Leeches opens with a scene situated in a lobby – an old lady is waiting for a big shot. He is welcomed with a photo album featuring young girls, mostly adorned with headscarves. Post what looked like an audition, a teenage girl Zainab is promised in marriage for Rs 50,000 to an evidently older man. Fortunately, Zainab’s older sister Raisa, being played by Sayani Gupta, decides to save her younger sibling by devising a secret plan that involves a disturbing old wive's remedy.
Set in the regal city of Hyderabad, the film addresses two main subjects – India’s obsession with virginity and the prevalence of one-day brides in various communities across the country.
Payal Sethi, who has helmed the 27-minute-long film, spent 9 months making herself fully aware about the intensity of this grave situation of one-day brides and contract marriages before converting it into a film. “These young girls are put through the ritual of marriage when in fact, it is just a guise for prostitution. The fact that it’s not illegal;that the qazi is the one who marries these girls off; that there are so many complicit parties, sometimes within the family itself – these aspects troubled me greatly and I began researching the phenomenon in depth."
"After multiple trips to Hyderabad, where I worked with the help of an NGO,Shaheen, a disturbing new world was suddenly revealed to me. I got so wrapped up in my research that, at one point, I forgot I was making a film," adds the filmmaker while speaking to News18.com at the recently concluded Dharamshala International Film Festival.
She believes that you can’t just use an issue to your benefit. "I didn’t want to make a film to simply arouse the emotions and sentiments of the audience – the idea was to understand why this even happens, and to get behind the psyche of both the perpetrators and the victims."
Considering the fact that virginity has always held a high place in a country like ours – more so for women than men –faking it automatically becomes a blessing. In olden days, leeches were a common remedy for women who were sold into harems and had to fake their virginity.
"It’s crazy – the obsession with virginity. I don’t get it. It’s such a small little thing that doesn’t mean anything. Yet, there’s an entire system set up, as seen in my film, where men are paying money to lie with virgins. It’s so bizarre to me - so disturbing and wrong on many levels. When we learnt how virginity was handled in certain situations back in the day, we decided to add a layer to the film using the leeches."
No matter where she screens the film, the reactions to the scene where the protagonist uses leeches, are always the same - women are cringing, men are just aghast.
Considering that Sayani has never played such an intense character, one may wonder why Payal chose her. “She’s fabulous. She’s so dedicated. I gave her the script and the very next day, she came for an audition dressed like my protagonist, Raisa. I jumped when I opened the door – seeing my character come to life! There was no turning back then".
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