Ranjib Mazumder

At almost midpoint of Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Sandhya (Bhumi Pednekar) realises that marriage has landed her at a place where she is terribly unwanted. While Prem (Ayushmann Khurrana), her husband, gets thrashed by his father, the other family members request her not to leave. Finally when her father-in-law insists, she tells him that instead of Prem, her husband, she is upset with him. If only he’d have let Prem study, this day wouldn’t have arrived. 

This is exactly the moment that defines Sandhya’s character. The average intelligence would have stressed her feeling terrible about her own overweight self, for being incapable of fanning desires in her husband. Instead, she blames his lack of education for carrying such a constricted worldview.

This character of Sandhya has very subtly and swiftly pushed the envelope of the Yash Raj heroine. Through a pair of rose tinted glasses, they showed us worlds where heroines usually serve to fit into romantic tropes. Exceptions were of course there, like Raakhee in Doosra Aadmi, Sharmila Tagore in Daag: A Poem of Love, Sridevi in Lamhe, Rani Mukerji in Saathiya or the recent Mardaani. Chak De! India had a terrific bunch of women, but it only cared about hockey, not romance, being a radiant oddity. More or less, Yash Raj loves their heroines conventionally beautiful. Sexy, svelte Indian beauties with pronounced features, after all, close-ups require them to be so. Adored by soft fabrics, and stunning colours, their bodies always move within the costumes as if they are the deliberation of muscles, bones and our collective desires. And when the song and dance adds to the effect, within the confines of flesh and blood, the viewer is supposed to feel alone with the heroine, giving in to romantic fantasies. An end in itself. Sandhya, again stands apart. In fact, the cruelty that all the Yash Raj heroines face while dancing in a chiffon sari in freezing Swiss Alps, she gets to wear sweater or shawl because of the obvious – winter.

The conventional Indian wisdom would consider Sandhya unattractive. We don’t have to point out in how many films we have made fun of fat people as an object of ridicule, reducing them to sexless entities. Remember those early Indra Kumar films? Sandhya for once doesn’t believe that losing weight would make her beautiful. Another trope of ugly duckling turning into swan smashed. She dances devoid of those sexy choreographed steps, inviting looks, but she is never apologetic about her own self, her plump self. The film finds its conclusion when the couple find their home in each other, instead of Sandhya suddenly transforming into Katrina Kaif and Prem cocktailing into safe zone. That’s the beauty of her character, a joy to behold, and as audience, instead of fantasy laden beauty, you feel for her. After all, we are just a bunch of feelings.

PS: Can we have more Sandhyas please?

(The writer is a journalist and screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise)