Fire : What Makes India Burn

Mami KANDA

Introduction

The essay is about Fire, a film set in India.Before I turn to a more specific discussion of that film,I would like to briefly explain how I came to choose this film as a subject for research, and the topic of this graduation thesis.

Last year, when I was studying translation in the third-year seminar, we used many kinds of materials such as books, films and poetry. I learnt that there were a lot of ways to translate, for example, inter-language translation, inter-cultural translation, and inter-media translation. Depending on what you chose to focus on, the way of translation could be completely different. I really enjoyed adding subtitles to some parts of a film in the class. I got a lot of knowledge about foreign cultures and history through those materials as well, especially about Aboriginal people in Australia, and that was exactly what I wanted to study so it was great for me to have a chance. I have been to Australia three times and it is a place that I always had a big interest in and so it was the foreign country I was most familiar with. Therefore I thought that I wanted to continue studying with a focus on Australian materials at first. However I had a second thought that it might be much more interesting to start to research something from zero, nothing, to see an other world and learn very new things.

India was a kind of mysterious country to me and I did not know much about it but I was always dreaming of visiting there, somehow. Actually, at first I did not have any idea about Fire, the movie that I used for this research project, and to my shame, I did not have any knowledge about India itself either, however, I became very curious about the film as soon as I heard that its appearance in theaters in India and story provoked controversy over lesbianism in India and made people panic and react violently to the film. All my research then started from my simple wonders. Fire was filmed in 1996 and it was almost 21^st century. The existence of lesbians is not a big surprise anymore in the world now. It is a prevalent issue, I thought. I wondered why Indian I wondered what the movie was really about. I wondered how lesbianism was described in Fire, and I wondered about women’s position in Indian society, as well. Perhaps, everything was related to their religion, traditional culture or some old thoughts in India. That was my very first step to set about this project. I soon realized, of course, that each of these topics is far too extensive to be handled throughout in this essay but, even very briefly, I hope to suggest their importance.

The main assignment of this research is a reading of contemporary society in India, which is dramatically changing, through Fire. For this reason, I will observe its story and dialogues in the film very carefully and look at it from many perspectives. First of all, I am going to focus on Deepa Mehta, the director of Fire and trace her life history in order to recognize what has tempted her to make such a controversial film. In addition to her simple biography, I will research about Indian diaspora since the director, in fact, is a part of it. Secondly, I will give you some pieces of information on the Indian reaction toward the film, the so-called “controversy” in India. It might be the basis of starting research because it can give us some hints about what makes Indian people afraid of accepting the film. Thirdly, I would like to do a language translation of some short conversations, where I find a tight connection with the background of India, so as to see how old traditional things have an impact on a frame of India and a modern Indian life and then, I will turn into a examination of whether Fire is really a lesbian film or not, using Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

A Brief Description of Fire

Fire is about a middle-class family in Delhi in which unhappy marriages lead to lesbian love. After her arranged marriage, Sita (Nandita Das) has to live with her husband, Jatin (Jaaved Jaaferi), and his brother and sister in law, Ashok (Kushal Kharbanda) and Radha (the Indian superstar, Shabana Azmi), and his infirm mother, Biji (Kushal Rekhi). Sita and Radha manage the household, help the family’s business and must take care of Biji together although the business of waiting for the milkman and demeaning chores are left to Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry), the family servant. The sisters in law are very lonely because for different reasons they do not get the expected and satisfying love from their husbands, and gradually their friendship turns to love and desire for each other.

Deepa Mehta

The director of Fire, Deepa Mehta is a Canada-based director, producer and screenwriter.As Mehta admits, her films are her life itself. She got some hints from all her experiences through her life for making a film. Indeed, she spent almost two years writing Fire and it was exactly while she was just on the verge of divorce. Fire is seemingly a big challenge not only for rising the question about the painful lives of Indian women but also for the director herself begins asking about her own desire since, at that time, she was just trying to begin a new life. So, looking at her biography and filmography helps us catch the significant ideas of Fire.

Mehta was born in Amritsar, India in 1949. She received a degree in philosophy from the University of New Delhi. She got married with Paul Saltzman, who is a Canadian filmmaker and producer, and immigrated to Canada in 1973. She founded Sunrise Films Company and started her film career writing scripts for children’s films, and also started working as a producer and director for television works including Danger Bay, Inside Story and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Mehta’s father was a film distributor and also a theater owner, so she naturally grew up with films in her childhood. However, she did not realize that she had a big interest in filmmaking until one of her friends asked her to help make a documentary film in Delhi. She had no professional training in making a film, but she gradually acquired the skills by working there. Making a documentary was the first step of her career and its process made her notice she loved filmmaking. In 1990, she directed her feature debut Sam & Me and it was highly praised and earned an Honorable Mention for the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes International Film Festival. In 1994, Mehta directed her second feature film Camilla, starring Jessica Tandy, Bridget Fonda and Hume Cronym. Fire is her third feature film, and it was the opening night film of the Perspective Canada program at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The elemental Indian trilogy of her works is composed of Fire (1996), Earth (1999), and Water. Mehta was inspired by Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, Cracking India: A Novel (1992) and directed Earth based on its story. It is a romantic tragedy set against the social upheaval and ethnic violence of India’s Independence in 1947. This film also won a lot of awards as Fire did. The last film of Mehta’s trilogy, Water is about the plight of widows in India and its main theme is the politics of religion. It apparently had many difficulties shooting at the first site, Varanasi because of strong resistance from religious and political parties and Mehta had to call off the production of Water. She intends to complete it later, though, but in 2002, she started filming Hollywood/Bollywood. The following year, she directed The Republic of Love, a romantic comedy based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize winning Canadian author, Carol Shields.

As above, Mehta has challenged to make films whose topics are all taboo in India, and as you can easily imagine, all of these three films sparked controversy in India. In a later section concerned with the reaction of Indian people into the film, I will give you further information of the controversy.

Indian Diaspora

What is my identity? Who I am? Where is my place? For a long time, Mehta was struggling to find herself and her cultural roots. She was living in Canada, but she did not feel she was Canadian as people drew a line between a visible minority and white Canadians. She was a “woman of color” there. At the same time, although her birthplace is India, people in India regarded Mehta as a Non Resident Indian (NRI) because she was a part of the vast Indian diaspora. It is necessary to briefly discuss Indian diaspora in order to understand how contemporary Indian society is made up since the diaspora has had such a powerful influence in many ways. Further, it is true that India struggles with the dilemma of accepting those influences or passing insular tradition down from generation to generation. Since Mehta is a director from the Indian diaspora, there might be a key here to find the reason why Fire was not accepted in India.

The term “diaspora” originally referred to the Greeks after their dispersal from Aegina, and to the Jews after their Babylonian exile (Naficy 13), but the term is no longer limited to these specific historical displacements; nor is it necessarily synonymous with the experience of exile. In fact, unlike exile, diaspora is “necessarily collective” in both “its origination and its destination” (14).

The Indian diaspora, according to Robin Cohen (1997), is a “labor/service diaspora”(Naficy 14).A diasporic filmmaker such as Deepa Mehta is less interested than an exilic filmmaker in narratives of loss or a relationship with a single homeland. Rather, her film is “accented […] by the plurality and performativity of identity […], by multiplicity and addition” (Naficy 14-5).

Nowadays, the Indian diaspora spreads out all over the world and its population of twenty million makes it the world’s largest diasporic population. In the 19^th century, during colonial times, the modern Indian diaspora were forced to migrate to many other countries as mainly indentured labor under British imperialism. Besides, people migrated to other countries as refugees, and cross-cultural marriage was another cause, too. Although a member of the Indian diaspora is a resident of a different country and if living in the west, has acquired a Western way of life and thoughts there, they have ‘little India’ in their mind all the times. That is, they have a strong Indian identity. The diaspora is dispersed over many different regions in the world, but retains respect for their motherland and nationalities. At the same time, the Indian diaspora has had a great influence on the transformation of India in many ways by sending back very new information that they have gotten in their new places. For example, communication and information technologies, too, have become a big industry in India, but also serve to keep the diasporic population in close touch with India, and vice versa. As the term ‘diaspora’ refers to a transnational ethnic group, deterritorialization is a very important phenomenon and is an element of globalization. In the discussion of Fire that will follow, we will see the effects of globalization on India.

The shape of marriage and family in India has also changed considerably. A higher proportion of persons of indian origin are marrying beyond racial, religious and linguistic boundaries than ever and that is one of the reasons why people have spread out to other places, and moreover, why there is a racial mixture in the subcontinent, as well. Of course, through such cross-cultural interactions, sexual lifestyles and concepts are gradually altered. The old shapes are ruptured by the transmutation, and the spectrum of sexual and familial identities widens not only in the “real” Indian society but also in works of the mass media, for example, or writing in English by anglicized Indian diaspora. For instance, one portrays the element of homosexuality in their works as Mehta has done in Fire, and another writes a story about bisexuality. Many people, who are part of the Indian Diaspora, are active in a diversity of fields today. Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram Seth are famous writers from the Indian Diaspora. They are currently living in other countries, but look at and write about India. At the same time, a writer such as Rohinton Mistry, is also considered one of Canada’s great writers.

In the field of filmmaking, Indian movies are remarkable and are getting more popular in terms of global audience. Like Mehta, directors from the Indian diaspora flourish now and are transforming the style of Indian films as well as being influenced by them. For example, Mira Nair who is originally from India and currently living in the USA, directed Monsoon Wedding (2001) and described both contemporary society and conservative tradition, and the successful British movie Bend It Like Beckham (2002) does as well. Its director Gurinder Chadha who is Indian descent, Kenyan-born and British-bred, portrays the life of Indian migrants living in England, raising issues of racial relations, gender roles, and traditional family values. Udayan Prasad, who directed Brothers In Trouble (1997), thinks that what makes Indian films and literature more interesting is that second and third-generation children of South Indian origin are growing up and their cultural references are not only what comes out of Britain, Western Europe and America, but also what their parents and grandparents have watched. For instance, they are able to use bits of Bollywood influence in their works and they also can make the stories that necessarily have an element of multicultural society. This innovation may also be a source of tension, though, when it causes a big generation gap between those people and traditional older people.

Like these writers and directors, many people who are from the Indian diaspora are trying to represent Indian life for to only local audiences but also global ones. The story of Fire signals a change in the representation of Indian tradition and culture, and as I explained, the Indian diaspora has brought new ideas to India and established new styles of pop cultures, but these influences of the Indian diaspora or whose of Western countries have yet to deeply penetrate conventional values; but they do make apparent a wider range of choices in terms of social identities, some of which are uncomfortable and unsettling. It would still need a long time to completely accept new values because it is not as easy as to accept western food or something like that.

Reaction to Fire in India

Fire had already been shown in more than 30 countries without any problem and won 14 awards at many film festivals. The Canada-India collaborative production definitely was a big box office success world-wide and many people in other countries were moved and touched by the strength of the two women in the film, whereas it caused outrage, enlightenment, and confusion in India and even became a political issue. Indian people saw the film from a different perspective. That is to say, the film raised an issue that was not acceptable or admired by the Indian people. To explore the reasons why the film exasperated them to anger, first of all, you need to know the real reaction of Indian audiences to the film. Surely, it is expedient to catch some important aspects. Now let’s more look at what has really happened in India due to the appearance of Fire in theatres and which people especially opposed to the film.

After Fire was released in India, a fundamentalist Hindu Party, Shive Sena, led violent protests against the screening of the film. They vandalized and attacked a number of theaters showing it in Bombay, New Delhi, and other cities all over India so that they strongly claimed that lesbianism did not exist in Hindu families and also insisted that the attack would cease if the two women of the protagonist in the film were shown to be Moslem instead of Hindu as they are given Hindu names, Sita and Radha. In addition, the party asserted that the film was an affront to India’s centuries-old Hindu culture and that it was immoral and a bad influence on the youth because they regarded it as obscene pornography, and they also considered that it was the primary attack on the institution of marriage. Consequently, they commenced attacking the people concerned including the filmmaker and the actresses who played the main characters. They submitted a petition in support of the film to the Supreme Court of India, and the Court ordered the Indian government to protect them. The debut of the film in India, as the result, expanded into a political issue throughout India. Authorities and the distributing agency decided to immediately stop showing it in areas where there was a Shive Sena Party, or radical Hindu communities, and the federal government returned Fire to the Censor board to judge one more time although it had passed a thorough examination once and had been shown without any single cut.

Mehta thinks that the reaction to lesbianism itself was, in fact, because they were afraid chiefly that it would prompt women to wonder about their lives and to fight for freedom like Sita.It was necessary for them to erase any factor that might threaten to damage the patriarchal society, however, people attacks Fire as if it is not suitable for the real Indian society and their religious thoughts. Meanwhile, it is an absolute certainty that women in India who are in a same situation just like Sita and Radha, and Indian lesbian communities were eagerly awaiting for such a powerful film for a long time since they could not openly proclaim their sexuality until then, and feminist groups, too, warmly welcomed it.

Screening in Japan

Compared with western cultures, homosexuality is not acceptable yet in Asian cultures, including here in Japan. However, we are never furious about a work and criticize a producer for such kind of story.Even if the story were about lesbianism between Japanese women, it would not have become as a serious political issue as it was in India. Most Japanese admit the entity of sexual alternatives in our country but coming out in society still takes a lot of nerve.

Fire was screened at the 8^th Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in 1999. The same festival was held in Osaka, too. In other words, to my surprise though, Fire was originally introduced as a lesbian film here in Japan. News of Indian reactions were reported on TV and some articles in Japan before it came here but it was one of the most popular films at the festival anyway, and received a favorable review from many people in Japan. The title of the film was translated as ‘炎の二人’ (Hono no Hutari) when it was shown in Japan. Personally I do not like the Japanese title because in this case, I feel like the term “Fire” only implies their desires to each other. Basically, “Fire” covers a lot of meanings and you should not confine it to only love desires although I have to admit that smoldering lust between Sita and Radha is a very important dimension of the film. The title has figurative meanings, as practically there are many kinds of expressions using the term, Fire. It also includes the meaning of the trial under Fire, which is come up from the ancient epic of Ramayana as I mentioned later, and the title refers to angers and a critique of the Indian society. The term “Fire” must also mean plights of living in such a suppressed society. That is why I think it is much better to let the title lie so that the audience can imagine and decide what it really means and comes from whatever they want.

Language

Many people complain that Fire is an Indian movie, but it is acted in English. As Deepa Mehta says, she is a victim, so to speak, of a post-colonized India. “The medium of my education was English. In fact, not like many children of middle-class parents, English was my first language and Hindi, my second. I wrote the script of Fire in English, a language I am totally at easy with. The difference is in the kind of English.” And I must mention that there is a respectable reason why she originally made in English even though it is about a Hindu family. In fact, Fire is screened in the western countries at first, and then is released in India because Mehta’s primary target was not Indian people but global audiences who have stereotypes of India and who reckon only extreme negative issues like a cleavage in society between the rich and the poor, or a main historical thing like the British Raj. These sides have already shown in many ways, and so Mehta attempted to concentrate on the Indian middle-class family and their oppression by old traditions and her decision of language options made the film much easier to be accepted internationally.

〜Fire: A Selective Translation〜

I will now turn to a close examination of several short scenes from Fire and will focus on each and analyze Fire more concretely through translating English lines into Japanese ones. Although it is difficult to express exactly the same feeling and meaning, I will try not to change the facts of the story and delve deeper into the structure of the Indian society by taking a closer look at each conversation. In this section, I will suggest that while the lesbian relationship drew anger, the film is really interested in raising many other important issues that India now must face. Now, I will explain about them one by one and will also point out words or expressions in which I have troubles to translate.

Visibility

Below is a dialogue of the opening scene in Fire and it starts with this Radha’s reminiscence with her parents of her halcyon childhood in the field of yellow flowers. Radha and her parents are sitting amid the beautiful flowers, and her mother is telling little Radha a story about some villagers. There seems to be nothing important at the moment other than the story and the laughter of her mother, but soon it will be clear that this scene is an intimation of Radha’s invisible desires. Later in the film, Radha dreams about the memory a couple of times, and a story that Radha’s mother has told to her is kept in her mind for a long time.

[Laughter of the mother is ringing out.]

Mehta is trying to tell viewers about tricky visibility by putting this dialogue in the very first scene of Fire. Undoubtedly, it is easy to see things that are visible, that you can see, but sometimes what you cannot visually see is even more significant. After Sita kisses Radha, the picture of the yellow field appears again in Radha’s dream and this definitely indicates that she is starting to be aware of something invisible, in this case, which is her desire for Sita. India is full of invisible issues such as homosexuality, of course, repression by tradition and the dilemma between old people and young people, but these are usually hidden. Mehta has made all of them visible in her work to tackle these issues. But in the real world, people try not to see what they do not want to see. Even if it is visible in the film, and evidently exists around them, it seems like people still keep them invisible. They just deny the existence of them. How come such a paradox occurs? On one hand, people find a new light in invisible things like emotion. On the other hand, people do not acknowledge the existence of it even if they are able to see. Only one thing that is sure is that visibility depends on our minds. People do not see something inconvenient, and they tend to regard them as other people’s problems since that cushions their shock.

The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is well known as one of the most beautiful architectures in the world. The thing that makes the conversation of Sita and Jatin in the prologue more interesting and impressive is that the monument and its legend are effectually used in Fire. Therefore, it is meaningful to know the background of the Taj Mahal in this section.

Shah Jehan (Prince Khurram) who was the fifth Mughal emperor, ordered the building of the marble mausoleum in 1648 in Agra, the capital of Mughal Empire for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Although she was the emperor’s second wife, he loved her very much and even couldn’t separate from her when he went on a journey, so he took her everywhere he went. She gave birth to fourteen children and died after bearing the last child during a trip. The Taj Mahal is of proof how much he loved his wife. It took twenty-two years to finish constructing and over twenty thousands people worked to build the gorgeous sepulcher. It was finally completed.

This is a first conversation between Sita and Jatin in Fire. They visit the Taj Mahal together for their honeymoon and the following conversation is carried on right in front of the monument connected to such a beautiful story of eternal love. Let’s look at the dialogue.

Sita :	Did you know? The greatest movie Taj Mahal was filmed right here? It’s my absolute favorite.
	知ってる？タージマハルはここで撮影されたのよ。一番好きな映画なの。
Jatin :	Oh.
	へえ
Sita :	Do you like romantic movies?
	ラブストーリーは好き？
Jatin :	Nah…
	別に
Sita :	Then what kind of movies do you like?
	じゃぁ、どんな映画が好き？
Jatin :	Kung fu…Bruce Lee…Jackie Chan…from Hong Kong.
	カンフーとか．．．香港のブルース・リー、ジャッキー・チェン．．．．．．
Guide:	… the emperor had the architect’s hands cut off so he could never design another Taj. Naturally, the architect was very upset, but, being a clever man, he drilled a hole in the eautiful Taj’s roof one night. Afterwards, he told the emperor that the symbol of your eternal love was now flawed forever…
	… 王様は、二つとタージマハルが造られないように、建築家の手を切り落としました。もちろん、建築家は激怒しましたが、冷?に、ある晩宮殿の屋根に穴を開け、あなたの普遍の愛は永遠に汚されたと伝えました。
Sita :	Don’t you like me?
	私のこと好きじゃないの？
Jatin :	Look, we’ve only been married for three days, okay?
	俺たち、結婚してまだ三日しか経ってないだろ？

As the tour guide explains to a group of tourists, the Taj Mahan is the most popular sightseeing spot in India and many people visit there every day. Even though it is a place known and regarded as a holy place of eternal love for one’s, Jading does not have any interest in his own wife, Seta and their relationship is the very opposite of the legend. In the film, the picture of the monument naturally makes us think of a happy story at first, but the cold conversation emphasizes that Seta and Latin’s marriage and relationship are completely different. The two couples, Seta and Jading, and the legendary Shah Johan and Mutes Mahan are perfectly contrasted. It is very easy to realize that Jading is not interested in even a romantic story. While Seta is bending her ears to the guide, he seems really bored and his heart is not with Seta.

So in translating this part, I tried to express Latin’s indifferent attitude towards Seta in his words. Instead of lavish attention, he just answers Seta in a word like “oh”, “nah”, or “kung fu”, and he does not make a sentence. On the other hand, Seta tries getting to know him at this first moment of their marriage lives and I translated her words very simply but naively. She asks him, “don’t you love me?”, and senses that he does not pay any attention to her and she is really disappointed at the fact. It obviously proves that she is not a natural lesbian.

I did not know if I should translate the part where Jading is saying ‘from Hong Kong’ into Japanese, as well, because in a Japanese sentence it looks a little bit unnatural. However, I wanted to place a special emphasis on Hong Kong. Although at this moment the audience does not yet know that Jading has a Chinese-Indian girlfriend, and that she is dreaming of becoming a film star in Hong Kong, I thought Hong Kong is something special for both of them. That is why I translated the part putting a stress on the word, Hong Kong.

Hollywood

Recently, Indian films are getting more globalize and hybridized speedily, however, movies peculiar to India is still remain popular and are preferred. For Indian people, a film is typically regarded as popular entertainment. People expect a film to take them to another world and they usually do not care much about the artistic beauty of the film. A film is an amusement industry which typifies the 20^th century and has always been the center of people’s interests and films’ influences on India is beyond imagination. That is one of causes, too, why Indian people have resented Fire so much. Here, I will weigh Fire and a typical Hollywood movie.

Bombay, which is now called Mumbai, is the center of the Indian film industry. Indeed, it is where the first movie ever was screened for the first time in India. Almost one hundred and fifty films are made in Bombay every year even now. People punned on Bombay and Hollywood and named its movie industry Hollywood. That is why Radar asks to Sita, “To join the movies?” as a jest when Sita mentions about Bombay in the following dialogue.

Traditional Indian movies have some points of mannerism, though, people still love it. For　example, most of them are melodramatic with an abundance of film songs and dances. In fact, India　makes more musicals than any other country in the world. The songs and dances are very much　connected to the story and the characters’ emotional expressions. You can often find a scene of　marriage in them. Usually, they have a happy ending and in fact, looked at from these two　perspectives, some parts of Fire borrow elements from stylized Indian film traditions, and there is　also of the marriage of Sita and Jatin. Besides, it has the possibility of a happy ending, too, if　Radha can survive the Fire and consequently join Sita in the end. However, although Mehta’s　works have some of the same ideas as Bollywood, her way of description is completely different.　Indian people prefer that a story ends, leaving viewers happy and comfortable. Fire, however, provokes people to meditate on its topics and issues after watching, which is actually not supposed
to be done in Indian films. The most important thing for them is whether it helps them escape　from reality, even for a while, while watching it. Social issues are hardly ever dealt with as they　are in Fire and Mehta’s other works. In the 1950s, some films which featured social issues　appeared in India but the style was not established, and even though India is in a changing time　right now as I have mentioned in the section of Indian Diaspora, people do not seem ready to adopt　it and persist in the “foreign” from their cultures before it becomes common.

〜Duty and Desire〜

In Fire, “duty” and “desire” are key words and all of them are trapped in the crazy society. As　Sita says “the concept of duty is overrated”, the themes of family duty and marriage duty are　prevalent in the story and that suffocates them, and they have to control their desires in different ways. This is a scene where Jatin and his brother, Ashok are arguing about what Jatin’s duty is and where Jatin is directory exploding with angers to him.

．．．．．．．．．．．

All characters are struggling between their own desires and expected duties as each position in a family and also in a society, just like Jatin says “being a yo-yo.” As Jatin’s complains in this scene, the two women are not the only people who are suffering from an oppressive old system. At first sight, Jatin seems a terrible husband because even after his marriage to Sita, he continues his love affair with Julie, a Chinese-Indian girlfriend regardless of Sita’s feelings. At the same time, however, he is being true to the woman he really loves. Ironically, that is exactly what makes Sita feel depressed and seek comfort in another person. However, if you see him from another angle, you realize that he is hemmed in by duties much like Sita. Julie does know very well what she would be obliged to do in a joint family if she would have accepted a marriage with Jatin. She is clever enough to figure out that the marriage will not allow her to have freedom and any opportunity to be a film star in her future. That is why Jatin has to accept an arranged marriage with a “normal" Indian woman, Sita and have a typical family on the surface while he will still continue his relationship with Julie. Although Ashok says that they have no objection to marring to a Chinese girl, Jatin is obviously in the situation that naturally brings him to choose not Julie, but Sita, and to bear the duties as a husband.

This was a difficult part to translate. I could easily imagine how Jatin is feeling and what he is talking about but I did not know which words I should use to express them properly. He is showing his angers at Ashok, his older brother, because he does not like that Ashok always interferes in his private concerns and tells him what he has to do. In this dialogue, I tried to show all his angers in his words. As Ashok is saying to Jatin, with kindness and tolerance, but also exerting the pressure of family and tradition, there is a duty a husband has that is one of old traditional thoughts, and it means that he does not have freedom even if it is a male society.

Celibacy

Needless to say, having children is one of Jatin’s expected duties, too. Actually Ashok believes that children are the gift from God, and the precious thing, but desperately Radha has no eggs and cannot have a child. As Jatin criticizes in the previous scene, Ashok has a strong inclination toward religion and Swami’s thoughts, who is a religious Hindu leader, in order to divert his mind from all his desires. Fire shows you a few ways to deal with their desires and loneliness. Of course, one is passionate relationship, which is consequently called lesbianism, for Sita and Radha. Other is philandering with a girlfriend for Jatin, and concerning of Mundu’s mode, he stealthily masturbate himself with a dirty video, pretending to watch a religious one with Biji. In this section, I roughly mention about celibacy to see how it works for Ashok as it is difficult for us to understand it.

In many parts of the world, celibacy expresses religious values, in which beliefs about self-denial and self-discipline mesh with beliefs about the refinement, salvation, or elimination of the self. Among Hindus this link is elaborately developed in the religious concept of brahmachrya (usually glossed as “absolute chastity”). Sexual abstinence, whether of short or long duration, either inside or outside marriage, is for Hindus generally motivated by religious ideals, expressed through individual transcendence of worldly esires and obligations in pursuit of salvation (Burghart1983a, b; Dumont 1970; Ghurya 1964; Narayan 1989; O’Flaherty 1973; van der Veer 1987, 1989 Peter Phillimore).

Therefore, Ashok is taking a vow of celibacy, lying next to Radha without even touching her. To Radha, it is a duty as his wife but she desires to passionate physical relationship. Radha is explaining, “Swami says the only reason to have a sexual relationship is to have sons that will carry on the family name. And so one night, many years ago, Ashok found a way of turning our misfortune into an opportunity. He took a vow of celibacy.” The problem is that he is selfish because he asks her to help him with no regard to Radha. One night, she refuses his demand of asking her to lie next to him for helping his celibacy for the first time when he says, “Radha, I need you.”, and the other she forces him to take care of Biji. The change in her means that she finally see “invisible” thing and that it is the time of her awakening to what her desires are.

Sita and Jatin

This is a dialogue that Sita and Jatin have after they first have sex. In other words, this conversation is held after Sita loses her virginity but she finds a picture of Julie in his wallet, and feels very disappointed. She has been holding out a small hope that Jatin would love her until this moment.

You can see from Sita’s words, she does not yet desire Radha. After she gets a closer relationship with Radha, she becomes generous to Jatin and Julie but at this moment, she still tries to make their marriage life work and minds that her husband is meeting another girl outside. That is why she is blaming him for keeping Julie’s picture in the wallet and her expression that cries out from the bottom of her heart. She wants to get his more attention and love, but he always gives her an icy reaction and a distinctly frigid attitude. As a result, this drives her to seek a comfortable and ardent love in another person and it is Radha who is groaning inwardly as she is, as it so happens.

A Minority in India

Julie’s grandparents emigrated from India to China, and her family is a micro-minority there. The following conversation is that Julie’s father is complaining about how uncomfortable India is for minorities. Julie was brought up in India but has educated herself in Western ways, in this case, the American way. In other words, she has naturally adopted new western ideas and has strong opposition to entering into a joint Indian family. She understands well what duties she would have if she got married with Jatin, and she just does not want to sacrifice herself and her dream to be an actress in Hong Kong where society is much more open to accept change. Let’s go into the dialogue.

As Julie’s father repines against the society, it is a social issue for not only Chinese-Indian but also for all minorities. Sammy is called “Chinky” at school, whereas, he is Indian and so does Julie as they are born and grown up in India. The differences of appearance do not mean that they are “foreigners” but people easily forget about that and discriminate against a minority group. India is a multi-racial country and minorities are suffering from a feeling of xenophobia no matter which race they have. Fire is a story about a contemporary India but Mehta treats all universal topics because almost all nations have the same problems. Of course, her own experience tempted her to make the story face it because she was also regarded as a minority in Canada as she emigrated from India.

It took a lot of time for me to decide how I would translate the English word, Chinky into Japanese.
At first, I just used ‘中国坊や’ for the word, but I found out that ‘支那人’ is maybe more suitable in this situation. Chinky or Chinkie is a word that is disdainful toward Chinese and this is the scene that Julie’s father is telling Jatin about how living in India is uncomfortable for minorities. So, I wanted to use a Japanese word that includes a bad feeling like racial discrimination against minorities, in this case, especially against Chinese. China is called ‘支那’(shina) in Japan. It is said that the word basically came from the sound of English word, China or that it was made up from the sound of Shin. Shin was a name of the country that is now China, and it was gradually changed into Cina. Besides, it is said that Indian people started to call China Cina at first and the word spread over some countries. So it actually doesn’t mean anything but China, however, some people insist that the word, 支那 includes a scornful feeling and it is not used for media now. Third choice was just leaving the word in Katakana, チンキー. After long consideration, I finally decided not to put any Japanese word to it since it is almost impossible to find the word that includes the same kind of discriminatory feeling to Chinese people.

Caste System

In India, that is, in the Hindu tradition, there is still a strict caste system and you can find it in the representation of the family here, too. The caste system plays a major role in society, though discrimination based on the system was outlawed when the Indian constitution was enacted. Mundu is a servant and helps the family in many ways such as looking after Biji, preparing meals for the family, and helping the family business. On one side, Sita and Radha are suffering in the lives because of a patriarchal and male world, and on the other side, there is a man who is ironically suffering from the caste system. The problem in both cases is a lack of freedom. In fact, Mundu’s situation seems be worse. In this part, I will explore the caste system, focusing on Mundu’s words of following two scenes.

[Scene 1] 　When Mundu is masturbating to a pornographic video, Radha comes into the room by accident and discovers him. What she finds makes her really mad and she starts hitting Mundu and yelling in anger at him. Yet, Mundu has also glimpsed the special relationship between Sita and Radha, and intimidates her by implying their secret desires.

[Radha hits Mundu]

[Mundu is leaving the room without any word.]

[Biji strongly rings the bell]

[Scene 2]　Mundu reports the relationship between the two women to Ashok, and in spite of not Mundu’s fault, Ashok gets tough with him. This is a scene where Mundu pleads with his master, Ashok to allow him to stay at the house, however, Ashok orders him to leave and just Fires him. But after that, his information makes Ashok to go to their bedroom to make sure whether it is true, and he caught Radha and Sita making love.

As you can see from these dialogues, Mundu’s choices and freedom are limited and he is not able to even have his only pleasure. It fully shows off how big a difference class rank is. In India, a vast country of close to a billion people of thousands of ethnic, racial, cultural, and language groups; family situation (such as class and caste), and location are important (Perry Brass). Indian people discussed only the part of the women’s passionate desires to each other, but indeed, the caste system is also very important aspects of understanding about lack of options for people in India.

Originating from the Portuguese word, caste, meaning breed, and now defined by the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences as, "an endogamous and hereditary subdivision of ethnic group occupying a position of superior or inferior rank or social esteem in comparison with such other divisions," the caste system of India has now become on of the most rigid and defining social institutions in the world. 　

　　　　　　(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dmlewis/castes.html) 　　　　　　　

The caste is an inflexible social hierarchy which is upheld beyond generations and generally dose not allow mobility of the position, which means that it is hereditary. They usually have to marry people who are from the same group of the caste. Broadly speaking, the caste system divides the Indian society into four groups such as Brahmans (priests) which is the highest position, Kshatriyas (kings and warriors), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers) and Sudras (laborers and servants). There are also people called Untouchables who are outside of the system and whose occupations are something menial and dirty, and there are more than three thousands groups as the sub caste. Depending on the position, people cannot even get the privilege of the basic human rights. The caste was originally started in Hinduism and gradually spread out over India.

Nowadays, Indian people who belongs to lower castes, especially the dalit, or untouchables are actively working for freedom and equal opportunities and their acts help the system change, although it is very far from completely breaking down. Indeed, Mehta made the very first documentary work on a profile of Bimla who belonged to untouchables and who swept the floors in Mehta’s house, and her arranged marriage. Mehta was little when she met the girl, but she nevertheless felt that the society was not fair to all people. It was an indispensable incident for her to try dealing with this issue in her works.

In Fire, Mundu is facing this problem. I basically translated Mundu’s words into polite Japanese to show that his position in the society is much lower than the family even though they are in the working class and this system is one of the big issues in India, as well. In addition to that, I made his words include a feeling of impatient and righteous. His master Ashok’s words are always orders to him and so are Sita’s and Radha’s. He is also the only one speaking a language other than English in an exchange with the morning milkman. His only pleasure is watching pornographic videos and masturbating. And even to do this, he must sneak videos, and masturbate while looking after Biji.

Radha and Sita

This is a scene where Radha and Sita are leaving their house after Ashok discovers their sexual
intercourse and desires to each other.

Sita declares that there is no even official word to exactly describe about their special feelings and relationship in a Hindu language. That indicates that their situation is really desperate to be accepted in the society. Ashok finally finds Radha’s desires for Sita and see that they are in bed because of the report by the peeping Tom, Mundu. As Radha says to Sita, seeing is simpler to explain about them rather than expressing with words since at lease he must admit that it is really happening for them. Ashok’s awareness and finding drive him panic for sure, and at the same time, Indian men also loose their countenance since Fire shatters centuries of Indian tradition, especially a part of which has been kept as the taboo topic of the role of women in society for such a long time.

〜An Ideal Indian Woman〜

In Fire, there are many scenes and parts where imply that the family has very traditional and devout thoughts, and it is also obvious that these scenes apparently demonstrate an ideal woman for Hinduism. Radha mentions that Biji loves religious movies and her favorite one is Ramayana, and Ashok respects a spiritual leader of Hinduism and goes to a meeting every night to control his desire, and one night he goes to see a play of Ramayana. It is no exaggeration to say that you cannot tell of India without Ramayana and to prove it, I must mention about the dawn of Indian film industry beforehand. Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra based on the Indian epic Ramayana (1813), was the first Indian feature film. The director was inspired by an American movie, The Life of Everest (1910) which he was overwhelmed by the religious subject and potential of the cinematic medium (527). Dadasaheb Phalke is regarded as the father of Indian cinema and Mehta must know the fact and his movies, as well. This fact shows that Ramayana is really popular among Indian people and has been a cultural basis for many thoughts for a very long time, and that is why we need to look at it now. Learning about Ramayana means surely looking into the fundamental values and gender roles in Indian society.

Besides, Sita and Radha fast at the festival of Karwa Chauth and actually, scenes related to the fasting occupy a major part of the film. These old religious things are effectively applied in Fire and give you a specific picture of an ideal Indian woman. It is very important to know what Ramayana and Karwa Chauth are to understand how Indian people especially women, are restrained with old thoughts. By focusing on them, I would like to get the root of an idea of prime and satisfactory wives for Indian men.

Ramayana

The most famous ancient epic poem from early Indian history is Ramayana. It is considered that the beginning of this poem dates back to from approximately twelfth to tenth centuries B.C. and its author is unknown. The two main protagonists are Rama and his wife, Sita. In fact, the story is quite long and consists of seven volumes with almost twenty four thousands verses, so it is difficult to refer all of them in this essay but before I take up the observation, I simply tell you the story of Ramayana at first.

Rama is exiled by his father so Rama’s younger brother could take over the throne, and Sita follows, trading the simple life of royalty for the hardship of devotion. Sita lives in exile with her husband for 14 years until she is abducted by a demon king and kept away from her husband for about a year until he finally musters up a way to rescue her. When Rama and Sita returns from exile to resume the King and Queen of the land, many people are concerned whether or not Sita is pure, as she has been abducted by a
demon. Despite that Sita says she is pure and Rama believes she is telling the truth, duty comes before anything else, even before his own love for her. The test of Sita’s purity is to set her alight; if she burns, she is impure, but if she resists the flames, she has remained unblemished. Sita passes the burning test, but Rama concerns about what people would think, exiles her anyway.

(http://www.varsity.utoronto.ca/archives/118/sep18/review/Stoking.html)