Let’s Talk About Women | 15 years of Jab We Met and Bollywood’s obsession with manic pixie dream girls

Kareena Kapoor had done over 25 Hindi films by the time she starred as the spunky, lively Geet in Imtiaz Ali’s 2007 blockbuster Jab We Met. A slice-of-life movie celebrating joie de vivre, it is arguably the most memorable project to date in the prolific filmographies of both the actor and the director.

Though Kapoor had starred in critically acclaimed films such as Chameli and Omkara, until Jab We Met she was best known for playing Poo, the P.H.A.T barbie big on glamour and self-love from Karan Johar’s 2001 family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Then six years later, Geet came along and cast a spell on not just Shahid Kapoor’s Aditya but an entire generation of movie-goers, showing us all how to live, laugh, and love.

Geet is a noteworthy example of the manic pixie dream girl, a trope Hindi films cannot seem to get enough of. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term, describes it as a female character in films that “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” Usually, a typical manic pixie dream girl is an underwritten woman character whose only purpose in a movie is to help inspire a greater appreciation of life and an awareness of true self/potential in the male protagonist.

Some beloved manic pixie dream girls from recent films include Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany Maxwell from David O Russell’s 2012 romance Silver Lining Playbook and Natalie Portman’s Sam from Zach Braff’s 2004 coming-of-age drama Garden State. Closer home, some of my favorite examples are Deepika Padukone’s Tara from Ali’s 2015 film Tamasha , Heer from Rockstar (2011), another Ali directorial, and Katrina Kaif’s Laila from Zoya Akhtar’s 2011 film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara . All of them beautiful women with an invincible zest for life waiting to fall in love with our heroes and inspire a life-altering transformation in them.

You may argue that Geet is not an underwritten character, that she is Jab We Met’s beating heart, its iridescent soul, that it’s not just Aditya who goes through a stark metamorphosis in the film, she undergoes a drastic change too. Yes, which is why Jab We Met stands as a great example of not limiting a manic pixie dream girl to the strict constructs of the established trope. Other fantastic films that followed the rule only to add to it include Abhimaan (1973), Akhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se (1978), Wake Up Sid (2009), and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013). Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan in lead roles, Abhimaan is the story of a playback Hindi singer whose wife’s superior talent ends up eclipsing his popularity. Unable to handle her meteoric rise to stardom, he goes through a gamut of troubling and self-destructive emotions leading to marital discord. Towards the climax, his wife’s towering talent and quiet withdrawal sober his arrogance, making him a more mature, nurturing man.

Akhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se isn’t too different either. A campus romance starring Sachin Pilgaonkar and Ranjeeta as academic competitors, it has the woman’s mature and forgiving presence, and later, her untimely death, knock sense in our hero and force him to grow up. Even in Wake Up Sid and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, the lead women inspire the men to turn a new leaf, but they are fully fleshed-out people and not just cardboard characters created in service of the hero.

If you look closely, Ali and Ayan Mukerji have made a career out of exploring, exploiting manic pixie dream girls. From Ali’s Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rockstar, and Tamasha, to Mukerji’s Wake Up Sid, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and most recently, Brahmastra: Part One—Shiva, the heroines of each of these films are quintessential manic pixie dream girls. It is a convenient plot device, often the favorite weapon in the arsenal of male directors, that they use when all else fails. It is their Brahmastra, if you will. But it’s lazy. Also, deeply patriarchal. Straddling women with the responsibility of making men come of age. It’s been 15 years since Jab We Met. How much longer till we and our films stop treating women as rehabilitation centers for men that are just too irresponsible, lackadaisical to clean up their own act?

When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites.

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