Dalit author calls out Made In Heaven makers for an episode featuring Radhika Apte
Stills from Made In Heaven
Made In Heaven Season 2's fifth episode, featuring Radhika Apte in the lead, has been receiving a lot of praise as it showcases a Dalit-Buddhist wedding. The episode, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, has been lauded for talking about casteism where Apte plays a successful lawyer and Dalit author who marries an upper-caste Hindu man in a Buddhist ceremony.
While the episode has been celebrated on social media, on Monday (Aug 14) journalist and author Yashica Dutt called out the makers for lifting incidents from her life for the episode and giving her due credit.
The episode opens with Radhika as Pallavi Mende launching her book 'Coming Out'.
Yashica pointed out that she had written a book called Coming Out as Dalit, a snapshot of what it means to be Dalit in India.
Dutt took to Instagram to share how the episode 'gave her chills' and criticised Made in Heaven makers for showing 'a version of her life on screen without permission or credit'.
Yashica shared a clip of the scene from the series along with her statement on the episode. Praising the makers for showing a Dalit-Buddhist wedding, Yashica called the episode a 'no less than a cinematic triumph'. But she also questioned the makers for not 'duly acknowledging' her contribution to the 'central ideas' shown in the episode.
She wrote in the caption alongside her long note, "It’s been an overwhelming few days. Seeing my likeness on screen without warning or permission was a roller-coaster starting from thrill and excitement to sadness and loss. I continue to support @neeraj.ghaywan’s excellent work, whether now with Made in Heaven or Geeli Pucchi before. But this needs to be addressed."
In her note, Yashica wrote, "Before I came out as Dalit in 2016, there was no vocabulary to identify the process of revealing your Dalitness after hiding it for years and owning it with pride either. Today, in 2023, there is both. Dalit directors like Neeraj Ghaywan have revolutionised our cinematic language by showcasing unapologetic Dalits in Bollywood, a tradition that has an even longer history in Southern cinema."
She further wrote, “The Heart Skipped a Beat, the fifth episode of Prime Video's Made in Heaven is no less than a cinematic triumph when it comes to showcasing what it truly looks like for a Dalit woman to take her power back in this casteist society.”
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Yashica said her ideas were taken without permission and wrote, "The scene where the Dalit author, who is from Columbia, has written a book about 'coming out' and talks about her grandmother 'manually cleaning toilets', asserts her selfhood with her life partner-to-be, gave me chills. It was surreal to see a version of my life on screen that was not, but yet was still me. But soon the heartbreak set in. They were my words, but my name was nowhere... The ideas I cultivated, that are my life's work, that I continue to receive immense hate for just speaking, were taken without permission or credit."
Yashica also mentioned that the Made in Heaven episode was 'stunning in its portrayal of a Dalit woman and her Buddhist inter-caste wedding', adding it 'unfortunately erased her contribution' to it.
Yashica further said that now since filmmakers are 'showing more Dalits on screen,' they should ‘duly acknowledge those who contributed to creating those ideas’.
"I request Neeraj Ghaywan, and the show creators Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti to formally acknowledge my life's work and ideas that contributed to this episode, which is among the most-talked in the entire series, beyond a post on social media and within the show's credits. So that the millions of viewers know its central ideas were not created out of the ether, but out of the blood, sweat and a lifetime of tears of a Dalit woman that the world had decided to cast aside," Yashica concluded her post.
The makers of the show- Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti and Amazon Prime Video are yet to react on Yashica's post.
The show headlined by Arjun Mathur and Sobhita Dhulipala, who play wedding planners, talks of societal issues.
Theirs as well as their clients' narratives play out against the backdrop of lavish Indian weddings. Apart from Neeraj Ghaywan, Zoya and Reema, the episodes are directed by Alankrita Shrivastava and Nitya Mehra.
