Holy Curse

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“I grew up thinking I was a boy,” Kapoor, now thirty-seven, said. In India, in the nineties, she played sports with the boys and mirrored their mannerisms and style. Her father called her beta, or “son,” as a term of endearment. “When my body started changing, my grandfather would say, ‘You can’t talk like this,’ ‘You can’t sit like this,’ ‘You are a girl.’ I didn’t understand what that meant.” The policing came, in part, from a place of fear: in Ghaziabad, where Kapoor was raised, self-expression was a grave matter. “People were shot in broad daylight,” she said. “It was a fine line of, ‘How do you get your point across and not get killed?’”

For Kapoor, the American approach to such matters had presented a different set of challenges. “When I moved to the U.S., I got this dictionary of labels and vocabulary that would help me understand my identity,” she told me. “But at the same time, it felt very restrictive.” She went on, “If I attach myself to one label, then I try to perform what I feel conforms to that label.” With this in mind, she decided never to name Radha’s experience. Onscreen, it exists as what it is––a collection of realizations, outside of language. While Kapoor acknowledges that Radha is essentially non-binary, she also wanted to leave them room to grow: “I don’t know how they’re going to feel in ten years.”

-The New Yorker.

Kapoor reveals that finding an actor for the child protagonist’s role was her biggest challenge because they met several parents who supported the idea behind the film, but were skeptical of letting their kids enact the role. They feared the societal judgments the kids may eventually face. “With just two weeks before production, we still hadn’t found our lead. Thankfully, a week before shooting, we found a young actor [Mrunal Kashid] whose mother’s support truly exemplified the acceptance and courage that Holy Curse stands for. She saw this project as a valuable opportunity for her daughter to grow as an actor and apply her craft in a meaningful way. She told me that films like this are bold and rare, which is why she wanted her daughter to be a part of it.”

-Forbes. Based on this article, and other publicly-available information, I have referred to Mrunal Kashid as an actress.

Notes from Jack:

I found this to be a beautiful short film, and I am very glad that Kapoor persisted when faced with the difficulty of finding a child actor to play Radha. I loved the rebellious ending, and the protagonist's persistent masculinity in the face of corrective religious pressure.

It's worth noting that Radha, and family members, actually live in America, and are visiting India... ostensibly just on a holiday to visit relatives. Radha begins the film with an angry outburst, frantically packing a suitcase and yelling, "You lied to me!" Radha, it is clearly stated, will not be allowed to leave until the ritual has been performed. In this way, Radha's story is similar to that of Naveen Bhat, a non-binary person who was tricked into returning to India whilst living in America, and was then trapped in India by their family, who sought to "fix" them.

This tactic of detainment, and corrective actions to force a trans or gender non-conforming person into performing girlhood/womanhood, is also explored in Facing Mirrors, which focuses on a trans man tricked into returning to Iran.

Much like Na Marei, Holy Curse also highlights why this site, while focused on trans men, also overlaps with butch lesbian, tomboy, AFAB non-binary, and gender non-conforming female media. While, for many of us, our birth sex may be irrelevant to our actual gender identity, our life journeys and unique experiences of discrimination/violence can be inextricably influenced by female oppression in our social and cultural contexts.

The reality that trans and gender-diverse people, men included, uniquely suffer from a combination of queerphobia and misogyny is an uncomfortable reality for many people, and I am grateful for films which explore this through the rich depiction of unlabelled gender non-normativity.

Radha might conceivably live as a trans man in the future, or perhaps a non-binary person like Naveen Bhat, or a woman like Snigdha Kapoor herself. This film is, after all, inspired by her masculine childhood, and she now refers to herself as a woman.

There are no wholly universal experiences, but there is unity and similarity to be found for many of us who were assigned female at birth, and embracing that is very important to me. I am very grateful for this film, and for what Snigdha Kapoor has given us.