalgia.
In 2042, Anhad’s world is restricted and constantly surveilled. The state intervenes in every aspect of his life, even sounding out warnings if he raises his voice. Cinematographer Rajan Palit does well to create a claustrophobic atmosphere, keeping his shots tight and lighting neon and sparse. What is particularly interesting about this timeline is Banerjee’s ability to show not tell. The technological tools and gadgets are used matter of factly, the audience getting used to their functions slowly on their own. There is no real explanation about what kind of society the dystopian state has organised but you realise it is fundamentally graded and unequal based on how different characters are treated and the privileges they are afforded. Anhad’s Aadhar card level is too low for him to be able to access several areas of a metro station, for example.
This access is also determined by how pliant you are to state sponsored propaganda. Anhad’s book deals with the anti-Muslim riots of 2030 in Mumbai (therefore the name Tees), an event that is neither spoken nor written about as per the dictates of the government. Naturally his manuscript is rejected. He tries to publish a cookbook based on his grandmother’s Kashmiri recipes but that too is rejected (because of the use of the word ‘Kashmir’) in a ploy to get him to write a pro-government version of Tees. Shashank Arora is excellent as a prostitute-cum-writer battling with the mighty arm of state censorship, his angst and seething anger visible, even under the veil of humour. His scenes with the family housekeeper, played by Naseeruddin Shah are particularly hilarious, the latter having completely disappeared into his role as Gasha.
Perhaps the best thing about Tees is in the way it treats its audience as intelligent and perceptive. There is so much that is kept out of the frame, leaving it to the audience to imagine and put together. We see Zia and Meera’s contentious relationship, but we are never shown how they break up. We know they have a child, Anhad, but we don’t know how he ends up with Zia’s grandmother and not Meera. We see Zia have a mental breakdown, where she flirts with the idea of suicide, but we are never actually witness to her eventual suicide. Most importantly, the riots of 2030 are alluded to– when Muslims were set on fire and thrown into swimming pools – but never depicted on screen. Everything that comes to pass is foreshadowed and therefore left to the audience to work out.
On the other hand, there could be some discomfort in the way the director, who has no history or relationship with Kashmir, has told its complicated story. At several points, one could ask whether it is ‘appropriate’ for Banerjee to be the one telling this story. At the Q&A after the screening, an audience member did indeed ask him this question to which his reply was, that after an artist has told stories that ‘belong’ to them, it is only natural to explore those that they may not personally be associated with.
In the film, in the end, what connects the three generations to each other and stands in opposition to tyranny is their memories. Ayesha’s memories of living in a peaceful, multicultural past, Zia’s memories of leaving a turbulent Srinagar for Delhi, and Anhad’s memories of the riots of 2030. “My memory is again in the way of your history,” writes Agha Shahid Ali in his poem ‘Farewell’, and that is exactly what the memories of the Draboo family represent — an alternative, uncensored version of the truth.
