Snigdha Kapoor | Holy Curse / 2024

the right to pee in an open field

by Douglas Messerli

 

Snigdha Kapoor (screenwriter and director) Holy Curse / 2024 [16 minutes]

 

Radha (Mrunal Kashid), clearly a young woman who feels misidentified in her female gender, has been taken at the very beginning of this short Indian film to a retreat where she is to undergo a orthodox ritual that will supposedly dispel the ancestral curse affecting her thinking. Her parents, Ravi (Shardul Bharadwaj) and Lata (Adithi Kalkunte), have lied to her, how precisely is never explained but clearly they have not told her the reason for their drive to this spot. Only her brother Bittu (Prayrak Mehta) has been honest with her, perhaps just to get even with her own sibling grudges against him.

    We see the victim behind doors locked from within as she attempts to pack, refusing to remain as a subject to their attempts to “cure” her “curse.”

    Her mother convinces her to let her in, trying to assure her that the ritual is not going to harm her in any way; but the girl is convinced, nonetheless, that her father hates her, and that the ritual is against her personal happiness. Lata attempts to explain to her daughter that her body is undergoing hormonal changes, and she herself once felt similarly. It’s not easy to be a girl, her mother declares, her daughter interrupting her to demand that she stop calling her “that.”

     But her daughter is still convinced that no one involved is interested in his happiness.

     “Nature gives us all a role to play,” the mother mindlessly explains. “And you have to play yours.”

    Forcing her to stare into the mirror, the mother attempts to console her with the words: “Stop fighting yourself, Radha.”

    What this traditional family cannot comprehend is that Radha has no other way to speak the truth other than fight such a closed society.

    As they continue their trip, a woman hands Radha the Indian equivalent of a Barbie Doll, proclaiming that after the ceremony, she too will look like this. Radha takes up the gift with some doubt and apparent disgust, as in the front seat of the auto the uncle (Anup Soni) hands over a substantial pile of money to the father, he obviously arranging and paying for the ritual ceremony.

     On route, the brother teases her, asking whether she is really “possessed” or just “mental.” Radha, on the other hand, attempts to make her mother aware that she has to pee, a request which the entire family seems to ignore. How might a young a girl possibly be let out of the car to urinate? How improper would that be?

    Angry with everyone, Radha takes out a scissors and cuts off the long hair of the doll. When her brother pulls the doll from her hands, the whole family goes in an uproar, the car coming to a stop as both the father and uncle scold those in the back seat.

    It is finally the uncle who leaves the car to pee, leaving Radha to hold it in. As in most such patriarchal societies, the males simply have the prerogative that women don’t.

    Finally, they reach their goal, the wacky-named “Astrology Center for Remedial Insights,” where the guru is explaining that when a relative dies suddenly, he or she is left in two worlds at once, and in this case an ancestor, a man, Pandit ji (Susas Deshpande) proclaims has possessed her.

    Radha meanwhile is attempting to decapitate the doll, as the guru corrects the mother for not properly covering her head and Radha for not listening to his insights.

    Through the ritual they hope to heal the lost ancestor and help him to proceed along the way, leaving Radha to become her real self.

    Now dressed in white for a ceremony of flowers, Radha is taunted with the doll once again by her brother.

     Through this all the young “girl” is asked to bow down to her ancestor, symbolized by two crude embracing figures who seem to be made out of vegetables and flowers.

     As her brother continues to taunt her, she rushes out of the room along with her brother, interrupting the unfinished ritual to the absolute horror of the guru.

     She chases Bittu into a nearby haystack where he explains that he is really trying to help her to escape the ceremony. They still mock fight as they run off suddenly to be confronted by several robbed Hindu men in the near distance, Bittu suddenly wondering “What is this place?”  He asks her if she is madder at the doll or her father. “Actually everyone.” Radha replies.

     “Right, you are better than everyone, aren’t you?”

     Finally. Radha turns to him with a rather complex question: “Are you a boy?’

     “What kind of question is that? Obviously I am a boy, no?”

     “How do you know/”

     It comes down to the fact that he was told he was.

     But Radha answers that although others tell her she’s a girl, what if he’s not?”

    In a moment or two after thinking, Butti does something so beautiful and healing that one might never have imagined it of him. He takes up the hated female doll and puts it on a nearly burning fire. “I mean…you always…like…felt like a brother to me.”

     Radha hunkers down to him and puts his arm around him, which Butti briefly shunts off before accepting the deep gesture of love.

     But at that very moment, the uncle appears, grabbing Radha and insisting he is not well. “But don’t worry, we are here for you.”

     He takes Radha back to the meaningless ceremony. Ultimately, the guru puts out the flowers, awaiting the crows to come take them away, a sign that “the ancestors have come and liberated your daughter from this flaw.”

     Driving home with Radha, Butti, and Latta in the backseat, no one speaks.

   Suddenly looking down, Radha let’s out a terrible scream, the car screeching to a halt, as Latta confirms that she is not to worry; she has just had her first period.

    The men in front seat are now convinced that the crows must have finally come.

     At that very moment, Radha runs from the car, racing to the middle of a nearby field where she stares back at her entire family with hate and a sense of justified revenge. She pulls down her pants and, to their entire shock, pees, confirmed not through sight but with sound.

     In Radha’s mind he is still clearly a male with the rights to piss openly as men do in a field along the side of a road. He will not conform after all.

 

Los Angeles, January 9, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).