I recently watched Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey. The movie was recommended to me by a kind reader on my Facebook Page, and then recently by a friend. I don’t know why I had missed this gem. Watching this movie left me with a lot of thoughts. More than a movie review, this is an article on marriage.
This movie is brilliant. The simplicity, the concept, the comedy, the acting, the message, everything is par excellence. It reminded me of ‘The Great Indian Kitchen’ and also of ‘Darlings’.
Spoiler Alert
Truth 1: Your life will be a series of choices made by people other than you
Jaya is a woman who is loved by her family within the confines of convenience, family honour and just the ‘right’ amount of freedom. Her family is liberal enough to educate her though the choice of college is restricted to one that is close to her house even if it means she has to change the choice of her subject. Even though Jaya hates her subject, she finds a nice, feminist professor who talks about women empowerment. Luckily for Jaya, he falls in love with her. To the world, he is an ideal feminist man. But when Jaya becomes his love interest, she gets to see the real face behind the mask – a jealous, possessive, controlling, and violent man, the opposite of everything he pretends to be.
As the family gets to know of this unfortunate “affair”, Jaya is hastily married off to a cartoon called Rajesh portrayed brilliantly by Basil Joseph.
I wonder how many men in India would actually get married had it not been for the disaster called arranged marriages. Rajesh does not have any great qualities but:
- He belongs to the same caste / state as Jaya
- He is a man
And so Jaya starts living with Rajesh, his mother, and sister. Jaya actually tries hard to please him, trying to make new dishes she learns from the internet. But nothing she does will help because….
Truth 2: Woh bicchhu hai, kaatna uski fitrat hai!!
–Dialogue from Darrlings
Our man’s anger and ego is inversely proportional to his accomplishments in life. He throws things. He slaps Jaya. He never says sorry but takes her out for dinner after slapping her. This is a common personality trait of abusers. While they never accept that they are wrong, they love bomb their partner after an act of violence leaving them confused and making them believe in the age old wisdom (read garbage) that women have been fed:
So what if he is abusive sometimes. He takes care of you too. Look at the positive things.
Our man also manages to be a “nice guy” for the one day that he visits his in-laws. The thing with dysfunctional men is they can pretend to be normal to the outside world and even “nice” but it is the wives who suffer with the task of putting up with the piece of trash they truly are.
Jaya is not new to violence. The professor guy was also violent towards her. What are the chances of finding two abusive guys? Considering their horrible upbringing and conditioning, pretty high!
There is a dialogue in the part of the movie when Jaya and Rajesh have separated and Rajesh’s brother advises him to send a divorce petition to Jaya so she can come begging back to him. Rajesh says that women can lead a life alone but men can’t. Men need their wives.
He says, “Men only have anger left in the end. Nothing else.”
Truth 3 – Wife is a society appointed scapegoat
This reminded of an article I read recently wherein the author who has been divorced twice and is now a therapist said that men need a wife who they can control, abuse, humiliate and make miserable in whatever way they can because their capacitiy to manage their emotions is that of a toddler. They cannot pick up fights with their bosses, clients, relatives so society has provided them a scapegoat in the form of a wife who can put up with their **** so they can pretend to the world that they are a functioning adult. I have never read something so close to the truth.
Truth 4 – The in-laws are nice until…
Rajesh has a widow mother and sister who is separated from her husband at the time of his marriage. He is essentially financially supporting the three women. Rajesh’s mother otherwise seems nice, and even scolds him for hitting Jaya but the moment Jaya hits Rajesh back, the MIL turns into a liar and says the same ghisa pita dialogue that most of these nautanki MILs say,
My son was very sweet. How come after marriage he has become aggressive?
These conniving, experienced MILs have been lifelong witnesses to their son’s violence . They must have received so man complaints throughout the son’s school and college. By the time the son gets a wife, these MILs are quite trained to deny their criminal sons’ action and project it on their wives. They are their beloved sons’ partners in crime. With a no more / retired husband they know they need the son’s money and they would support him in any wrongdoing.
This is the truth about the “nice” in-laws. They are useless.
Truth 5 – Women are better off alone!
This is the Truth that women withheld. Across generations, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, everybody knew it. But they continued to trap women into marriage, making them believe women “need” it.
Rajesh in this case sent a divorce petition to his wife expecting her to come begging back. This is not uncommon. While only a small percentage of men can be exceptionally disgusting enough to actually go to a lawyer and send a divorce petition to their wives just as a threat, a lot of men do threaten their wives with divorce.
Guess what, dear Rajeshes,
Times have changed in case you have not noticed. While you were working on your best assets – anger and ego, women were actually doing a lot of work on themselves and as a result they have evolved. They might not be trained in Karate and kick you right into a hole in the wall where you belong, but …..
They will leave you!