There are few industries as familiar with stories of love as Bollywood. It would not be going too far to bet that for every bright covered chick lit novel, there are at least ten Bollywood films with brighter posters and more unbelievable obstacles to the happy ending eventually achieved. The hero meets, or rather catches a sudden and unforgettable look at the heroine. From there the trajectory of the chase, the inevitable fall, a seemingly insurmountable conflict, and the deeply satisfying conclusion are all things that can be seen as clearly as if they were only hiding behind a glass door. Of course, that isn’t to say that these elements cannot be played around with great effect for surprise and shock. It is just that when it concerns the more lighthearted of the love stories that are considered mainstream, there is a pretty set standard. I bring this up because there seems to be emerging a vocabulary around the kind of films that seek to respond to this standard from a feminine point of view – ‘the female lead film’. It’s not exactly that the vocabulary is new, it is just that there seems to be enough of these films now for them not to be considered outliers or exceptions. Before I even went to type ‘women lead Bollywood films’ in the search bar, there was already an image forming in my mind of what narratives of such a category would constitute. Strength, or the idea of it. Perhaps stifled in a patriarchal household, an unequal partnership with a spouse. Or confrontation with the audience via messaging. It was startling to think these things while also understanding them to be completely untrue and overly generalizing of a genre I am not certain even exists. Can you call ‘women lead films’ a genre of Bollywood at all, comparable to the masala entertainer or the action thriller? But there is an image that permeates the conversation, whether in interviews or on comment sections of trailer releases – an image of what a ‘women lead’ film’ is or should or can be.
It brought to mind two highly successful and widely acclaimed films of recent times that featured women in the leading role. Both take a lighthearted yet complex look into a middle-class woman’s ‘coming of age’, an exploration of desire and identity outside the bounds of both home and country. Queen (2013) and English Vinglish (2012), though vastly different in tone (with one being a comedy and the other leaning more towards melodrama), both draw a connection between foreign spaces and a woman’s search for her self-hood. As far as narrative devices go, these films both overturn and affirm expectations. There is a journey outwards and a triumphant homecoming. The element of helping oneself, with the help of others, is a fixed presence in both the narratives. As a formula, it doesn’t strike as particularly new, but it is fascinating to read it as a reversal of sorts of the homecoming trope of films like Purab Aur Pachhim (1970), Swades (2004), or Namastey London (2007). A reversal because, unlike in the aforementioned films, there isn’t a permanent shift but a temporary foray into the ‘other’. In films such as English Vinglish and Queen, the shift only occurs for the purpose of self-discovery; and the characters return to their homes and families once the purpose is achieved. The interesting bit is where and what they are returning from, and how it maps onto a general perspective on what it means to be a woman in the national context. Both Rani (Kangana Ranaut in Queen) and Shashi (Sridevi in English Vinglish), by either choice or circumstance, find themselves in a new environment in a foreign country. This change of location as well as cultural context comes with a blend of sudden independence, freedom, fears, and a chance to rediscover their identity. It is as if entering such a space in itself is a drive for claiming one’s own identities. The question is – why not at home? In the context of English Vinglish and Queen, the answers are at once simple and complex.
Shashi (Sridevi) is by no means a damsel in distress. She is a capable woman, with exceptional culinary prowess, and a caring persona. She runs a small business selling homemade sweets, a successful venture with many loyal customers. What makes her home an unsafe space for her is not any external conflict, but a lack of self-confidence that is in part a consequence of her husband and daughter’s complexes regarding modernity and language. Shahi cannot speak English, which constantly irks both her banker husband and metropolitan daughter. It is, to them, a sign of her not being capable enough. This shame, a sign of their own insecurities, is taken out on Shashi via the means of demeaning back-handed comments or outright ostracisation from parts of their lives. In one scene, early on in the film, we are shown Sapna’s (daughter) reluctance to bring her mother to her school for a parent-teacher meeting. Not only does she disrespect her mother by asking her if she even knows what PTA means, but infantilizes her by speaking in her stead and contradicting her authority as a parent. This, and several other moments, such as Sapna and Satish (husband) laughing at her English pronunciation, Satish constantly side-lining her needs and taking her work and presence for granted, as well as the general superior act of both father and daughter, result in Shashi becoming disillusioned with her family life and losing confidence. However, once Shashi steps out of the sphere of her home and country, after a few initial setbacks, she is able to see life and herself in a new light. She finds in this new space respect for herself and the things she is capable of. In the motley group of people that she goes to English class with, the guard she greets every day at the subway station, and in the French chef who is obviously smitten with her, Shashi understands her own capacity to learn and grow.
The reason Shashi’s realization in New York City happens in New York City is a statement—that she is more than capable of taking on anything, as long as there is support and encouragement. The woman that her daughter is ashamed of taking to a PTA can conquer New York. In the essay “‘Shining Indians’ Diaspora and Exemplarity in Bollywood,” Therwath presents this contrast between the popular depiction of NRIs (“In K3G, Rohan drives a Lamborghini and luxury sports bikes, while the elder brother moves around in helicopters which makes his father say casually (and in English) that ‘we must get a couple more of those’”) with the actual lived experience of some (“…a NRI working in Boston and supporting his family in Punjab feels that ‘one has to really struggle to experience a good life in America… why do movies not bother depicting …that?’”). English Vinglish does, briefly, venture into the struggle of the immigrant experience, how Shashi and her classmates (who include nannies and taxi drivers and salon owners), whose English is scoffed at, can make space for themselves in this ‘other’ space also (a space that is often seen as available to only the rich, the metropolitan, and English-speaking people). What matters even more in the case of Shashi is that she is going on this journey herself, free from the burden of her daughter’s shame or her husband’s neglect, something she cannot completely be free of in a space full of the reminders of her ‘duty’ and ‘image’. In the introduction to her book Seeing Like a Feminist, Nivedita Menon refers to the gaze of a state: “… a modern state makes heterogenous practices legible to itself in order to control them. Thus, the state’s ‘seeing’ is invested with enormous power, because when it ‘sees’ an identity, it is making that identity ‘real’, its ‘seeing’ is simultaneously ordering society.” This is exactly what the foreign space allows Shashi to hide from. It gives her a clean start, where she is not immediately assumed to be a mother or a wife without having to alter her appearance. With this, she begins to recognize the disrespect and mistreatment she has received, and begins to question it. She begins to question the treatment of her vulnerability as her whole identity. In the presence of her family and society, this would not have been possible. In a scene where her son is injured in New York, we see her question her ‘selfishness’ in pursuing her own interest over taking care of her children. This demonstrates exactly the kind of gaze Menon talks about, one that shackles a woman to her presumed identity.
In a similar but not quite the same venture, Queen’s Rani finds herself out on a solo honeymoon trip after her fiancé (Vijay) breaks their engagement on the day of their wedding. Her experiences mirror Shashi’s in more than one way. Besides sharing an interest in cooking, both were considered dependent and incapable. In Rani’s case, it wasn’t an inferiority complex borne of language but a result of being too sheltered. As a woman in her twenties who couldn’t even go out of her house without being accompanied by her much younger brother, it is the emotional shake up post the failed engagement that pushes her into attempting a solo journey to a whole other continent. Rejected for being a simpleton, Rani goes out into the world without a guardian out of spite, but finds in the challenges a way out of the shackles of her own anxieties. Simpleton or not, she finds adventure, friendship, love, and respect. It is not that she transforms so entirely as to be unrecognisable — beyond the ability to navigate day to day life independently and a sense of validation over her culinary prowess, her base personality remains as it was. She remains an excitable individual who trusts with ease and is kind, despite her unease with ideas that challenge her traditional upbringing. Yet, there is something about the way she holds herself in the presence of others that marks her as fundamentally changed. In the final scenes of the film, Rani’s former almost mother-in-law fawns over her saying ‘ab toh kitni modern ho gayi hai’ (now you’ve become so modern), as if saying now you are worthy of being a part of our family. This obsession with modernity doesn’t go beyond serving a hunger for social status in Vijay and his family. For Rani, her trip isn’t a search for or a taste of ‘modernity’ or even experience. At its heart lies a desperation to see for herself what it is that makes up the world outside, when her inner world was so cruelly and suddenly upturned without a thought. That she was able to discover herself away from all preconceived notions of her, to taste the freedom of being somewhere where no one knows her or is able to read her culturally and make, as Shashi says in her speech, ‘judgements’, is a testament to her character not her intentions.
In the essay “The Nation and Its Women,” Chatterjee refers to the inner/outer division of gender roles in the Indian Context: “… the world is a treacherous terrain of the pursuit of material interests…typically the domain of the male. The home in its essence must remain unaffected by the profane activities of the material world- and woman as its representation.” For women, the foreign space isn’t as threatening as it is to men. It is external but available to them, unlike spaces in home. Its otherness affords them the freedom that familiarity cannot. In this space, they can bring their inner world outside with them. Both Shashi and Rani not only adapt to the otherness, they become part of the space. English Vinglish and Queen build a bridge between cultures by making their heroines find things to keep from their experiences as well as wisdom to impart from their own lives. The differences between cultures are explored respectfully and practically. Eventually, the women return from this space, changed forever and capable of taking on the gaze of people at home. This exploration of self-hood and independence isn’t concluded, but enough strength has been gathered by the women to not waver.
Why I thought of these films in response to my own ideas of what films led by women are starting to look like is not difficult to parse. There is power in vocabulary, in labeling ideas and limiting them to perfect standards. The gaze that shackles Shashi and Rani, the one that upholds the inner/outer division of gender roles, and fences the idea of a love story seeps into such vocabulary. Films like English Vinglish and Queen are unique for being successful mainstream ventures that feature women in leading roles in narratives that don’t attempt to propel them into biased ideas of modernity and growth. There is a value for the journey of the character from the beginning to the end, notwithstanding their gender. Rani does not refuse Vijay’s second proposal out of spite, she does it because she is no longer a person whose next big step in life has to be marriage. Shashi gently lets down a classmate clearly smitten with her not because of any call of duty or tradition, but to take the next step in which her journey is leading her – which is to go back home with her head held high. There are films that invest in and take the narratives of their characters to satisfying conclusions (or satisfying cliff-hangers for the masochists) and there are films that do not even attempt that. Some of these films feature solely women in leading roles, a vast majority does not. We have a long way to go before a balance is struck. But till then, as a remedy against thoughtless generalization and judgement, there are some wonderful stories of love and exploration that deserve every bit of admiration that finds its way to them.
Muskaan Chaudhary is a graduate student in English Literature based in Dharamshala. A grudging cinephile, she has recently been exploring fan culture and fandom studies. She is always on the hunt for good books, tea, and cheesecakes. You can find her writing and reviews at dreams about mangoes | Muskaan Chaudhary. Instagram: @mousecant