Monochrome Man: Aesthetics over authenticity, and other emotional choices in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi

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You begin in a village in Goa, where Annie of Khamoshi: The Musical  [1996] lives with her deaf-mute parents at the intersection of silence and music. Then you must traverse spellbound, multiple universes. Chandramukhi’s glittering kotha by the glittering lake where Devdas drowns his sorrows [Devdas, 2002], a desert palace throbbing with colour where Nandini lives in _Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam_ [1999], a snow-globe packed with the dense world of Michelle McNally in Black [2005]. You then cross the shimmering blue circus-scape of Sawariya [2007], lush green paddy fields of Guzaarish [2010], a kaleidoscope of colour in Goliyon Ki Rasleela:  Ram-Leela [2013], and spectacles of excess in Bajirao Mastani  [2015] and Padmaavat [2018], before reaching… Kamathipura.  

When you arrive at the  Kamathipura of Gangubai Kathiawadi — or shall we say Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Kamathipura — you are not sure what to expect. Because Kamathipura is a real place with real people, unlike his other worlds. Gangubai herself was a real figure in the history of Mumbai’s infamous red-light area. But realism is not a word that exists in Bhansali’s filmmaking vocabulary. The “real” is only an artistic version of itself, a cousin twice removed.  

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The 14 lanes in a triangular patch [bound by Grant Road, the JJ flyover, and Falkland Road] that make up Kamathipura is reduced to one “Badnaam Gully” or the Notorious Lane. There is no dust, grime, disease, nothing “ugly” [but violence] in this red-light area. Colours harmonise elegantly in monochrome palettes of pastel greens, muted browns and pinks, and soothing blues, broken only by Gangubai’s famous whites.    

However, through his elevated craft and distillation of 30 years of experience, Bhansali creates a convincing world where you submit to his rendition of reality. Until Gangubai’s shoes [available on Instagram and a shop in Palladium Mall] with pristine clean soles come into the frame, and remind us that these shoes have never walked Kamathipura’s gullies, and neither were they in existence in the 1950s and 60s.  

The most obvious departure from realism in Gangubai Kathiawadi is the costumes [by Sheetal Sharma], repeatedly breaking the spell he weaves. Do not get me wrong. There is beauty in every frame, lovingly and personally drenched with an artist’s eye. Each piece is exquisite, each frame a staged painting. The scale is always mindboggling, with hundreds filling the screen, symphonically costumed and choreographed.  

But there is little that can identify Gangubai as a period film through the costumes. Set around 1960 [if the film posters are anything to go by], the “looks” reference broad swathes of Bollywood ideas of an era of glamour, without bothering to be mindful to fabric, styles, and other details that fashion history documents as being central to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some, like the shoes, are just glaringly odd choices.  

The film looks stylishly “vintage” through elaborate production design, with a lavish and precise set. Attention is given to the colours of walls, the kind of shops, and the posters of films lining the lane. Bhansali even takes care to note that only the slightly less-popular films would play in the Talkies of Badnaam Gully because, having grown up a lane away, this is “a world he knows”.  

Yet the costumes do not get this care to detail. It is all broad strokes, everything painted with one massive Bhansali brush devoid of historical accuracy or authenticity.  

Despite the now-famous scene where Gangubai speaks of the many shades of white [of the moon, of salt, of clouds, of the Rann of Kutch], it remains in the conceptual realm. The shades do not translate on screen. We are only left to imagine what the whites of the Rann of Kutch or that of clouds might be.

The white we ultimately see is only one — a perfectionist’s Nirma-white for Alia Bhatt’s magnificent star quality to illuminate the screen.

The ‘perfect’ white offset by the ‘perfect’ black, Gangubai’s triage of accessories: goggles, umbrella, and Bentley.

Ultimately, Gangubai’s whites become a gimmick, cleverly used in the film’s marketing as Alia Bhatt wears white in all the promotions for the film. This is, in my view, a bad decision because it highlights even more the lack of authenticity in the film – the clothes Bhatt wears for promotions in 2021 look no different from Gangubai’s wardrobe of 1960, both drawn clearly from current handloom and Instagram networks.

The same problem lay with Mira Nair’s adaptation of  A  Suitable Boy.  It is indicative perhaps of a more serious issue, that “ we Indians care far less about historicity.”  It is not like research on fashion history in the 1950s does not exist – in fact, Oscar-winning costume designer Bhanu Athaiya’s  sketches for Eve’s Weekly in the 1950s were recently auctioned by her estate after her passing.  

Why this kind of dismissal of fashion history, one wonders. Perhaps it is a genuine gap in fashion history studies and opportunities for nurturing this strain of knowledge, or an assumption that accuracy is best left to documentary filmmakers, and there is no need to be fastidious in this regard.  

If one really want to see “shades” of white or the same colour, watch Death on the Nile  [1979] for costume designer Anthony Powell’s crafty prowess. Powell shows us so many whites, ivories, and creams through texture – lace, linen, silks, fur - and clever detailing and silhouettes. This kind of technical finesse is conspicuous in its absence in Gangubai Kathiawadi.  

Not enough, however, to mar the experience of the film. It is the power of Bhansali’s filmmaking abilities and sensibilities that he can use other tools available to him to rouse feelings, and bring a tear to every eye in the hall.  

In fact, this is the founding principle of choices Bhansali makes in this film: the emotional. Bhansali chooses to stay away from garish colours usually associated with sex workers, instead draping them elegantly in posh pastels and earthy browns. He chooses to be personal by pulling in his Gujarati Garba staple as the crucible for an emotionally wrought scene. He places private touches, like a strategically placed photo of Nargis wearing white above the girls lined up to put their make-up on. Or my favourite – he chooses to bedeck all the women in the brothel in floral small chintz prints, often with flowers in their hair. They are in a sense, the fallen flowers, a metaphor strewn beautifully across the narrative. The job of a flower, Gangubai tells us, is to spread fragrance whether in a garden or a graveyard. Even if they are, “a field of black roses."

Bhansali chooses aesthetics over authenticity but in the end, manages to balance the style with the substance through his emotional choices. Gangubai Kathiawadi falters as a period film, but wins in other ways through a spirit and vulnerability that showcase the emotional as the ultimate aesthetic.  

Gangubai Kathiawadi is playing in cinemas.

Manjima Bhattacharjya is the author of  Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry [Zubaan, 2018] and Intimate City [Zubaan, 2022].

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