Beyond Shakuntala Devi, Gunjan Saxena: Where are the inspiring stories of the aam aurat in Bollywood?

‘Jab amazing ho sakti hu…toh normal kyun banu’ (‘when I can be amazing why should I be normal’) – Vidya Balan’s Shakuntala Devi tells her daughter in the recently released Amazon Prime Film. She’s not the only one who thinks this way when it comes to women protagonists in our films.

While Bollywood is beginning to tell more stories that put women front and centre, they tend to be stories of extraordinary women. If Saand Ki Aankh had the trailblazing sharp-shooting Tomar sisters, Manikarnika chronicled the life of the swashbuckling Rani of Jhaasi and Sehmat in Raazi is an Indian spy who takes on the might of the Pakistani Army. Notice the common thread? These are fierce, kickass, heroic women. That these films are giving us female role models is quite a change from the 80s and 90s when female characters had little agency, confidence and capability. It is important to note, though, that we still don’t tell enough stories about the ‘every woman’.

Vidya as Sulu (Sulochana) in Tumhari Sulu is a suburban housewife who has found her happily ever after. She is a mother who participates in the lemon-and-spoon race in her son’s school and the wife who waits for her husband to come home from work. She has a small dream – she wants a career. After many a failed attempt, Sulu finds herself in front of a microphone at a radio station and her late night call-in show becomes wildly popular. While it wasn’t perfect, debutant director Suresh Triveni gave us a story that called to mind some of the films of the 70s, starring the likes of Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha, Pearl Padamsee and Utpal Dutt where the spotlight was firmly on the aam aadmi/aurat(common man/woman).

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[caption id=“attachment_8655911” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Vidya Balan in a still from the Shakuntala Devi biopic[/caption]

“Don’t underestimate the power of the common man,” Shah Rukh famously said in Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express and, if the last few years are anything to go by, Bollywood has embraced the sentiment.

As the larger-than-life hero is slowly fading out, the aam aadmi stories are gaining popularity. From Vicky Donor to Trapped, both Ayushmann Khurranna and Rajkumaar Rao have filmographies that are a testament to this shift. Tumhari Sulu is that rare film that trained its lens on the aam aurat, someone who is normally ignored in our films.    

Earlier this year, Anubhav Sinha gave us Amrita, a stay-at-home wife who has made her husband’s dreams her own in Thappad. While he is climbing the corporate ladder, she makes sure that all his needs are met at home – she runs after him with his wallet, feeds him his unfinished breakfast, takes care of his elderly mother and is the consummate hostess when he entertains. The couple lives in Delhi but Amrita could be any housewife in Bengaluru or Bhatinda. The director, though, thinks that too much is made of the trend of women-led films.

“Let’s not to take this phenomenon too seriously. A lot of it is just because we are making more films, for both theatrical and OTT release. So, some stories about women get included. If I’m making Rani Laxmibai, it’s obviously because she’s a personality and an extraordinary character. Or like Mithali Raj who is extraordinary. But where are we making films about ordinary men? You’re making films about heroes that walk at 100 frames a second and they can also sing and dance. Actors like Ayushmann and Rajkummar make four films year. So you have four films a year with ordinary men and four with ordinary women. So, it’s not too bad and it’s not too good, it’s just ordinary,” he says in his trademark style.

[caption id=“attachment_8569711” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Taapsee Pannu in Thappad.[/caption]

In the last two years, however, a leading studio like Dharma Productions has had three films – Raazi, Guilty and Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl – that tell women’s stories, albeit not all around the aam aurat. Their head of creative development, Somen Mishra has been involved in all three. According to Mishra, the criteria for picking these stories is simple – ‘the story has to be interesting’. “It’s not that we are looking for something heroic, or somebody doing day-to-day things. It’s about how interesting the journey is and if the journey can hold for two hours. That’s the criteria,” he says. The big difference between Guilty and Gunjan Saxena is the medium the films were intended for. While the former was always an OTT film, the Janhvi Kapoor film was intended for a big screen release. “For a theatrical, the stakes are much higher and the stakes for the story also have to be higher. OTT gives you the option to explore spaces where the person doesn’t need to be as heroic maybe, but can be more complex,” adds Mishra.

Having directed films like Nil Battey Sannata and Panga, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari knows a thing or two about this substantial segment of our society. “The every woman’s story doesn’t get told because we just take her for granted. We always feel that she’s there – the mother and the wife – and things will happen around her. It’s time we put her in front and see what she’s thinking. I always wanted to be the voice of the voiceless, rather than doing biopics and talking about strong personalities whose stories are already known because of the circumstances and what they fought for. I want to tell the stories of every woman from every cross section of society,” says Tiwari.

Industry experts would tell you that studios won’t green light a film about the hopes and dreams of the regular woman. It’s all in the writing according to Tiwari. “My woman would be the protagonist but there are a lot of other characters that are integral to the storytelling. It’s never in isolation and that makes it easier to tell the story along with a studio. Someone asked me what I wanted the audience to take away from Nil Battey Sannata and Panga. I want every boy and man to call up their mothers after watching the film. Women-oriented films or men-oriented films are something the media comes up with —audiences don’t watch films like that. Audiences see films as films. So, it’s very important that your character sketches are extremely well-written. When that happens, the film can never be about just one person. One person can drive the story but each person watching, regardless of their gender, should have their own takes, and that’s the beauty of storytelling”.

[caption id=“attachment_8569751” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Kangana Ranaut in Panga.[/caption]

In a pivotal scene from Tiwari’s 2020 film Panga, Jaya Nigam (played by Kangana Ranaut), a former captain of the Indian women’s kabaddi team who is struggling to make a comeback, says, “Main ek maa hoon aur maa ke koi sapne nahi hote hain” (‘I am a mother and mothers have no dreams’). Tiwari shares that she finds inspiration in her 40-year-old maid who is being forced to have another child because her husband wants a son, and an aunt who went back to study after her kids grew up. Movies, however, are a tough business and it’s not always easy to convince a room full of suits that the audience at large would be interested in a story of a 32-year-old who wants to play kabaddi again even if an A-list actress plays the character. Maybe it’s not about our storytellers casting a wider net for inspiration, maybe it’s time to forget the net and look around at the women in our homes and lives.