Athhoi- Just a theatrical movie or more?

- Debolina Mondal

Recently, I’ve watched one of the most talked movies, named- Athhoi, directed by Arna Mukhopadhyay. The movie is a contemporary retelling and modern adaptation of the epic Othello by William Shakespeare. 

The movie starts with Gogo as the narrator, played by Anirban Bhattacharya, who narrates about a fictional village called Bhinsura. I won’t narrate the story to you as you must’ve watched it already. But what has caught my attention, is the way the storyline has been set, based on the most discriminatory and taboo topic of India, the caste. 

From the very start, Athhoi Lodha, played by the director himself, has been made aware of his caste and from where he belongs. After his grandmother got burned, his mother brought him to the village of Bhinsura, under the protection of a noble person Anagra Chatterjee’s father or Gogoi’s father. From the very first, we see Athhoi as a very quiet child who is not very responsive. Later on in the plot, it gets revealed that the quiet boy was also very much observant. Later on, he loses his mother as well, due to sickness. All these things don’t stop him from living what life has to offer. And he really makes the best out of it.

Effect of long-term discrimination on Mental Health

We don’t see any direct-discrimination happening to Athhoi and he did receive his fair opportunity to study because of Gogoi’s father. But another thing we don’t see in this movie is that, Athhoi never having any sweet pet-name or nick-name as Anagra. Which as a viewer, questions that arises are- Was Athhoi truly loved? Was there any loneliness in his life that he has very well hidden away with a poker-face expression? 

Not all discriminations faced are direct. Some are also indirect. For example: Mentioning in a job post that a person lesser than certain height, cannot apply for the job, although height is not an important factor for that job. Similarly, Athhoi did notice how he was always getting a discarded shirt of Gogoi, which was intentionally damaged by the later. Or how Athhoi had to sleep on the floor, on a mat, but never got a spared room, not even a servant’s quarter. This was not because of the fact that he was an orphan or there were no spared room in that bungalow, but because of his caste. This caste gets so much embedded in his mind, that later on when he would visit Gogoi’s father, he would always sit on the floor. Even though he was educated and was self-sufficient in his life, still these new-gain qualities haven’t managed to improve his self-esteem. 

A study, done by Subadra Panchanadeswaran and Beverly Araujo Dawson on the Dominican immigrant women in New York City, on how Discrimination and Stress Affects Self-Esteem among Dominican Immigrant women (DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/10911350903341069). The study was done on 235 immigrant women and it was found that long-term discrimination and stress due to income inequality and level of education has affected the self-esteem of the participated subjects. 

Another research of NCBI was done in Korea (DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13040343) on adolescents and it was found that perceived discrimination on adolescents, not only affect the self-esteem but also, it affects an individual’s own satisfaction with their physical appearance and it also leads to depression.

Low self-esteem of Athhoi

When Gogoi mentioned about Athhoi not being very attractive and he is dark and very hairy, he believed Gogoi. That is because somewhere he not only felt discriminated by Gogoi but also was seeking for his admiration as well. This is why, in spite of being fully aware of the malice intention of Gogoi, Athhoi couldn’t help but still fall in trap of the former. This is called Trauma bonding, where a strong emotional attachment gets formed between the victim and the abuser, often as a result of cycles of abuse and intermittent reinforcement. 

In the movie, Gogoi used to help Athhoi in escaping the harsh reality of life. This is the intermittent reinforcement for Athhoi as somewhere he took upon the responsibility of serving justice to his late mother and grandmother by bringing a societal change in Bhinsura. And this emotional enmeshment lingered to the adult life of Athhoi where, he was having difficulty in maintaining boundaries with Gogoi even being fully aware of the fact that he was getting manipulated by the later. 

Long-term stress and psychosis

Long-term stress can induce psychosis in a person and this is what we watched in viewer as well. Athhoi developed ‘delusions of infidelity’. Delusion means a false belief, and delusion of infidelity starts with an individual becoming suspicious, sensitive and mildly jealous; and slowly the person becomes more jealous, insecure and more convinced of their spouse’s infidelity. Finally, the idea reaches delusional intensity. This is exactly what happens with Athhoi. 

The final scene

In the final scene, this is how Athhoi and Diyamona’s love-nest looked like. 

When I saw this in the credits of the movie, what appeared in my mind was- this house exactly looks like the house of the cartoon ‘Courage: The Cowardly Dog’. Over there, Muriel and Eustace had schizophrenia. And their house was in a barren place which had no touch with any civilisation. And this was a mental depiction of schizophrenia where, an individual lives in their own reality that has got nothing to do with the outer world. 

Athhoi and Diyamona’s love-nest when ended up looking like the house from Courage, it symbolises the psychosis of Athhoi.