If Kangana Rananut does Arunima Sinha biopic, it'll be a landmark film for differently-abled in India

It is being reported that Kangana Ranaut has her sights set on yet another biopic. The actress is currently playing Rani Lakshmibai in Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi. Once she wraps the historical biopic, she’ll bring to the silver screen, the just as inspirational life story of Arunima Sinha. The 29-year-old Arunima is the first woman amputee to scale Mount Everest. In 2011, the national-level volleyball player was pushed out of a moving train by robbers between Dellhi and Lucknow. She lay on the side of the track all night writhing in pain. The next morning, some villagers took her to a nearby hospital where doctors amputated one of her legs and inserted a rod in the other. Not content to stop at walking with a prosthetic leg, Arunima vowed to climb Everest. Since her recovery, she has conquered six peaks including Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Kosciuszko (Australia), Mount Elbrus (Europe), and, of course, Everest. Details of this big screen adaptation are still sketchy but if anyone can pull it off, my bets would be on Kangana. [caption id=“attachment_4198139” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Kangana Ranaut; Arunima Sinha. images courtesy News 18[/caption] It’s been a little over a decade since she skyrocketed out of obscurity. And, in this time, Kangana has proven her mettle as an actress extraordinaire playing characters ranging from a troubled fashion model, a gambling addict to a jilted bride embarking upon her solo honeymoon in Europe. The three National Awards she’s been awarded are a testament to the depth and potency of her skills as an actress. Bringing the courageous story of this athlete from Uttar Pradesh to the big screen will challenge how Bollywood sees their leading ladies. In over a century of Hindi cinema, we’ve seen just a smattering of films that feature a female lead with any kind of physical disability. Which, then, throws up the question: does Bollywood believe that characters with physical disabilities are somehow not capable of drawing in an audience? For years, the heroines we see on screen mostly fit templates. There’s been the ‘sexy siren’, the ‘girl next door’ and the much loved ‘sati savitri’ who have embodied what generations of Indians believe an Indian woman should be. And, even in the last decade where we’ve seen our female actors breaking some of these stereotypes, the one common denominator that’s stayed, no matter what the role, is the need to “look good”, a template for which has been established and a template that seems to have little or no room for any kind of physical difference.

Ask any Bollywood actress to describe her character and chances are that she’ll describe what she’s wearing in the film.

It’s 2017, and going de-glam or without makeup is still considered a bold move for our leading ladies. From Kareena Kapoor in Omkara to Aalia Bhatt’s forthcoming Raazi, a simple google search will throw up all the praise that was heaped on actresses for looking real on reel. Bollywood’s given us many deaf, dumb or blind heroines but any kind of physical imperfection is almost unheard of. Raj Kapoor took a huge gamble when he cast Zeenat Aman to play an adivasi girl with a disfigured face in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978). This was probably the first time in mainstream Bollywood that the heroine wasn’t a specimen of beauty from head-to-toe. In the 80s, Bharatanatyam dancer and actress Sudha Chandran lost a leg to gangrene following a road accident. She went on to tell her own story of post-accident trials and triumph in Naache Mayuri (1986). More recently, Kalki Koechlin played Laila, a 19-year-old with cerebral palsy in Margarita with a Straw (2015). Mostly confined to a wheelchair, with slurred speech; Kalki’s transformation into the character was stripped of all vanity. When it comes to telling stories about characters with disabilities, Hollywood’s track record is just a shade better than Bollywood. And, even then, these characters are overwhelmingly male. The best thing about George Miller’s high-octane Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) was Charlize Theron’s outing as the renegade War Rig trucker Imerator Furiosa. Shaven-headed and with a metal prosthetic arm, Furiosa is one of the most awe-inspiring, badass action heroes I’ve seen in years. If and when Kangana plays Arunima, it would be a landmark not just for women in Bollywood but also for the differently-abled in the country.