“Your name must gather a Pandit as a prefix, but not bai as a suffix,” Urmila Devi, played by Swastika Mukherjee, tells her daughter Qala, played by Triptii Dimri. Vidushi would have been more accurate, but that detail aside, Qala suggests Urmila Devi comes from a lineage of courtesans, who are known for thumri, a form of Hindustani classical music that is typically associated with women (as were ghazals). On the other hand, dhrupad and khayal are the masculine forms. They’re said to be more complex and hence, truer indicators of mastery of Hindustani classical music. What is inspired is the casting of Urmila Devi, deliberate or not. Mukherjee — she is often typecast as the seductive escort/performer figure in Bengali films — starred as the singing sensation Anguri Devi in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (2015). In Qala, it is as if Angoori Devi has curdled into Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, voicing all the prudishness of Indian society.
Hindi cinema in particular was for long obsessed with the figure of the performing woman, typically portrayed as a courtesan and occasionally, as a performer (Teesri Kasam, 1966), actress (Heroine, 2012; Bhumika; Arth, 1982; Woh Lamhe… 2006), dancer (Guide, 1966), singer (Saaz, 1997; Abhimaan, 1973; now Qala.) In the majority of these films, the performing woman is portrayed sympathetically, even empathetically, but rarely is she happy. She serves most often as a cautionary figure, a tragedy, signifying what befalls you if you are not a ‘bhadramahila’, the educated, decent woman following the norms of respectable society. Think of Umrao Jaan (1981, 2006), Pakeezah (1972), Guide, Arth, Heroine. Now Qala.
The emphasis on respectability and the lack of it in the performing arts, particularly in cinema, in the early twentieth century is superbly captured in Neepa Majumdar’s book Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!, which takes its name from an advertisement published in the English-language magazine Filmindia in 1943. Another notice in the book reads:
“We cannot expect to produce a heavenly picture like “Song of Songs” with artistes recruited from the slums of North West Calcutta. It is a happy sign that the pick of the society have come into the producing branch of the industry.”
–Amar Das Mullick, Varieties Annual, 1 January 1934
While it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise chronological setting for Qala, writer-director Anvitaa Dutt seems to have drawn inspiration from the cultural world of the 1930s, when MK Gandhi drew crowds that may have otherwise attended concerts. An impulse for ‘improvement’ took hold of the filmmaking industries in Calcutta and Bombay, part of a wider discourse of reform as the National Movement gathered momentum. How would India cinemas—seen as a lowbrow form of entertainment vis a vis Hollywood films that were entertainment for the colonising class and therefore upmarket —improve? By casting women from ‘cultured’, non-’slum’ backgrounds. That is, women who did not come from lineages of tawaifs (Muslim) or devadasis (Hindu).