200 women become prostitutes everyday
80% against their wishes, because of family tradition
These words and statistics appear on the screen at the onset, announcing the raison d’être of Rivaaz and to put us in the mood for some disturbing truths about ladies and their lot.
Almost instantly we are transported to a dusty, dismal village where women in red, blingy ensembles are praying at the local holy pond. Helpfully, Amar, son of Thakur Ranjit Singh (Sayajee Shinde), explains to his city-bred friend Rahul (Manoj Biddvai) that this is no wedding ceremony — all these women are prostitutes and the one dressed as a bride is going for her first gig. But Rahul is not paying attention. He is busy staring at Bela (Ritisha Vijayvargiya) through his camera lens.
Next we are introduced to the entire cast of characters of Rivaaz who seem to have descended upon a village whose innocent villagers are going about their business solemnly, oblivious to actors prancing around, pretending to sell and buy girls.
The deal is this: There are pimps and their fresh, enticing wares, and some annoying old, clattery wares. If thy name is prefixed with “Thakur”, or if thou art either rich or important, thou shalt telephone the local SHO (Yashpal Yadav) and place order for girls. If thou art a random lout, thou shalt look for Mangi (Vijay Raaz), who is usually found strolling about the village muttering gibberish. And if thou covet a virgin, that too a beauteous one, then thou shalt dispatch your minion for a chitchat with fathers of such daughters.
In the margins, pathetic mothers make weak protests (Deepti Naval etc), an overacting gentleman (Upendra Limaye) sells eight-year-olds to foreigners and poisons 80-year-olds, and on happy occasions, when good sales are made, Sambhavana Seth’s breasts are pressed into service.
To instigate change, there’s a romance that riles all fathers of daughters. Gents bash up antiseptic lover boy and his coveted-by-evil-Thakur sweetheart. Girl’s father joins in because it wasn’t for nothing that he had given a jhakal of “Bela ki jawani” and demanded Rs 1 lakh for one night. Another romance, murders, wailing women, and so it goes till it’s clear to all the women folk that total destruction is the only solution.
This is the world director Nanda has created, ostensibly to expose an old tradition still being followed in pockets across the country, including the devdasi belt — districts bordering Maharashtra and Karnataka — for which there is a helpful Marathi saying: “Devdasi devachi bayako, sarya gavachi” (“Servant of god, but wife of the whole town”).
In his world, men look forward to their daughters maturing, much like an FD (fixed deposit). And the girls behave much like ripe, useful FDs.
But 10 minutes into the film and it all begins to unravel. This setting excited Nanda mainly because it gave him licence to have two-bit actresses skipping about in falsies when not being sold, bought, used for sex or thrashed.
That this was his intention is clear from the ladies’ dress code — one for the nymphets and one for their old mommies. The mature women are in lovely emporium saris, with long pallus; the nubile lot strut about in low-waist ghaghras and high-strung cholis.
The film has two interesting ideas: all girls are apparently trained to ensure that they never give their clients “shikayat ka mauka”, and the fact that all the men are uniformly devoted to protecting this rivaaz. But neither do we attend a single sex training session, nor do we get a peek inside male heads. We just sit still in our seats, impaled by an exceptionally incompetent lot who are a sight to behold.