"Wear Your Rue With A Difference"

*blogpost missed earlier*

The film “Garam Hawa” through the character of Salim Mirza elevates the status of the virtuous man. Though not without issues in his dealings of partition this is the character that the audience sympathises with and eventually respects. The other characters such as his brother Halim Mirza, and brother-in-law are almost caricature like in their portrayal and reprehensible in their actions. Thus the film pushes a shareef agenda with virtue being the ultimate way to live one’s life by. This then raises a question; does Amina have to die because she loses her virtue? It is clear that her relationship with Shamshad is not completely chaste, which makes me wonder if giving into her desires makes her death inevitable. The death of another character in the movie, dadi jan, is both similar and very different to Amina’s. Both their deaths involve elements of weddings and marriges, with Amina dying dressed as a bride and dadi jan being carried back home to the haveli in a doli as she recalls her wedding day. The difference though is that Amina’s death is a result of continuous rejection and an inability to wed, whereas dadi jan’s death is almost an achievement as she is able to reclaim the house of her husband’s forefathers and dies with a smile on her lips. This very different portrayal of the two deaths, where the former is undeniably tragic and the latter in a way triumphant, leads me to believe that Amina’s death is tied to her rejection of the shareef code.

Her death, for me, is also reminiscent of another tragic figure in literature, Ophelia from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. Both girls are spurned by the men they love, and both take their own lives (yes I know Ophelia’s death is debatable). Amina, like Ophelia is susceptible to the decisions made by the men around her. Ophelia’s father and brother tell her how she should behave with Hamlet, and in complying with their wishes she appears suspicious to Hamlet. Amina to has to stay in India due to her father’s decision to stay there even though she desperately wants to marry Kazim, who moves away to Pakistan. Thus in both cases the women comply with the wishes of their fathers and in doing so lose the men they love.