Aligarh trailer and the Punjabiyat of Ranjit Katiyal

So the trailer for Hansal Mehta’s upcoming film Aligarh is finally out, and the fact that I happen to have watched the film a few months ago does nothing to temper my excitement. In fact having loved it at MAMI, I feel somewhat invested in the film's commercial fate. This story based on true events deserves to be told, and it could not have been in better hands than the superb cast and crew of Aligarh. If you haven't watched the trailer, drop everything and watch it on the Eros website right now.

I'll spare you any details about the story until its release, but allow me to wax on a neat little detail, already revealed in the trailer.

Like the real life professor on whose story it is based, Manoj Bajpai’s Prof Siraj in the film is in his 60s, and teaches Marathi at the Aligarh University. At one point he laments that this adds to his isolation in this Urdu dominated city (besides his sexual orientation).

One of the many things that sets this film apart from the Bollywood mainstream is this choice of a central protagonist. When was the last time you saw a soft spoken, ageing, middle class Marathi man of slight stature at the centre of a Hindi film?

And this isn't just because of the “based on real events” tag on the film. In adapting real events or books, filmmakers have the creative freedom to change some details of character, and they do it all the time. In the film adaptation of The Martian, the character of Venkat Kapoor is modified into the African-American Vincent Kapoor, perhaps because they wanted Chiwetel Ejiofor to play him. And who can blame them? He was amazing.

In the more recently released Airlift however, I'm a little disappointed in the film's decision to fuse two real life heroes from Kerala into one Punjabi Akshay Kumar. Why did AK's character in the film have to be a Ranjit Katiyal, the strapping Punjabi savior of a predominantly Keralite Indian population stuck in the middle of a warzone in the Gulf? If it was because the makers were keen to have AK play the part, it was perhaps wise not to make him bumble with an accent.

In doing so however, the film loses out on quite a bit of the kind of nuance that can add texture to the narrative, and sometimes make for some delicious cinematic moments.

This is not a social rant, but one about a creative choice. Nor does it make Airlift a bad film. The film works beautifully within its own universe, but a little more authenticity could have made it so much more. A stray observation on the Kerala-Gulf connection. Some harmless cultural humor. A slight Sidin Vadukut touch, maybe.

Granted, the film is not about any of these things. It is a tight thriller with a very focused storyline. Then again, would it have been any less tight or focused with a Malayali family at its centre? Haven't we had enough Punjabi NRIs in our films?

Cultural details add value to such stories. What would Munnabhai’s confrontations with Dr Asthana be without those Bambaiyya potshots? An street ruffian with a heart of gold in a medical college. What would Piku be if Bhashkor wasn't so Bengali? An ageing, intellectual Bengali hypochondriac in Delhi.

And when you watch Aligarh, ask yourself what that film would be if Manoj Bajpai’s Siraj wasn't so Marathi. A homosexual Marathi poet teaching in a Muslim University.

Like Aligarh, the source material for Airlift afforded it the opportunity for a protagonist who would be unusual for a Hindi film, but the more engaging for it. A Malayali Christian businessman in Kuwait. Sadly, for whatever reasons, the makers chose not to use it.

Youth films and the Rajwade kids

I have an axe to grind with most Indian films about young people and youth - most of them seem obsessed with young romance as if it were the most profound thing in the world. I am not against young people hooking up. I envy people who find their life partners at a very young age and manage to stick to the relationship and build a life together. Envy, because it is such a rare occurrence. I know exactly three such couples in real life, and the beauty of their stories lies not in the meeting or falling in love, but in the years of growing up together, navigating the challenges of adulthood and the needling doubts that are bound to crop up. Those are stories we almost never get to see in the movies. What we get is the kind of films Alia Bhatt has made her own.

Her debut movie has her torn between a rich guy and a poor guy. By the end of the movie we are told she has managed to stick it out with one of them. Her second film had her running out on her own wedding. Her most successful film till date is about how she goes about getting married to the guy she met in college. She is one our youngest actors who actually looks young, and I am yet to see her in a role where marriage isn’t one of the major themes. She is much more fun to watch in pimple cream ads and YouTube videos.

This is the one of the unique features of Sachin Kudalkar's new Marathi film Rajwade And Sons. Despite the presence of four good looking single youngsters and one good looking single Atul Kulkarni, the film is refreshingly unconcerned with love and romance. Exactly one character has a romantic sub-plot, and the paramour in that story has all of one scene and no speaking part. For the rest of its runtime, the characters in the film have their hands full trying to balance the expectations of the older generation against the aspirations of youth.

I have not read any of the reviews, but from what I heard, the film has been accused of being slow with not a lot happening. That isn’t something I strictly mind in a film that can engage me in the slowly unfolding little stories of interesting characters, and that is something Rajwade And Sons does quite well.

Briefly, the ‘story’ follows three generations of a very affluent family in Pune as they move out of their ancestral mansion, which they have assigned to redevelopment. They briefly settle into four separate flats in one of those swanky apartment buildings that have been popping up in the city’s fast growing outskirts. During one of their last visits to their old house, they receive an unexpected guest - Vikram, the prodigal son who had run away from home almost two decades ago.

Vikram’s arrival is most warmly welcomed by the four 20-something kids of his older siblings, who are fascinated by his ‘cool’ life. He is a globe-trotting investment consultant with seemingly loads of cash, a South African wife and a no-strings lifestyle. One by one, he catalyses questions and introspection in each member of the family, lending an ear, offering a suggestion, gently prodding the youngsters along to follow their dreams instead of settling into the family business like the generations before them.

One by one, the youngsters rebel under the gentle patronage of their lost-and-found uncle. Sachin’s daughter Shweta pursues her dream to travel the world rather than get married, Mrunal’s daughter Ananya moves to Mumbai to pursue a modelling career. Her brother Virajas chooses to stay with the family business, and is handsomely rewarded with a plum position and a new car.

The middle generation gets interesting character arcs too. Sachin Khedekar, the oldest son of the family patriarch realizes with a sigh that his life is set. He is a simple Marathi man, as he puts it, who has never thought beyond the life path set out for him by his father and now, with his own apartment without the foreboding eyes of his stern father over him, the best he can do with the new-found freedom is to take the occasional swig of beer in his own drawing room.

The sister, Mrunal Kulkarni faces up to the fact that she gave up on her dreams of being an actress under family pressure and due to an early marriage. However she also realises that it may not be too late for her daughter. Atul Kulkarni plays a widower who too, like his older brother and sister, married young under the orders of his father, but the film reveals some fascinating aspects to his character that I won’t spoil here.

Rebellion however is not the point of the film. The film is mercifully bereft of the kind of melodrama you would generally expect in this kind of a story. It also avoids judging anyone, not even the stern patriarch or Mrunal’s somewhat uncouth small-town husband. The grandmother played by Jyoti Subhash is a delight to watch. The lady demands prompt wi-fi connection in the new house so she may skype with her old friends, and pulls out an iPhone as soon as Vikram shares his Twitter handle. Incidentally she is the only character who voices that popular old grudge about a changing Pune.

The revered Marathi author and humorist P L Deshpande (Pu La, as he is fondly called in Marathi) once remarked that in order to become a Punekar, you should learn to complain about how Pune is not what it used to be. The city of Pune gets a starring role in this film, with leisurely night-time drives along FC Road and panoramic views of the city and its changing face. Pu La is also referenced by the grandfather - his habit of recalling the beloved author is one of the humanizing touches in a somewhat unsympathetic character.

When the character of Vikram first appeared with his swanky suitcases, I braced myself for a Bawarchi rehash, but thankfully he does not play a preachy, magic-wand-wielding influence here. The people in the family mostly figure things out for themselves - the wheels are set in motion much before we meet them. I suspect they would have made the same choices even if Vikram never came back in their lives. His presence here, and the endearing scenes he shares with his nephews, nieces, siblings and mother only make the proceedings more interesting cinematically.

All in all, it is a warm and endearing couple hours with a bunch of likeable people and general doses of Pune. It has been released with English subtitles, and is worth a watch even if you don’t follow Marathi. The specifics may be very Pune-centric, but the characters and themes have a very universal, very modern appeal. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon at the movies.

**Edit: An earlier version of this article wrongly cited the name of the actress playing the grandmother. Thank you Manali, Snehal and Abhimanyu for correcting me.

Tu Hi Re: no surprises!

The short story Neither A Song, Nor Fiction by Sindhi writer Popati Hiranandani very endearingly narrates the growing insecurities of a young woman married to a woefully unromantic man. Being thwarted at every attempt to infuse a little romance in her dry domestic life, she starts harbouring fears of losing him to another woman. The husband's staid, even boring personality makes it easier for the reader to empathize with her emotions.

The writer and director of Tu Hi Re could take a leaf out of the late Sindhi author's book. The film tries very hard to make you worry about Nandini (Sai Tamhankar) and Siddharth's (Swapnil Joshi) marriage, but I did not buy it for a second. Not when the film's nominal bad man, the evil politician Kamlakar Bhanushali (Girish Oak) offers Siddharth a load of cash to leave his wife. Not when said wife learns about her husband's past affair with Bhanushali's lovely daughter Bhairavi (Tejaswini Pandit). Not when the sweet and simple Nandini goes out of her way to afford Siddharth one more meeting with the earstwhile object of his affection. Not when an excruciatingly loud Sad Song burst my fragile eardrums goading me to worry about Siddharth and Nandini's 8 year old marriage. Not even when their little daughter voices Nandini's worst fears. I just could not get myself to worry. Or to care.

In the aforementioned short story, it is the husband's personality and the dynamic of the marriage that make the wife's fears seem plausible. Here instead we have a saccharine sweet first half of watching the couple coochie-cooing all over the town. We are given no reason to doubt Siddharth's dedication to his wife and kid. And you can't blame the movie too much. Popati's hero would not be as multiplex friendly as the ever smiling Swapnil Joshi. But then in 2015, can we really get ourselves to worry over such a trivial issue as a husband's long forgotten college romance?

The premise of Tu Hi Re would have made a compelling watch in the 90s. Not just because that generation would make a bigger deal about such an issue, but perhaps a Marathi filmmaker of that time would be able to tell this story more honestly. This story belongs in a quintessentially middle class setting, where marriages are arranged, romance belongs in the fictional world of the movies, and subjects like past girlfriends are not discussed. The couple in this movie is too urban, too polished, and too 'cool' to sell its central conflict.

This seems to be the bane of mainstream Marathi cinema of late. In its attempt to be at par with mainstream Hindi films, it is losing its middle class roots. The SRK-Kajol chemistry of its lead pair can wring a few smiles from you, but it cannot keep you at an edge. the role of Siddharth needed the broodiness of say, a young Amitabh Bacchan or the seriousness of Vijay Anand from Kora Kagaz. To cite more Marathi examples, given my limited exposure I can only think of Dilip Kulkarni in Chaukat Raja, the family man with his very understandable discomfort over his wife's growing closeness to her retarded friend.  This is a man who can surprise you, and before the film ends, he does. Or Manohar Joshi in Tu Tithe Mee as the retired gent who has been so busy tending to his duties as the provider for the family that his wife seems unacquainted with his gentle loving side. In one of the film's most touching moments, the wife mentions a letter she wrote him decades ago, early in their marriage, pouring her heart out to her young husband for the first time, that he never bothered to answer. On reply, the old man pulls out a tattered piece of paper from under his pillow - it is the same letter, which he had carefully preserved all these years, and which he now recites word for word. He has always felt very deeply for her, he explains, only never been able to express.

These are stories driven as much by personalities as by circumstance. I have always found Marathi films most adept at exploring the psychological aspect of these simple yet deeply personal stories. Getting inside the heads of your characters can lead to some of the most intense and affecting moments in film - like Amitabh's outburst in Zanjeer when he feels suffocated by his resolve to keep our of harm's way for the sake of the woman he loves. It can also get messy, and you cannot be emotionally honest while looking pretty.

Perhaps it is Swapnil in the role of Siddharth that's the problem. The dude is just too... nice. There's nothing dark or mysterious about him, no hint of secrets. He is believable enough in the flashback scenes of candy floss romance around a plush college campus. But I could see no difference between the freshly graduated Siddharth of the flashback and the much married Siddharth of the present.  I wonder what someone like Sandesh Jadhav might have made of this role.

There is a moment in the film where the wife registers surprise on hearing of the escapades of a young Siddharth. Like most emotions in this film, I could not share in her surprise.

Questioning Modi

In an interview with Newslaundry in 2012, Justice Katju made a very interesting point. In a democracy he said, the traditional hierarchy of power gets reversed. Instead of political leaders ruling over the public, now the public, at least in theory, sits at the top of the power hierarchy, and the elected representatives at the very bottom. The statement was in the context of a larger argument regarding the liabilities of public figures, but it was this point about the reversed hierarchy that I find very thought provoking. It also provides the clue on the state of public political discourse in the country at the moment, such as it is.

If democracy has placed the power and superiority with the general public, it would seem most members of the public have not received the memo. For we continue showering our leaders with the kind of reverence, loyalty and dedication formerly reserved for monarchs.

For the longest time since the country gained its freedom, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty enjoyed this loyalty by sheer virtue of bloodline. The most blatant display of the monarchical nature of Indian politics was when after the death of Indira Gandhi her younger progeny, a pilot, wholly inexperienced in politics or administration, and having never served a public office, was promptly pressed into service as the new Prime Minister. I was too young to recollect the genesis of that event, but there you have it, the Prime Minister with the Most Number of Things Named After Him, a person who got there with no merit to speak of.

Our political landscape is teeming with noble families headed by Lords and Ladies who enjoy the unwavering adulation of their people, and when the time comes, step aside and hand over the reins to the next generation. This holds true across state lines and political affiliation, and enough has been written about dynastic politics that I don't need to repeat here.

To the credit of the electorate, they did not allow our Central Cercei to plant her Joffrey on the Iron Throne nearly as easily. A good part of the credit for keeping little Joffrey in check goes to our current Prime Minister, the former Warden of the West who promised to change the paradigm. This man rose through the ranks on merit, and has over a decade of heading a State to show on his CV. That in itself is more than some of our former Prime Ministers could claim. And for what it's worth, we don't have any Modi-kids to worry about.


Yet this is not the end of monarchy in India. In an ideal world, the very people who threw their weight behind Modi's BJP and gave them an unprecedented clear majority in the parliament, should now be holding this government accountable for every one of their moves. Some of them are doing just that. So we had army men holding the government by the collar over their OROP promises. We have students of the FTII refusing to allow their institution to be given away like a piece of candy to a party loyal unworthy of its chairmanship.

If more of us thought of themselves as the masters in a democracy rather than as subjects, the tone of political discourse in the country would have been very different and very encouraging. Instead, we have a large and vocal segment of the public clinging to the new government with the kind of fierce loyalty that Congress once commanded. You see them everywhere - in drawing room discussions, social media, news debates, and overlong WhatsApp messages - people who continue campaigning for Modi.

They jump to the defense of Modi and his government every time someone questions either. They viciously attack those voices as if questioning Modi were the equivalent of supporting the Congress. It is not. Most liberals who view Modi with a degree of skepticism have no illusions about Congress or the Gandhi family either. Nobody in their right minds is taking Rahul Gandhi seriously, not even within the Congress. So chill. A lot of people who question Modi, simply do not want to let him or this government to get away with the kind of crimes against democracy that Congress did. Regardless of which party is in power, what their political leanings and convictions, however noble their intentions, constant and unforgiving public scrutiny of a government is always a good thing.

Darlings, put down the campaign banners. The Elections are over. Modi has won. You've done your service to him, by voting for him, by speaking up for him, by drumming up support for him when he needed it. Now let him serve you, like he promised.

(Sorry for the Game Of Thrones references. The bug does get you.)

Tangy chicken broth recipe

I was tempted to name this dish Lemony Snickets, since it was born out of a series of unfortunate events, the details of which I'll spare you, dear patient reader. Let's just for a dish that started out as one thing and ended up as quite another, I could do much worse.

This is a very mild-flavoured dish - those with a preference for the sharper Indian curries may find it bland, but I prefer the subtle flavours from the ingredients I used rather than the overwhelming effects of turmeric, onion, ginger, garlic and green chillies, those staples of every North Indian gravy that I completely ignored in making this. The broth gets a triple tang from lemon, yoghurt and tomato - again, keep their effects in check by adding just enough lemon, and the freshest yoghurt and tomatoes you can find. Another departure from the Indian style is to add the tomatoes in the end instead of putting them in the tadka, so that its pieces float about in the watery broth instead of assimilating. The resulting broth is tangy, creamy, and messy with lots of things floating around like in a clear soup. (I may have to work on making my descriptions read more appetizing,)

Anyway, so I started out with half a kilo of chicken including one leg piece (you could use two leg pieces), washed it up, removed the fat, and kept the liver and some of the bony bits separately in a pan with 1 1/2 cup of water. I placed this pan on heat, brought the water to a boil, then removed the pan from the stove and kept it aside.

Then I marinated the remaining chicken in the juice of a single teeny tiny lemon, a tablespoon of butter, a handful of crushed mint leaves (just tear the leaves with your hands, don't grind), about a teaspoon each of freshly crushed black pepper and allspice, and enough salt to suffice the entire broth. After coating the chicken nice and proper in this mix, I tucked in a couple of pieces of cinnamon and star anise and a tej patta in its folds, covered the marinated chicken, got busy with my phone and merrily lost track of time.

About 40 minutes later, I drizzled a tablespoon of dark soy sauce over the marinated chicken, heated a dollop of butter in a kadhai, and dumped the chicken in it as soon as the butter melted. You want to add the leg pieces first to give them a little more time to cook. In a couple of minutes, all the chicken turned from pink to an opaque white, at which point I started assaulting it with some Indian flavours - two tablespoons of fresh yoghurt, a spoon each of red chilli powder, coriander powder and cumin powder. I strained the liver-water and added it to the kadhai, followed by a finely chopped fresh large tomato. I raised the temperature to bring the mixture to a boil, and after letting it bubble for a minute or so, lowered the heat to 120 degrees, covered the pot and let it simmer. With nothing more I could do to help the chicken, I cleared up the kitchen and scrubbed my hands of all the spicy smell, contemplated the human condition for a minute, and returned to the simmering pot.

This last step is mainly to let all the flavours come together really nicely. The broth now ready, I served myself a generous helping in a large soup bowl, sprinkled some coriander to get better results on Instagram, and consumed the fruit of my labour with some brown bread, though I couldn't quite stop myself from scooping up some rich spoonfuls of the tangy, creamy, watery broth before reaching for the bread.

Like I said, as accidents go, one could do far worse.

In case you're wondering, yes, I do occasionally cook and some friends have asked me in the past to share some of my recipes, so trying my hand at food blogging for a change. I'm starting to feel it's not my forte.

Random rants on Drishyam

It has been brought to my attention that reading my 'reviews' of films does not tell readers whether to watch the film or not. While that's mainly because I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your time or money, let me clarify this at the outset: do watch Drishyam. It's an engrossing little thriller that you can enjoy with your family, and that's all you need to know. 

For the rest of this post, I'm going to indulge in more unintelligible ranting about the film that in no way should inform your choice to watch it or miss it.

1. Before the film started, I started a little game with my sister - we would apply the Bechdel Test as the story unfolded. Surprise, surprise! None of the women in the film ever talk about anything that doesn't have a penis. And we're talking about two women who are complicit in murder. They don't fucking talk to each other while covering a murder. Not even, "hey, remember that murder we're covering up? Pretty cool, huh!"
2. Shriya Sharan's character has to be the blandest, dumbest and most personality-devoid accessory to murder ever projected on a big screen. And I'm including Mamta Kulkarni from Sabse Bada Khiladi in my sample size. Hell, Nirupa Roy in the worst of her weepy momma roles has more personality than Shriya Sharan in Drishyam. 
3. We did a thought experiment with the film, around the time our hero takes it upon himself to save his ladies from an impending murder charge and sets about vanishing all the clues to the disappearance of a young boy that could potentially lead the trail to his doorstep. What if there was no 'hero', no father figure here? What if we were dealing with two women who end up killing someone and must cover their tracks? What if it was about some women doing all those awfully clever things we saw Ajay Devgn doing in the film? Something similar (the murder part - not the cover-up part) happens, to spectacular effect in the Spanish film Volver starring Penelope Cruz as a mother protecting her teenage daughter in a vaguely similar situation. But then, that was Penelope Freaking Cruz. This was Shriya Sharan.
4. Another thought experiment - what if there was no Shriya Sharan? I know, I'm sounding like I have something against her now, but seriously, was her character written so unimaginatively, or was the director unable to use her acting skills, or is she simply a bad actress? Anyway... so picture the film without the mom... the plot, the story, the murder, the cover-up... everything remains pretty much the same. She does not even strike a flicker of terror in the teenage boy who was not expecting an adult at his rendezvous with a schoolgirl. Seriously, my mother would be more terrifying than Shriya Sharan in that shed.
5. All this seems weird in a film that boasts of its writing being its biggest strength. And it is, to much of an extent - the plot is well-baked, the loose ends are neatly tied up and all that. Except for an annoying little scene at a quarry in the first half, the pacing is generally good. Only the editor in me could not help but wonder if the chronology of the story could have been played around with. What if we, the audience, did not know about the murder before-hand? What if we approached the mystery from Tabu's viewpoint? What if the secretive family came across as a bunch of creeps covering a vital link to the disappearance of a young boy? 

So many possibilities.. so much fun.. only because the story as it is, is essentially a good one. So do watch Drishyam. If nothing else, it's a good little film to stroke your imagination. We don't get too many of those around here.


One final thought - how come everybody is so okay with the morality of the whole thing? I mean, we all just watched an entire movie dedicated to the art of dodging justice and getting away with murder. And it's all justified because the murder victim was a blackmailer? Hmph.

Ma, I won't marry

Accidental or idiopathic - welcome to Womens Liberation, 21^st Century filmi edition

Way back in 1975, the film Aandhi treated us to a rare kind of character for a Hindi film - a father who wishes expects his daughter to carry forward his political legacy, and feels let down by her choice to instead settle for marriage and family like millions of women everywhere. (A framed picture of Jawaharlal Nehru with a young Indira stands in the backdrop of the Big Confrontation scene between father and daughter to drive the point home.) Exactly 40 years later, this kind of a parent, whose expectations from the girl child comprise anything but marriage remains a rarity.

One of the recent revisits to the subject of pushy parents was of course Dil Dhadakne Do, where Priyanka’s achievements as an entrepreneur are merrily ignored by both her parents and her in-laws, everybody more eager to hear the ‘good news’ from her. Is it more of an indictment of our society, or of the failure of our stories to evolve beyond the tired old clichés that when it comes to parents and daughters, the only plots we ever get to see have to revolve around marriage? Could cliched expectations of narrow-minded parents not involve boring and banal career prospects - become a doctor or bank employee instead of an artist or journalist - or are those kinds of pressures only reserved for the boys?

The splendidly crafted Masaan is another rare exception, where a widowed father - a Kashi pandit to boot - has to confront the issue of his daughter’s sexuality. His only mild attempt at steering her to do something right (according to his jaded worldview) involves getting a low-paying but respectable job. Some middle-aged ladies at the multiplex where I watched the film kept murmuring about this being a ‘festival kind of a film’, meaning this kind of a film is allowed to do things a little differently. One of Madhuri Dixit's late-career roles in Wajood had her father trying to push her into his business, and her act of rebellion in the film was to become a journalist. But hardly anybody watched that film.

The theme of young women going their own way against the path prescribed by their parents and society has been a recurrent one in the last 15 years or so. But barring some frustratingly few exceptions, this path is usually to get married and settled, and more often, to marry a guy picked by the parents. This applies to the works of some of our directors unfairly accused of creating some strong female characters, mainly those of Imtiaz Ali and Anand L Rai.

I have often wondered about all the accolades Imtiaz earns for his heroines - who belong to a group I like to call the Accidentally Liberated Women. Most, if not all of his heroines seem to be engaged to somebody or the other parent-nominated bloke, and the girl’s own aspiration of freedom seems to be limited to doing something wild for once in their life before settling into that life. It is on those let-me-try-this-once adventures that they usually meet the hero and their life changes forever. And by ‘changing forever’ I mean they marry this guy instead of that one.

Consider his first film Socha Na Tha - Ayesha Takia’s character in the film is an orphaned girl raised by her loving relatives, who are keen to dispose of their responsibility to get her settled at the earliest. Knowing her fate is sealed, she chooses to go on her one wild ride, getting inappropriately involved in the romantic fate of strangers Abhay Deol and his girlfriend, just so she gets to hang out in Goa for a few days along with those girls and boys (none of whom seem to suffer from parental control that badly). And then Ayesha and Abhay fall in love, things get messy, but love triumphs all. Or Geet in Jab We Met - her idea of going her own way is to elope and marry her college sweetheart instead of the sweet ol’ guy her parents wish for her to marry. Along the way, she bumps into a rich guy, things get messy, they fall in love, it gets messier, but in the end love triumphs all.

Whether it is Heer in Rockstar or Alia Bhatt’s character in Highway, the girls never seem to be dealing with any greater challenges in life than a pre-ordained engagement. Once again, is it a reflection of our society or lack of imagination on part of our writers that our heroines seem to be stuck in an era where saying ‘no’ to prospective grooms in arranged marriages is never an option?

Even the much-celebrated Queen belongs to this group of accidentally liberated women - none of that self-discovery on a solo Europe trip would have happened if the man in Rani's life hadn't dumped her. Women who willfully push the boundaries, like Konkona's character in Wake Up Sid, exist only in the recesses of the stories of male protagonists, much like Konkona's character in Wake Up Sid.

Coming to the more problematic matter of Anand L Rai. Now his Tanu and his Zoya are a different kettle of fish. They are rebellious alright, but what exactly they are rebelling against, or what they plan to achieve is anyone’s guess. And that’s not a stray observation - in Tanu Weds Manu, the film keeps underlining the fact that this girl is a rebel without cause, in exactly those words, with her friend Payal playing Greek chorus throughout pointing out the absurdity of Tanu’s many absurd choices in case the audience hadn’t noticed. I could write an essay on the puzzle that is Tanu (I actually have, but will spare you) in both films. Zoya is even more frustrating. What the hell is the girl thinking, when she does one thing or the other? Does she have any internal logic at all? Or is that the whole point of Anand L Rai films, that the actions of these enigmatic, fluttery young women, the only kind of women his protagonists will find attractive by the way, do not have any underpinning logic or consistency, because… bitches be crazy?

I ask these questions because I belong to the generation of women who have been slowly, patiently and often painfully subverting expectations. Like any middle class girl from small town India, I had my life cut out for me - study hard, graduate, get a cosy job, get married before 25 - only I didn’t. I spent my 20s hopping jobs, changing career paths, living in different cities away from the safety net of family and community, until I found my groove and felt ready to commit to marriage. I can say I am at present in a place where I want to be, but this comes at a cost - the cost of being the last one of my friends to settle, the only one to not have kids yet, and the uncertainty over future that is always looming around the corner.

I know a lot of young women whose stories are even more complex and proportionately more inspiring - women who have followed their heart, got burned multiple times along the way, spent the best years of their lives negotiating boundaries and ambitions with their families and society at large, and who stand tall at the end of it all, battered and bruised but proud and independent. And in most of these cases, families, instead of being hurdles to be overcome, turn out to be pillars of strength, often confronting their own set of challenges and paying their own cost for standing by their children in a brave new world.

Much like the poor old Sanjay Mishra in Masaan.

P.S.

Even in films that aren't necessarily about the woman, the very existence of a woman in the main cast usually has to be justified by having her hook up with one of the boys. Nowhere does this stick out more sorely than in Happy New Year - isn't Deepika's function in that ragtag group of robbers as their choreographer who helps them sneak into a major dance competition substantial enough, that she has to be given a most unconvincing romantic arc with the repugnant SRK character in the film? Or coming back to Konkona in Wake Up Sid, isn't her role as the catalyst to Ranbir's transformation strong enough, that the pair has to be given their kiss-in-the-rain climax? How wonderful it would have been if the film had let the pair be friends and pursue their own romantic interests while remaining important influences in each other's lives. Again, a nod to the notable exception in this regard goes to Gouhar Khan's part in Rocket Singh. The girl is supposedly married, and the husband plays no part of the proceedings. Her value to the group of entrepreneurs is purely in terms of what she contributes to their business venture.