You wouldn’t want to be a pretty, somewhat talented woman in Madhur Bhandrakar’s world.
For one, you can’t have any chance at success without having to maniacally pop pills three months down. You’ll be thrown at men, not always Arbaaz Khan, whose only redeeming quality seem to be looking good while making out. Basically, you’re a smart cookie, who’s a bimbo at heart – greats abs, great hair, great promise, but abysmal taste in men.
And oh yes, you cannot handle success either. You have to, inevitably, gulp whiskey down at a swish-looking party and stagger on high heels across a chandelier-ed room to say a bunch of mean things, usually to the much-married man you otherwise had no problems in canoodling with, till a week ago.
A still from Heroine. Image courtesy: Facebook page of film.
And while you’re at it, there are the three witches of Bhandarkar, in white chiffon, nudging, winking and struggling hard to make I-know-what-you-did-last-weekend faces under all that botox.
Don’t blame the man much though. He doesn’t mind you being snappy, ridiculously cocky, only short of drooling over yourself in the mirror. At least he makes those girls in Splitsvilla seem rightly-wired.
And he also gives you a gay best friend/lackey. So what if outside his world gay men aren’t always trying to look and talk like Paris Hilton, he gives you one that makes even your nails seem more intelligent and the Rubik’s cube less colourful.
Oh, if you are taking way too long to figure out how messed up you are, and have kept the pills waiting, Bhandarkar will throw you in bed with a random man from a random party. Possibly of the type Indian middle class mothers didn’t approve of twenty years back. So that you then puke, cry rivers of mascara and break the mirror, or some other glass object, in that earth shattering moment of denouement. The man will not tell, but any human with any iota of sense will know you’re as racist as racist can get!
But Bhandarkar will also give your life back at the end. One that has no sex, no alcohol, no boyfriend, no form flattering dresses – but good ole mom, dad and a TV in the drawing room. And definitely no halkat jawaani. Because in Bhandarkar’s world, you may at the top at some point, but you definitely end up right where you started or lower.
