When National Award winning-filmmaker Ravi Jadhav recently released the first look of his forthcoming film Nude, it might not have broken the internet, but it definitely started a discussion about nudity. Risque or artistic? Obscene or beautiful? Sensual or sexy? Erotic or empowering?

Answers to these and many such questions came from nude art model Lakshmi, who has been posing for students of Mumbai’s iconic Sir JJ School of Art for over three decades. “Mere ko bahut garv hai ki nude artiste ko itni izzat mili (I’m happy that we have finally got respect),” she said.

DIGNITY IN NUDITY

Being felicitated at the launch of the first look at a packed event (barely a floor below where she works) where the entire cast, crew and production was present along with the iconic Art School’s student fraternity, seemed to tap into a well of emotions for this mother of two. “After putting in so many years in this work that’s largely misunderstood by the world, I’m happy it’s finally receiving recognition. It’s almost like I’ve waited for this moment all my life,” exclaimed Lakshmi who’s in her late 50s.

“When my husband died, my younger son was only three. I was desperately seeking work. My aunt Rajamma had told us she swept and swabbed at the JJ School near Victoria Terminus (VT has since been called Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) station, so I asked her to help. She would say yes but kept fobbing me off. One day, I took a train to VT, asked directions from people and found the place. When I asked for her by her name, the watchman and students directed me to a room on the first floor. Since it was closed, I peeped in through a window louvre to find her posing nude. I was shocked. I had never seen anything like this before,” she recounts.

When she met Rajamma during the break, her aunt asked her if she wanted to work as a nude model. “I was desperate. I’d seen the worst kind of sexual predatory advances from prospective employers outside. This seemed safer instead and my Chittee (aunt) was there, so I agreed,” she says but remembers how the first day was far from easy. When she broke down, the professors and students allowed her to work at her own pace and she gradually became comfortable. “So much so that later, I started feeling I have the best job in the world,” she adds.

The fact that nudity has been forbidden in most cultures makes it that much more alluring, explains Ravi. “It feeds into our primeval desire to uncover and unclothe. Unlike communities in the world that some like to call ‘backward’, where it’s the norm, it’s the ‘developed’ world that often brings this uncovering and unclothing the exploitative edge,” he affirms.

A SENSITIVE APPROACH

This commercial art graduate from the same JJ campus should know. Known for sensitive handling of bold subjects, Ravi’s work has always brought him critical as well as mass acclaim. Nude, however, made headlines when it was dropped as the opening film from the Panorama section at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa last November. Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, who was the chairman of IFFI 2017 Indian Panorama section, resigned in protest followed by writer Apurva Asrani, who was on the jury.

While he insists the episode is in the past, Ravi is still baffled by it. “Nude models are a vital aspect of art study because we learn about anatomy from them. I was always curious about their lives,” he says and adds, “In a patriarchal world where a fully-clothed woman also has to suffer the prying male gaze, in an art school even if someone poses nude, it doesn’t attract that kind of attention,” he says.

According to him, if the predatory sexual gaze would turn into an artist’s, it would change the world for good. “I didn’t make the film for controversy. Look at my other work — Natrang (gender fluidity), Balak Palak (sex education), Bal Gandharva (gender fluidity) or Mitwaa (lesbianism) could have become controversies, but that’s not what I did. In fact, they went on to garner awards and praise without any controversy at all.”