“The Police Are Just A Bandaid”: Shashwati Talukdar And Cheryl Hess on Hot Docs-Premiering ‘Marriage Cops’

A cramped room inside which most of Marriage Cops takes place becomes an effective metaphor for not only the stifling sensation of being trapped in an unhappy marriage but also the limited scope within which the police can work. The Hot Docs-premiering documentary follows sub-inspectors Sandhya Rani and Krishna Jayara, who run the Women’s Helpline in Dehradun, India, listening to sparring couples and attempting to work through their marital issues along with a psychologist, a lawyer, and a volunteer. Behind them lie voluminous bags of paperwork and cobwebbed files. 

What unfolds is a bleak examination of the country’s toxic ingrained social norms, in conflict with women’s rights. The helpline’s aim is to “preserve the cultural institution of marriage,” which means that women are advised to return to their abusive husbands and blamed for men’s moral failings. Men, on the other hand, are sometimes treated derisively, their issues minimized. One woman pleads for help because her first husband won’t let her see their son. “Let it be,” says Sandhya. “[Your husband] will care for him.” The case is closed. Later, the police speak about her with disdain, condemning her for not fighting harder for her child. 

On the other hand, the police too are products of the same society they’re tasked with holding together. Their emotion is at odds with their purpose. They often acknowledge the women’s plight, but the issues they’re presented with are too complex and the relationships too acrimonious to neatly resolve. Sometimes, there’s just no winning — should a woman succeed in getting her abusive, deadbeat husband imprisoned, how is he to pay crucial child support? Victory comes in the form of the cops getting him to secure a job. 

Shot over three months by Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess, Marriage Cops sticks with three main couples as they open up about tragic, harrowing and deeply personal problems, while also following them beyond the confines of the police station, where some recount stories of happier times. For Documentary, Hess and Talukdar spoke about gaining their subjects’ trust and the film’s big revelation for them. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

DOCUMENTARY: How did you first discover this helpline and what drew you to it as a potential documentary subject?

CHERYL HESS: Shashwati and I knew each other in grad school. I was doomscrolling and saw this headline calling India “the rape country” and thought that was not nuanced at all. I had travelled in India by myself when I was younger—you have to be careful anywhere, but the headline was advising single women not to go there. And I thought that was extreme. I clicked around and found this Mumbai policewomen initiative. I’d done some projects based in law enforcement and Shashwati too had a law-enforcement component to another project she’d done, so I sent it to her. We went to Mumbai for a research trip and spent a week filming the unit there. Then we went to Shashwati’s hometown, Dehradun. They let us observe the counselling sessions without a camera and those were so rich. Shashwati then had to do the hard work of getting us permission to go back, which took a year. 

D: A women’s helpline sounds like such a wonderful initiative but the documentary very quickly reveals the limits of policing, imposed by cultural norms. 

SHASHWATI TALUKDAR: The big revelation for me was actually the ways in which the police were helpful. When we went in and saw what was happening, it seemed absolutely wrong. But after spending some time there, we saw how people were making use of this service. 

CH: The police aren’t solving bigger-picture problems, but how could they? The problems have been going on for centuries. They were helpful in a strange way. If you can get a bit of relief from an authority saying, “How much money is in your pocket? Give it to her so she can buy food or formula for the baby,” that solves someone’s immediate problem. 

ST: It was interesting to watch women leverage authority to get what they needed. Maybe they needed a kitchen separate from their mother-in-law’s and the police would then tell the mother-in-law, “You should leave your daughter-in-law alone, there’s nothing wrong with having a separate kitchen.” And that’s useful.

D: The police sometimes come across as lacking in empathy, especially when they tell women to stay with abusive husbands or when they brush off a woman whose husband won’t let her see their son.

ST: I wouldn’t say they’re lacking in empathy. They’re in this position of having to represent an arm of the state that has the coercive power to discipline you, and yet they’re also people. They were doing double duty — they work all day and then go home and do the “women’s work.” They would leverage whatever power they had on behalf of what they thought was the right thing to do. The aim of preserving the “great institution of Indian marriage” is reflected in the helpline saying, “Why don’t you figure out a way to stay?” But it’s clear that that’s not always feasible. In one case, Sandhya says, “It doesn’t look like you want to stay together so why are you wasting our time? You should move on and get a divorce because this is obviously not working for you.” So the police would contradict their stated goal. 

Part of the reason they’d advise women to stay in these marriages was practical—where would these women live or find money to feed their baby? So they’d tell them to stay until they have a better solution. 

D: In terms of access, were the police receptive to the idea of the documentary? And have they seen the final cut now?

ST: Initially, they weren’t. They don’t like cameras in the police station. It took a year of talking to various people getting them to understand who we were. The Indian state media is often very sensational, and so they were concerned that we weren’t interested in what was really going on and that we didn’t want to delve deep into the matter. It took them a while to see that we weren’t doing some sensational piece about the police. Some of them have seen the film and found it even-handed and fair. They want to screen the film in more training and insight-related situations. 

D: The three main couples in the film are so vulnerable and open about issues like abuse and neglect. How did you go about gaining their trust and how did you decide to narrow the focus to them, from among everyone you might have spoken to?

CH: There were a lot of couples who said no. There were many days we just concentrated on the reception room and captured a lot of great goings-on. We had plenty of couples who’d been in just one session, but we wanted to be able to have an arc to the couples’ stories so it came down to couples that had more sessions, and those we were able to go home with. That limited the pool of who we could put in the film.

ST: I’m from the city and speak Hindi and so we didn’t have to struggle to communicate. I would just tell them that we were trying to see if the helpline was useful. I was surprised how many said yes. So many were willing to talk. They needed relief and here was someone who was willing to listen and not be judgemental. It was clear that Cheryl wasn’t Indian so they knew at least half of this team wasn’t judging them and wouldn’t say, “You’re disrespecting your elders. You’re a bad wife,” and that created an environment of safety. 

CH: We were careful to make it clear that we weren’t with the police because we didn’t want to have an appearance of state power or favoritism. Me not being from India helped. I didn’t look like some stealth agent. It was important for people to understand that we were independent. 

D: Sub-Inspector Sandhya is a great subject. She’s so resilient because of all the horrors she’s seen but she’s also a victim of a system that doesn’t allow women to be weak. So she’s internalized that. 

ST: She’s a career policewoman and she loves it. But she’s also a product of society, like the other policewomen. Sometimes they would contradict what was expected of women and sometimes they would conform completely. I was fascinated by them trying to create some sense of order, whether it was through perfect registers with perfectly straight lines, or societal order through keeping marriage together when maybe they shouldn’t be. 

CH: The police are a paramilitary order and part of their training is, I don’t want to say groupthink, but groupthink. You don’t have individual thoughts when you have that uniform on and you’re representing the police force. If any one of those policewomen had strong opinions on the helpline or the couples, they wouldn’t share them, especially if they were interested in a career because it doesn’t behoove them to have private thoughts. So we couldn’t—and wouldn’t—ask Sandhya what she really thought of the helpline. She was smart enough that she wouldn’t answer anyway. 

ST: I don’t think you have to be a policewoman to identify with not wanting to show vulnerability in a male-dominated profession. We weren’t out to get anybody or make anyone look bad. Even an abusive husband. We wanted to preserve everybody’s humanity. We were after nuance. It was important to not be judgemental, which is why it took a year-and-half to edit 80 hours of footage.

CH: It’s hard when there’s domestic violence and you hear, “Don’t leave.” But in the context of what that woman’s options are, it’s rough. Maybe her family won’t allow her home, maybe there isn’t a shelter system, maybe she doesn’t have money. The rate of prosecution for domestic violence is very low. It was hard to portray these things, but it’s reality. The cops aren’t pro-domestic violence but they understand the reality. If this woman prosecutes her husband, it might take 10 years and the result might be nothing. In the meantime, her children might starve. It’s heartbreaking. 

In some cases that didn’t make the cut, you could tell Sandhya was pissed off. In some cases, the women didn’t want the husband to be prosecuted, they just wanted the violence to stop. They wanted to use the system to get relief while still having a roof over their head and the ability to feed their children. It’s not black-and-white. 

ST: The police are just a bandaid in that situation. 

Gayle Sequeira is a film critic and reporter whose work has appeared in The Guardian, BFI, Sight and Sound, Vulture, GQ, and more.