‘Bulbbul’: When Churails Rise and Rule

The film opens in 1881 in the Bengal Presidency. You see small feet stained with alta, shimmering with anklets, dangling from a tree. A woman calls out “Bulbbul” multiple times before we see a young girl, no older than 8, dressed in a bridal sari. But alas, she’s dirtied her getup while playing outside. “We have to get you ready again,” her aunt sighs lovingly. “Why do we have to put on a toe ring?” the young Bulbbul asks as her aunt dresses her up for her wedding yet again. “It’s so you don’t fly away,” her aunt responds, and then adds, less happily, “It’s to control you.” Fast-forward a few decades, and the wealthy Thakur family she has married into is obsessed with hunting a mythic “demon-goddess” behind a string of unexplained murders in the village. But not all is as it seems.

Writer and director Anvita Dutt’s Bulbbul (2020) is a perfect film. It has a certain symmetry: every detail, glance, and turn of phrase has far deeper meaning. You might watch it because you can’t look away from Triptii Dimri as the titular Bulbbul. But it’s also the perfect watch this Durga and Kali Puja season, one that helps us understand why a society that loves goddesses can treat its women so cruelly. “Men will call her a demon, women might call her a goddess,” Dutt told The Juggernaut in an extensive conversation. “Goddesses are very beautiful, but they’re also dangerous.”