The forgotten sister in the age of ‘Behen Hogi Teri’

We live in times when popular culture wakes up to the brother-sister bond, ironically, only to disown it with a distancing note saying Behen Hogi Teri (2017). In a way it admits the distance mainstream Hindi films have been seeking in the last 25 years, or so, from the sisterly character in depicting relationships. Any attempt, for instance, to list popular rakshabandhan numbers in Hindi film music has to be stretched at least two decades back. Where did the sister, or for that matter, brother, disappear in Bollywood’s landscape of filial and human ties? More significantly, what does it say about the diminishing appeal of asexual bonds for filmmakers in societies which are witnessing the nuclearisation of family structures and the rise of an atomistic approach to life? Is it a sign of following a globalised template of relationships on the silver screen – a template in which such brother-sister ties have little relevance, and far less a cause for musically cherishing the tradition-steeped rituals such as tying raakhi?

Besides popular culture forms like Hindi movies, however, such relegation isn’t there to be found in your shopping malls, e-commerce sites and even street markets which are keen on making all sorts of offers to leverage the gift-buying spree the festival entails. Billboards advertising raakhi-themed shopping carnivals in urban centres or television ads peddling raakhi merchandise continue to mark the occasion. Given that, its recent diminution in cinematic imagination is intriguing as well as suggestive of certain subtle shifts.

With the place brother-sister ties occupied in the narrative and musical scheme of Hindi cinema in the first four decades following Independence, it was difficult to anticipate its fate in the last three decades. In fact, the Ashok Kumar-Waheeda Rehman starrer Raakhi (1962) was credited with taking the festival from an essentially North Indian phenomenon to other parts of the country. Mohammad Rafi’s soulful rendering of raakhi dhagon ka tyohar epitomised the distinct place of the brother-sister bond in the country’s festive calendar. Three years later, Asha Bhosle gave voice to the melodious, though mushy, tribute to a brother from a sister as she sang – mere bhaiya, mere chanda, mere anmol rattan in the Meena Kumari- Dharmendra starrer Kaajal (1965). However, in the black-and-white era, one of the earliest numbers to mark the occasion was  Lata humming bhaiya mere raakhi ke bandhan ko nibhana in the Balraj Sahni- Nanda starrer Chhoti Behan (1959).

A string of such songs and themes found their way to mainstream Hindi films in years to come. Hum beheno ke liye bhaiya (Anjaana, 1969) and ye raakhi bandhan hai aisa (Beimaan, 1972) are the ones one recalls immediately. However, the most lingering musical tribute of a brother to his sister was to come in the Dev Anand and Zeenat Aman starrer Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971). Kishore Kumar gave voice to phoolon ka taaro ka sabka kehna hai, ek hazarron mein meri behna hai.

What, however, is important is that even the body of work of the reigning deities of the Hindi film industry in 1970s, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, wasn’t deprived of films with brother-sister narratives and songs expressing that bond. While Bachchan, playing the brother to Farida Jalal, was the face of the Kishore number nahi main nahi dekh sakta tumhe rote hue in Majboor (1974), Rajesh Khanna was emoting the brotherly enthusiasm for his sister’s marriage in Sacha Jhutha (1970) as Kishore sang meri pyaari behaniya, banegi dulhaniya. The affectionate brotherly banter about his sister’s matrimonial choice was also seen in Shahenshah (1988) as Bachchan enacted O behana, O behna, mere jijaji ka kya kehna, while the pain of parting with the sister could be felt in the Mithun starrer Daata (1989) number, babul ka ye ghar behana. Three years later, one of the last of brother-sister musical moments on Hindi screen could be heard in isse samjho na resham ka taar bhaiya song in Tiranga (1992).

In the decades that followed, raakhi songs almost made a silent retreat from the musical scene of Hindi films. It’s evident, for instance, in the fact that none of the Khans – Salman, Aamir and Shahrukh, have any memorable number emoting the brother-sister bond. As a sign of the preponderance of romance at the cost of other relationships, the only song Shahrukh and Aishwarya Rai, playing siblings, in Josh (2000) is about the sister (played by Aishwarya) advising the brother (played by Shahrukh) about courtship and insights into wooing women. It’s not about their bond- perhaps too mundane and asexualised a relationship for both stars to risk their carefully cultivated sex appeal. My Brother…Nikhil (2005) comes to mind as the only other movie one can think of having a sister-brother bond as a theme in the recent period. A low budget film, with Juhi Chawla playing sister, this film was more of an account of the death of an AIDS patient.

This marginalisation of sisterly affection in Bollywood narratives has somehow coincided with the negative connotations that the once innocuous address of brotherly affection, ‘Behenji’, has acquired over the years. Everyday life observations make it clear what kind of nightmare it evokes when girls and women are addressed (or labelled) as one. There is also an argument that the word has been demonised by non-Behenjis to assert their sexual exclusivity which is rooted in a distorted understanding of modernity where anything which has no sexual potential (as the relation between a sister and brother) is not sexy enough. To an extent, in doing so, non-Behenjis play into the hands against which they supposedly rebel – men who want to see them as exclusive sex objects.

It’s perhaps this exclusivity of characterisation of women as subjects of either sexual or romantic interest that might be making Bollywood to look away from their asexual social roles, as that of a sister, in weaving its narratives. A section may also see traces of patriarchy in brothers’ self-arrogating to themselves the role of protectors. The problem is that in treading such extremities of ideological positions, it invents a red herring for overlooking the emotion-imbued sibling bonds which have nothing to do with underpinnings of social  power equations. It may be seeking traditions of raakhi to cherish, or, alternatively, fetishise it.

In receding to the margins of Bollywood tales, brother-sister ties reveal the shrinking of its narrative imagination to leitmotifs of sexual or romantic roles which are dictated by increasingly global templates of filmmaking. For all its uniqueness in being celebrated in the collective cultural psyche of the country, the sister now seems a misfit in such a template. In this point of departure from Hindi cinema’s past portrayal of brother-sister bonds, Hindi films now also show their point of disconnect with the ties which still matter in this country. For every ‘Behen hogi teri’, there are people still happy to claim, ‘Behen hai ye meri’. The latter, however, have no takers in Hindi films now.

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