Aiyya! What a Stereotype

Hawa main tairti plastic ki thaili hai Meenakshi, Ud gayi!" is how a dialogue in the recently released Aiyyaa sums up its protagonist played so convincingly by Rani Mukherjee.

Two different films, English Vinglish and Aiyyaa, with two different women, Rani Mukherjee's Meenakshi and Sridevi's Shashi. They belong to different generations, but both struggle with the same thing- wanting to be their own people in a world which has other plans for them.

All Aiyyaa's Meenakshi wants is a room of her own where she will read books and listen to the stereo. Of 'marriageable age' in the world's eyes, she doesn't want marriage without love, and falls in lust with an object of a man, just like heroes fall for objectified women in most Hindi Cinema. Meenakshi is an unusal heroine who expresses and chases desire which is beyond her control, epitomised in the song "agu bai hala machaye..". Annie Zaidi, author of "The Bad Boy's Guide to the Good Indian Girl' liked that " She did not wait for men to take charge of her life. She was curious, not afraid to chase the man she likes, without worrying about the time of day or night or worrying too much about niceties."

English Vinglish's Shashi, older and married for years, lives in a world where her husband and kids are indifferent to her. Social commentator Santosh Desai sees the film as her "quest for self respect" which restores a sense of personhood to the figure of the "housewife", usually under-represented in cinema and ignored in feminist discourse. Unlike Meenakshi, Shashi doesn't have any radical plans but doesn't like it when her english accent is made fun of, or when her husband proudly declares that she was "born to make ladoos".

By chance, Shashi lands up in America, all by herself. As she is experiencing her incidental independence, walking the city on her own, you feel dread for her. Because you know she has a family and husband waiting for her back home. How will she resolve what she has seen she can possibly have, with the life she already has? The moment is not very different from the younger Meenakshi's helpless-ness at her situation where marriage is presented to her as the only option available. "Sagai ke baare main sagai ke baad sochna" (think about the engagement after its over), her mother tells her. It is possible that her obsession with the other man is an escape from this limited choice of a situation.

But here is where the two films are strikingly different. English Vinglish never allows Shashi her dilemma. The film conveniently resolves Shashi's could have been confusion by making her say "I don't need love, I just need a little bit of respect,". Here was a woman we all saw our mothers in. It probably would have been too much for us to see her in serious doubt, forget walking out for another man or worse to be by herself. This is despite the fact that her relationship with her husband seems love- less and as the film underlines, without respect.The film sees her primarily as a mother and deals with her problems keeping her firmly within her defined roles.

Why can't the mother, or the housewife, be other people she might want to be? In Hindi Cinema's rare women's history, we have seen women in other, more pressing contexts, make unusual choices- Waheeda Rehman's character did in Guide, so did Shabana Azmi in Arth and Tabu, also a mother and wife in Astitva. Very recently Konkona Sen in Luck By Chance. This is where English Vinglish feels dishonest. Shashi need not have made a dramatic choice, what is 'radical' or not is not for us to decide, but in the manner in which the film resolves all her possible dilemmas it fails to understand her.

Meenakshi's resolution seems to be a receding into a world of her dreams, where one doesn't know what 'really' happens and what doesn't. In doing that, the surreal film, gives her the chance to play the 'hero'- we hear her thoughts, we have no idea what the object of her love thinks or feels right till the end. When he finally does talk, he is very different from what he appeared to be till then. No screen time is wasted on any confusions he might have, he seems only too happy to love her only because she is so much in love with him. That's a tongue in cheek role reversal.

But when Shashi sacrifices her english exam in order to make ladoos for her family, that's the right opposite of a role reversal. When her husband looks at her with disappointment because she was not there when her son got hurt, its again the same thing- a confirmation and reaffirmation of our patriarchal prejudice when it comes to women, and mothers. For a film that could see Shashi's discomfort at the patronising manner in which her husband links her life's mission to making ladoos, to lead up to an end like this, feels like cheating. And when her husband asks her, unsure for the first time, "do you love me?", we know, even if the film doesn't , that Shashi's answer could have been a "no". "Hawa main tairti plastic ki thaili.." We wait for the day we can say the same about Shashi.

(An edited version of the essay was published in DNA)